What is "the shadow" in these stories? It's what lurks in the dark, and it's different for everyone. -For Isabel, it's the whisper from the basement that invites her to come on down. -For second-grader Emma, it's the tortured spirit that has haunted her family for generations. -For Deacon William, it's the damaged android that frightens visitors in the retreat house halls. All ten short stories in this collection are about how the different characters deal with what they find in the dark. Two of these stories received recognition from Writer's Digest and others won awards or were published....

"A potent mix of fantasy, romance, and intrigue." D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review Eighteen-year-old Sheft has good reason to fear there is a connection between himself and a deadly entity that haunts the nearby Riftwood. Already despised as a foreigner, he keeps himself apart. Yet, beyond what he'd ever dared to dream, he and Mariat fall in love. Sheft can't bring himself to tell her the truth about his deepest fear. Neither can he share with her the devastating realization of who he is discovering himself to be, nor the terrifying journey his destiny demands. But when he is...

"A richly-imagined tale of the struggle between the persistence of goodness and the corruption of power within the heart of a single youth-an absorbing follow-up to Blood Seed, the first book in the series." ---Debra Doyle, PhD, co-author of Knight's Wyrd, winner of the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award Born in a land devastated by a reign of terror, Teller is snatched as an innocent boy into the brutal lord's subterranean stronghold. Mind-probes twist his memories of home, and he grows up into an eighteen-year-old dark rebel. He simmers with hatred for the extended family he believes abandoned...