Seventeen-year-old Karou, a lovely, enigmatic art student in a Prague boarding school, carries a sketchbook of hideous, frightening monsters--the chimaerae who form the only family she has ever known.

During the last moments of calm in prewar Prague, Lenka, a young art student, and Josef, who is studying medicine, fall in love. With the promise of a better future, they marry--only to have their dreams shattered by the imminent Nazi invasion. Like so many others, they are torn apart by the currents of war.

When seventeen-year-old high school students Veronica and Dessy go to Prague to attend a summer writer's program for college students, they experience romance, conflicts, and, ultimately, the strengthening of their friendship.

Living in the twenty-fifth century, young Dawkins and Hypatia Faraday take time travel and technology like the NeuroNet for granted but in Prague in 1648, they are startled to find a rogue alchemist who is using advanced technology to change mercury into gold.

"It has been years since Helen Franklin left England. In Prague, working as a translator, she has found a home of sorts--or, at least, refuge. That changes when her friend Karel discovers a mysterious letter in the library, a strange confession and a curious warning that speaks of Melmoth the Witness, a dark legend found in obscure fairy tales and antique village lore. As such superstition has it, Melmoth travels through the ages, dooming those she...