Annie Harvey gets an unexpected gift from a grandmother she thought had died years ago. Her grandmother left her a mysterious book that appears to be blank, but then an odd little man enters the book store where Annie is researching the book and it reveals its secrets. Annie soon finds herself exploring a whole new world by going through Elfreth's Alley into Elf Reth's Alley and an alternate version of Philadelphia, this one populated by witches and wizards and the like. Her efforts to unravel the secrets of the book have endangered this community, and Annie works hard to undo the damage. Just when things are looking up, she learns that a new threat has emerged. Annie ultimately finds herself holding Merlin's wand in one hand, the Green Witch's scepter in the other while the beast turns it's full attention to her. The only person left to save the world is Annie and there's just one little problem, She has no clue what to do.
About the Author: Donald A. Shinn was born in Southern New Jersey in 1958. He was diagnosed with hemophilia A in the early 1960's. Back then the standard treatment for hemophilia related bleeds was rest, ice, compression, and elevation. This resulted in lots of time lying around which made Donald into a fanatical reader. While other kids would race to the record stores and arcades in malls, Donald would head to the bookstores. (Back when there were bookstores in malls.) This made it natural for him to become a writer. A writing experience in third grade was enough to temporarily quell that fire. His teacher gave the class an assignment to write a story that involved a moral. Donald wrote a story about a parrot and monkey. The monkey was jealous the parrot could fly, and begged the parrot to teach him to fly. The parrot agreed to do so, if the monkey would do the parrot's chores for a week. The monkey readily agreed and after a week the parrot pulled two of his feathers, handed them to the monkey and showed the monkey how to flap his arms. The monkey leaped from the tree, flapped like mad, and fell to the ground with a thud. He looked up at the monkey and asked, "What happened?" The parrot said, "You can't fly because you're a monkey. You should be glad for who you are and not try to be something else." Well, this story had Donald's teacher thrilled to no end. She dragged Donald to every classroom in the school and made him read the story to everyone. Donald was mortified. He was a shy child and would have preferred to be beaten over being forced to read his story to everyone in the school. Writing became something Donald focused on not doing well after that to avoid a repeat. Then in high school Donald took a sci-fi class in English which required the writing of a story. This stoked the writing fire and it's never died down since. Becoming a "real" writer though was never something he considered. Just before graduating from college his hemophilia intervened in that plan. A long series of medical setbacks kept Donald sidelined for most of the next twenty plus years with multiple hospitalizations/issues, and had him nearly dying on four occasions. By the time he finally shook off those issues, writing was the only really viable career option left. He likes to say that God chose writing as a career path for him. In addition to writing, Donald loves to garden, care for his tropical fish, his two cats, and putter around.