If what hooked you was Kay Harker’s determined hunt for the lost Santa Barbara treasure—dodging the Black Canon and that witchy coven while conferring with Nibbins at midnight—then you’ll love the way Bilbo Baggins is swept into a single, shining objective in The Hobbit: help a band of dwarves reclaim their hoard from Smaug. The road is studded with clever set pieces (riddles with Gollum, trolls turned to stone, a perilous forest) that echo the mix of peril and play you enjoyed in Kay’s night adventures.

If you loved how Kay’s ordinary house became a portal—where toys whispered by moonlight and old documents about the Santa Barbara breathed back to life—then The Children of Green Knowe will feel like coming home. Young Tolly explores an ancient manor where time seems thin; he meets the ghost-children who once lived there and, like Kay, learns that the past is still speaking if you listen closely beside the fire or under the boughs after dark.

If the charm for you was the way Kay slips into midnight councils and broomstick flights where the rules of sorcery are felt rather than explained—witches like Sylvia Daisy Pouncer looming at the edges—then Lud-in-the-Mist is a perfect match. In Dorimare, respectable folk are undone by the hush and rumor of fairy fruit; Mayor Nathaniel Chanticleer must face a creeping enchantment that, like Kay’s world, can’t be pinned down by tidy laws but is unmistakably real in its consequences.

If you delighted in the playful side of Kay’s nights—the talking animals, the conspiratorial whispers, the sudden flights that soften the menace of the Black Canon—then Five Children and It offers that same gleeful sparkle. Siblings Cyril, Anthea, Robert, Jane, and the baby meet the Psammead, whose daily wishes go hilariously sideways, producing scrapes and rescues with the same buoyant, twinkling spirit that lights Kay’s escapades.

If you were drawn to the intimate feel of Kay’s solitary forays—padding through halls after bedtime, finding hidden doors to the past and clues to the Santa Barbara—then Tom’s Midnight Garden will resonate. Tom discovers a garden that appears only at night and befriends Hatty across time; like Kay and Nibbins plotting at midnight, his quiet, private explorations bloom into a profound adventure without ever leaving the house’s shadow.