Philip Pullman returns to the world of His Dark Materials with this magnificent first volume of The Book of Dust. Eleven-year-old Malcolm Polstead and his damon, Asta, live with his parents at the Trout Inn near Oxford. Across the River Thames (which Malcolm navigates often using his beloved canoe, a boat by the name of La Belle Sauvage) is the Godstow Priory where the nuns live. Malcolm learns they have a guest with them; a baby by the name of Lyra Belacqua . . .