More than anything, Abbey Howard wants to be an ordinary seventeen-year-old girl-hang out with her girlfriends, gossip about boys, stay ahead in school, and keep on the right side of her mom. But there's one thing that makes her different: a ghostly shape she calls the Shadow that's haunted her since she was a little girl. Her life gets even more strange when the new dreamy guy in school, Caleb Powell, claims he can also see the Shadow. He tells her that he and his family are guardians who protect ordinary people from the very real and very dangerous things that go bump in the night. He wants to know what the Shadow is and if it's dangerous, and destroy it if he has to. But is he interested in her, or just the thing that haunts her? They discover that the Shadow is more than a simple ghost. It's part of an ancient plan to thwart an immortal empress who desires to conquer Earth. The empress was separated from this world untold ages ago by a Veil of power that bars her and her kind entry to our dimension. But over the millennia she's worked tirelessly to tear down the Veil, and her work is nearing its completion. When the Veil falls, nothing will be able to stop her from reclaiming what was once hers. Abbey has within her a secret power that can bring true death to the immortals-a fact that has come to the empress's attention. She knows Abbey's name, and the dire threat she poses to the empress's everlasting rule. Abbey and Caleb must fight for their lives against demons and undead soldiers sent by the empress to destroy them. Their only hope for survival lies in the hands of a shady spiritualist, and a mysterious occult artifact known as the Sapphire Eye.
About the Author: David Forbes lives near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, with his wife and two children, a very talkative cat named Pumpkin, and a not-very-bright ferret named Hip-Hop who has yet to realize that you do not poop in room corners. He spends his days as a credit union marketing executive and dons his not-very-secret alternate persona of novelist during whatever little spare time he has left in the evenings, on weekends, vacations, and the occasional holiday. Forbes (this is me writing in the third person. For those of you who've always wondered who writes the author's bios for books, the secret is now out of the bag) is the author of the bestselling epic fantasy series THE OSSERIAN SAGA, published by HarperCollins, as well as the mainstream novel LIFE LINE. He is currently working on a young adult trilogy called THE LOST GARDEN, about a teenage girl named Abbey Howard who finds herself pursued by an immortal empress who believes Abbey is a threat to her immortality. Abbey finds protection in the arms of the new kid in school, hunky and dreamy Caleb Powell. He and his family are secretly witches who protect ordinary people from the very real monsters that go bump in the night. The individual titles of each book are THE SAPPHIRE EYE, THE BLACK FLAME, and THE WHITE ROSE. He's also preparing an urban fantasy novel called THE RUTHLESS DEAD, about a half-angel security consultant who's marked for possession by an ancient Greek vampire. More information about all of these titles can be found at the author's website, www.davidforbes.net.