The Phantom Isles - Tapa dura

The book is called The Compleat Necromancer, and when Ming, Orion, and Courtney read an incantation from its pages, they have no way of knowing they are about to conjure up the ghosts of an entire nation. Because the ghosts that the three friends summon aren't just any ghosts. They were captured from an island in the middle of the Indian Ocean—the Ilhas dos Fantasmas—a place where the living and the dead once coexisted peacefully. Now confined to the pages of a few dozen library books in a New England town that's thousands of miles from their home, the ghosts must rely on the children and a determined librarian to free them before they are lost forever.

Stephen Alter is the son of American missionaries to the Himalayas, and was raised in India. The author of seven books for adults, he is the former Writer-in-Residence at MIT, and a recipient of a Fulbright grant. He currently lives in India with his wife, where he is researching his newest book for adults—a behind the scenes look at the world of Bollywood.