Faith. Fate. Two words so full of potency, yet fraught with nuances that touch on many of humanity's hopes and fears. Two words commonly employed as if they are mutually exclusive—that the realities they represent exist within continua in complete opposition to each other.Forty-five hundred years earlier, through the remarkable efforts of one woman, humanity sprang outwards from the surface of Earth to reach for the stars, for new worlds to mould and then inhabit. A new beginning w...

It is often said the past is an unstoppable current, flowing relentlessly into the present and forever shifting the contours of the shores that might have once constituted the future. This is no less true in small villages where memories are long and the effects of both good and evil dwell in the minds and hearts of its residents for generation after generation.David Hutchings and Clare Edwards arrive at the Tudor Arms in the village of St. Milborn-Under-the-Hill for ostensibly dif...

Michael Liddle walked alone into his new school on the first day of a new year. All he wondered about was whether he would make some new friends, fit in with his classmates, and do well enough at his school subjects. Unknown to him, a web of fate and hope had been spun around him long ago that was soon going to ensnare him. He discovered that much of what he thought he knew about himself wasn't true at all and that secrets about his past had been kept for millennia. Soon, the dreams he had...

Nothing could be more idyllic than growing up in a small Oklahoman town. That was as true for me as for everyone else in my neighbourhood until I began the third grade. Then things changed and not for the better. But perhaps the worst of all that happened to me was the end of my friendship with the girl three doors down from my home, a relationship I had imagined, even in that prepubescence age, would last forever.But the warm sunshine of that effervescent childhood was over—dead. ...

King Sylvian Jolivet slowly rose from his prostrated position before the icons of his faith. Despite the past hour of baring his soul before his Lord, he felt little peace. He had allowed no priest to accompany him or to act to intercede on his behalf. There were secrets, no, not of the kingdom, that he wished no clergy, no wife, no man or trusted advisor to be privy to. These were to be kept within his own heart and shared only with God.The king stood staring at the sacred emblems...

"As long as she lives, may she turn uglier each day…be less fair, less desirable and that it continue until her death."Black, evil, merciless words spoken by one whom Ilena, in all of her innocence, believed loved her: a curse founded upon envy and desire but chiefly uttered in an appeal for justice seasoned with revenge. Or so did Marta convince herself.But that is only one type of curse, for there are others.Some would believe that they are born under a curse and ...

Broderick knew who he was: a peasant, a commoner, a nobody, at best a stable boy. Why couldn't everyone else see him for who he truly was? Especially her! Ever since Princess Charlotte had ordered him to ride with her to the old mill, his life had been turned upside down with no one granting him the right to choose his own future. With every new situation that befell him with the princess, Broderick only felt the chains tightening about him, the cell door in the castle dungeon looming that...

Leaving St. Milborn-Under-the Hill and the murders that had been committed there, David Hutchings and Clare Edwards want to believe the chief part of the guilt and the loneliness and, too, the punishment for their past sins are now behind them, that the budding dawn of a new day is waiting there in London for the two of them as they return to England's greatest city. All they have to do is to turn their faces toward its glow to feel its invigorating warmth and the promise of a new life tog...

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. From 4,500 years in our future, Bree Matthews and Jude LeClaire would wrinkle their noses at such a basic theorem, dismissing it with almost scornful laughter, considering it as hardly worthy of being taught as a first principle. Even such sayings as "power accretes to power" or "when great forces clash, the gods rise from their restless slumbers and take notice" would appear as trite and boring clichés. If only that could be true.

Michael Liddle wants to yank the hair right out of his head!It's bad enough that he and Alowyn, the Tylani princess, are included in the Ideema prophecy. Now the Procifi are naming him the "Arribahur"—"the one who opens the bridge" to their home world. All Michael and Alowyn know is that they are expected to find the "Gift of the Ideema," a device that will save the worlds of the Tylani. It's a lot of pressure for a seventh-grader.In the last year alone, Michael has discove...

Something lies hidden under the sands in the Middle East, a secret so fraught with consequences and surrounded by the fear of the tumult its discovery might provoke, that it cannot be named.It is for this reason the British government has assembled a team to unearth it before any of the other parties searching for it can find it. Included among its members are David and Clare Hutchings.Ostensibly, they are participating in an archeological investigation in northern Iraq, at...

Michael Liddle and Alowyn face more than one set-back in their quest to find the Ideema Gift. It appears that no matter what they discover, the real truth seems to be something else entirely. They had located the Bastion, which had led them to another world where the trail of the Gift was picked up once more, but the clues uncovered there pointed them back to Earth. But where is the Gift? The means to find it fail and Michael believes the search is now hopeless. Despite these difficulties,...