I figured here would be a good place to ask, since obscure fandoms seems to be a thing for PPCers.

When I was really little, maybe eight or nine, there was a book (that might be part of a series, I'm not sure) and a book series that I really enjoyed that I haven't been able to find despite the wonder of Google.

The first one had an adolescent girl who found a book in a library that taught her how to do magic, and she befriended a boy about the same age who had the same book. There were two older wizards who kind of sort of but not really became their mentors (I think one of them had a mynah bird or a parrot- some sort of talking bird) and the kids went to what I think was an alternate future post-apocalyptic Manhattan where this evil darkness tried to kill them.

I'm not sure if this was a series or not because I only found the one book, but I distinctly remember there was some sort of cliffhanger, which makes me think there are more books.


The second one started with a girl waking up from a coma with amnesia, and her aunt and uncle told her she'd been in a car accident. The girl went back to her aunt and uncle's farm where she met her horse, which had a mysterious rough bony patch on its forehead. It turns out the horse was actually a bronze unicorn whose horn had been sawed off and he'd come to our world with the girl to protect her, who was actually a princess. There were also black unicorns who were waging war against the girl's kingdom and they opposed the bronze unicorn and the others (I can't remember the full range of colors, but I'm assuming that since the main unicorn was bronze there were unicorns that covered the metallic spectrum).

I've been searching for these books for almost ten years and would love it if someone could point me in the right direction. {:-)