The Anthony Monday series consists of four books written entirely by John Bellairs and published between 1978 and 1992. The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn, the first of these adventures, is the sole example of Bellairs' young adult output to not feature supernatural elements and is instead similar to a more straightforward mystery in the Hardy Boys vein. Six years passed before another Anthony Monday adventure: in both The Dark Secret of Weatherend (1984) and The Lamp from the Warlock's Tomb (1988) Anthony was now fighting evil spirits and enchanted objects, much like Lewis Barnavelt the decade before and the run of Johnny Dixon adventures. Anthony returned only once more - 1992's posthumous The Mansion in the Mist - and no stories have been written in the series by Brad Strickland, though he has noted over the years that his story idea submissions to Dial often include six proposals: two for Johnny, two for Lewis, and two for Anthony.

The Experiment of Alpheus Winterborn

First-time readers of The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn who are somewhat familiar with both Lewis and Johnny's escapades will find an entirely different story within its pages, one lacking the supernatural effects one would come to expect after such chilling thrill-rides like The Face in the Frost and The House with a Clock in its Walls.

Also notable is that Treasure became the only one of Bellairs' young-adult output to not be released through Dial Press. Because of the drastic change of pace from his earlier novels, Strickland says Dial insisted on changes to the novel that we infer Bellairs was not too keen to make and Bellairs took the text to Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Strickland has categorized these "suggestions" from Dial as:

• The ending was entirely coincidental; there should have been more detective work on Anthony's part.
• The villain should not have learned about Anthony's plans the way he did.
• There was some concern with the portrayal of Anthony's family as being unpleasant.

Apparently Bellairs was not as happy with HBJ either and, after staying silent for many years, resurfaced in 1983 back at Dial with two supernatural adventures focusing on an entirely new set of characters, Johnny Dixon and Professor Childermass. Still, after these two novels, Bellairs resumed the Monday series in 1984 with an adventure more akin to the concurrently written Dixon series than its immediate predecessor. In The Dark Secret of Weatherend, Anthony again teams up with Miss Eells but this time against a nefarious creature focusing on controlling the elements to cleanse the world and start a new. Not exactly your standard Hardy Boys fare.

Why had the concept of the Anthony Monday books changed? Strickland feels Treasure was the first of a "faux Gothic" series, where seemingly supernatural mysteries would turn out to have everyday explanations. "Given John's interests and reading, perhaps inevitably the Monday [series] became true Gothics as he went along." This seems plausible: it also does not take much imagination to see the plots for both The Dark of Weatherend and The Lamp from the Warlock's Tomb originally conceived as Dixon books.

It is also likely that Bellairs wanted to try something different. More than once he tried returning to the realm created in The Face in the Frost, including drafting a short story about the first encounter between Prospero and Roger Bacon; he also tired his hand at adult detective novels, though in a 1990 interview he called his attempts "lousy." Fast forward to the months preceding his death when he began writing the first Lewis and Rose Rita book since the 1970s, The Ghost in the Mirror. Perhaps he thought himself in a rut, punching out semi-predictable stories involving the same character and, instead of introducing another new series of books, he could easily pick up where he left off with Anthony. But since Dial had originally passed on Treasure, perhaps they insisted that if that story's hero were to return, he would have to settle into the established "Bellairs' format" or "style." He too would have to face ghost and wizards and whatever other supernatural forces hit Hoosac.

The Return of Anthony Monday

Strickland feels a new Anthony Monday adventure is possible; however since Anthony's family situation is close to what John's was like when he was a boy, he thinks that perhaps the publishers feel Anthony is too personal a creation for him to meddle with. In 2002, Strickland said a new non-supernatural Anthony Monday novel was among his proposals to the editors - perhaps returning Anthony to his origins - but nothing ever surfaced. Strickland has routinely explained that fans should not write him asking for further adventures of Anthony, but to Dial Publishers instead.

Settings

Like the Barnavelt and Dixon series, most of the Anthony Monday adventures are set in the 1950s. Again, the odd book out is Treasure: careful examination notes no date is explicitly mentioned. Readers are free to assume, based on a familiarity of Bellairs' other books, that this too is set in the early 1950s and noting in the text specifically says otherwise - meaning the story is as plausible as happening in the 1950s as it could be in the 1970s when the book was published. Subtle clues are given:

• Alpheus Winterborn died in 1929 [40]
• At his death, his nephew Hugo was 20 [40]
• Hugo is nearly 50 now [39]

The Dark Secret of Weatherend notes in its opening paragraph that its adventure begins in August of 1954. Later Bellairs adds a strange nod to the previous book when he reintroduces Emerson Eells to readers: "I haven't laid eyes on you since the affair of the Winterborn treasure...." [75]. Perhaps Bellairs wanted to reinforce the continuity and chronology between the two books or simply allude to a previous work released by another publisher - or both.

The remaining two books in the series revert to the generic "mid-1950s."