In A Boulders Shadow

When you've been brought to your knees, once you're able to stand again, where do you go? In a Boulder's Shadow begins a week into the New Year. A college baseball player kneels in the snow on a Chicago sidewalk, staring at the bodies of his friend and an eleven-year-old boy. Knowing his failed attempt to rescue the child from a gang initiation led to their deaths, he begins roaming aimlessly until he meets another wanderer holding fast to her own dark secret from a distant war. In a Boulder's Shadow chronicles the journeys of four characters from different walks of life, trying to escape the guilt of a deadly mistake, a war, a school shooting, and a rejected marriage proposal. Knocked to their knees by their circumstances, they are drawn to the same woodland camp in northeastern Pennsylvania where a mysterious boulder awaits in the woods. Coming together in the shadow of the boulder to coach, play, and heal, these mentors, teachers, and counselors soon find they must fight to prevent the boulder's destruction. As the camp owner faces the possibility of losing his family name and lands passed down from his great-grandfather, decades-old antagonisms between the owner, the caretaker, and a local handyman are stoked in the heat of summer by the greed of a real estate developer. All leads to a final choice: let the boulder be destroyed or unite and risk everything to save it.

The New York Times bestselling author of the Novels of the Elder Races returns with an enchanting and sizzling new tale about debts that cannot be repaid and hunger that cannot be satisfied… For Beluviel, consort to the Elven High Lord, and Graydon, gryphon and First Sentinel of the Wyr, even the slightest desire for each other is forbidden. But two hundred years ago, after a desperate play to save Beluviel’s stepson left them indebted to the cruel Djinn Malphas, they found their fates inexorably linked together—and the hunger between them growing too strong to ignore… Two centuries later, with their debt to Malphas coming due, Beluviel and Graydon realize that, if they are to stand any chance of saving their souls, they must once again work together—this time more closely than ever before. But every moment they spend with each other brings them nearer to losing something even more vital—their hearts…

Bounded by desert and mountains, El Centro, California, is isolated and difficult to reach. However, its location close to the border between San Diego and Yuma, Arizona, has made it an important place for Mexican migrants attracted to the valley's agricultural economy. In 1945, it also became home to the El Centro Immigration Detention Camp. The Shadow of El Centro tells the story of how that camp evolved into the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service Processing Center of the 2000s and became a national model for detaining migrants—a place where the policing of migration, the racialization of labor, and detainee resistance coalesced. Using government correspondence, photographs, oral histories, and private documents, Jessica Ordaz reveals the rise and transformation of migrant detention through this groundbreaking history of one detention camp. The story shows how the U.S. detention system was built to extract labor, to discipline, and to control migration, and it helps us understand the long and shadowy history of how immigration officials went from detaining a few thousand unauthorized migrants during the 1940s to confining hundreds of thousands of people by the end of the twentieth century. Ordaz also uncovers how these detained migrants have worked together to create transnational solidarities and innovative forms of resistance.

A young Silicon Valley engineer stumbles into a hidden company with advanced technologies that could change the world. But at the same time, he learns this company, his life and the rest of civilization is threatened by a force even more advanced. And the opposition has a head start. The startling discoveries he encounters could point to the origin of life on Earth, and maybe its final destruction. With the help of a beautiful and mysterious astrophysicist and a retired math professor, it's a race against time to expose the conspiracy. Following the clues takes them on a frantic chase to the dark side of the Moon in an experimental spacecraft and back to the streets of San Francisco. What he can't out-smart, he has to out fight. In the battle to save the Earth he must rely on his Silicon Valley training and ability to leverage the new technologies at his disposal. But will it be enough? What can one engineer, an astrophysicist and an old professor do to save the Earth? Whatever it takes.

