On the orders of his boyhood friend, now King Philip of Macedon, Aristotle postpones his dreams of succeeding Plato as leader of the Academy in Athens and reluctantly arrives in the Macedonian capital of Pella to tutor the king's adolescent son, Alexander the Great. Aristotle warms to the challenge of instructing his young charge in whom he recognizes a kindred spirit, an engaged, questioning mind coupled with a unique sense of position and destiny. He feels that teaching this startling, charming, sometimes horrifying boy is a desperate necessity. And that what the boy - thrown before his time onto his father's battlefields - needs most is to learn the golden mean, that elusive balance between extremes that Aristotle hopes will mitigate the boy's will to conquer. Annabel Lyon's second book, The Best Thing for You, was nominated for the 2005 Ethel Wilson Prize for Fiction. She lives in New Westminster.