It's Brent Weeks meets China Mieville in this wildly imaginative fantasy debut featuring high action, elegant writing, and sword and sorcery with a Chinese flare.      Persimmon Gaunt and Imago Bone are a romantic couple and partners in crime. Persimmon is a poet from a well-to-do family, who found herself looking for adventure, while Imago is a thief in his ninth decade who is double-cursed, and his body has not aged in nearly seventy years. Together, their services and wanderlust have taken them into places better left unseen, and against odds best not spoken about. Now, they find themselves looking to get away, to the edge of the world, with Persimmon pregnant with their child, and the most feared duo of assassins hot on their trail. However, all is never what it seems, and a sordid adventure--complete with magic scrolls, gangs of thieves, and dragons both eastern and western--is at hand.

You have been warned. The human race has been coddled, protected by an ancient species, in a multi-dimensional war that spans centuries. Under this umbrella, the people of Earth have thrived, ignorant of the threat looming just out of sight. This umbrella, this safety net, woven together from the lives of the fallen, will protect them no more. Our story begins in the small town of North Shore. A place known for its tropical climate and year round beaches. An unlikely place to find the savior of a war that is still undiscovered. Anthony Dimair doesn't know it, but he may be the last hope for Earth. Or, he may be the cause of its ruin. A darkness that has been buried deep inside of him for years, is slowly brewing to the surface, itching to find its way out. Can this teenage boy and his friends uncover the secrets before it's too late? Can they solve the riddle before the entire town is consumed by the Shadow of Darkness?

Casey (short for Acacia, but don’t call her that) is spending a few summer days with her parents at Disneyland. Just like they do every summer. Except this summer is different. Casey’s best friend has dumped her. She starts high school in the fall, and she’s tired of following her parents’ rigid schedule and putting up with their embarrassing behavior. She’s miserable. Even Disneyland can’t make her happy. Then, standing in line for the Indiana Jones Adventure, she bumps into Bert. A year older. Tall. Brown eyes. Nice. But Bert’s parents are mysteriously absent. And he wears an old, broken Mickey Mouse watch. Bert has secrets. When Casey ditches her parents to run off with Bert, those secrets are revealed in the darkness of a Haunted Mansion Doom Buggy, aboard a rocket ship hurtling through Space Mountain, and in the cramped confines of a Matterhorn bobsled. Is Bert really as cool as he seems? Could he become Casey’s first…boyfriend? To make matters worse, Casey must also fight off her parents’ attempts to ruin her relationship with Bert and fend off a pack of selfish, rowdy girls—the “Bra Strap Girls”—who seem intent on sabotaging her vacation and stealing Bert. Casey can’t stay in Disneyland forever. When she leaves, with or without Bert, she’ll have left behind her childhood and learned some important lessons about what it means to grow up.