Thomas Steinbeck has been praised by Publishers Weekly for his stylistic brilliance and “accomplished voice.” Now, his enthralling novel In the Shadow of the Cypress blends history and suspense with literary mastery and brings vivid realism to California’s rich heritage. In 1906, the Chinese in California lived in the shadows. Their alien customs, traditions, and language hid what they valued from their neighbors . . . and left them open to scorn and prejudice. Their communities were ruled—and divided—by the necessity of survival among the many would-be masters surrounding them, by struggles between powerful tongs, and by duty to their ancestors. Then, in the wake of natural disaster, fate brought to light artifacts of incredible value along the Monterey coast: an ancient Chinese jade seal and a plaque inscribed in a trio of languages lost to all but scholars of antiquity. At first, chance placed control of those treasures in the hands of outsiders—the wayward Irishman who’d discovered them and a marine scholar who was determined to explore their secrets. The path to the truth, however, would prove to be as tangled as the roots of the ancient cypress that had guarded these treasures for so long, for there are some secrets the Chinese were not ready to share. Whether by fate, by subtle design, or by some intricate combination of the two, the artifacts disappeared again . . . before it could be proved that they must have come there ages before Europeans ever touched the wild and beautiful California coast. Nearly a century would pass before an unconventional young American scientist unearths evidence of this great discovery and its mysterious disappearance. Taking up the challenge, he begins to assemble a new generation of explorers to resume theperilous search into the ocean’s depth . . . and theshadows of history. Armed with cutting-edge, moderntechnology, and drawing on connections to powerful families at home and abroad, this time Americans and Chinese will follow together the path of secrets that have long proved as elusive as the ancient treasures that held them. This striking debut novel by a masterful writer weaves together two fascinating eras into one remarkable tale. In the Shadow of the Cypress is an evocative, dramatic story that depicts California in all its multicultural variety, with a suspense that draws the reader inexorably on until the very last page.

10,000 years have passed since the Second Great War destroyed the Earth. A new world has risen from the ashes. A young assassin finds himself trapped in the middle of a war that will change his destiny forever. An ancient evil has risen and the minions of the Dark Lord move to destroy the balance of the world further. One such minion known as Moraseth has declared war on Olroo and will strive at nothing to satisfy his Dark Master. The demons of the Abyss known as The Riv'Noss rise from the shadows to wage the war their Dark Masters have started. Can a rag tag band of heros restore the balance to the world and revive The Old Religion and defeat the evil that now festers like a plague on the world, or will Moraseth and his minions destroy everything that the people of the world have worked so hard to forge?

High Ambassador Akira Muro has shielded herself from personal connections her whole life. Due to her immense power, her own people feared her. Now, she is a dynamic warrior and diplomat on her final mission. Akira must face the deadly Mors, also known as the Black Death, and to do so, she is willing to risk everything. Her mission takes Akira and her team to the mountain pass guarded by the Protectorate of Mountain Shadows. There, she encounters the man who abandoned her for the protectorate: Kilronan. Akira has always guarded her heart as desperately as she guards the elemental forces she commands. Kilronan threatens her self-made shields. In order to protect her country, Akira accepts an alliance with Kilronan. Together, they will fight the dark invaders. First, Akira must learn to fight together with a new breed of warrior, and she must also learn to trust. As the Black Death nears, will Akira choose duty or the emotional, human life she has always denied?

The age of human wizardry is drawing to an end. The wizards are now almost universally despised for the part they had played in ancient wars and politics. The life of one wizard, Syle, is in a quiet valley where he now resides with his feline companion, Greysquire. Now the valley's peace is shattered as a horde of beasts traverse it destroying the nearby village of Broadoak and slaughtering all but Tallon a half-elven girl, daughter of Syle's inn keeper friends. There had been peace in the world for many decades, but now Syle is compelled to determine the hordes purpose. Joined by a small group of adventurers they meet along the way, Syle and his party must determine the key to dissipating the power which has mobilised the evil horde army. They follow a hazardous, less well traveled route to avoid detection. Battling the ancient horrors in long dead cities, in wilderness and underground each of the travelers has his or her part to play.

In a world where beliefs are real, actualized by will, expressed by intent, Yip Chi Chuan, a young martial and spiritual ascetic, flees as the only home he has ever known, the ancient monastery of the Priests of K’un Lun, is destroyed by a newly ascendant extradimensional evil. Cast out and alone, Yip strikes out on a quest spanning the breadth of his home world of Ea’ae and into the greater macroverse beyond in an attempt to unseat an all-consuming Darkness rooted in his once vaunted Order’s distant past. Will Yip, the last of his kind to walk the wide world beyond his fallen sanctuary, succeed where his mighty brethren failed in Ages past? Unfortunately for Yip, the answer appears all too clear.... Without the guidance and teachings of his lineage, pursued by malevolent supernatural agents of the Cabal, unable to fully defend himself in a world steeped in magic, his own quest may fail before it ever begins. Unfazed by his own limitations, guided by his inner vision and direct experience of the energies of life, the radiant chi suffusing and enlivening the world all around, he is determined to triumph where others have faltered. To win forward, he will need help... but first he must survive. A blend of Eastern mysticism and Western fantasy, Shadow’s Rise is the first book of the Chronicles of the Fists, an epic trilogy recounting Yip’s adventures against all odds.