View our feature on Barb and J.C. Hendee’s In Shade and Shadow. The national bestselling Noble Dead saga is "one of those [series] for which the term dark fantasy was definitely intended" (Chronicle) Wynn Hygeorht arrives at the Guild of Sagecraft, bearing texts supposedly penned by vampires. Seized by the Guild's scholars without Wynn's consent, several pages disappear-and two sages are found murdered. Convinced the Noble Dead are responsible for the killings, Wynn embarks on a quest to uncover the secrets of the texts...

Without shading, even a beautiful drawing can appear flat. But artists can learn to add dimension to their work with these techniques, illustrations, and exercises that show how to achieve effects with light and shadow.

The Great War is won? so everyone tells her. But even with her brother now king, Astra Verzaer knows the fight is far from over. When her sudden exile finds her alone in the dreary country of Merimeethia with only the aloof Prince Louko for company, she digs deeper in vain attempts to find proof of her suspicions. Yet Astra is not the only one with secrets, and she soon finds herself swallowed up in a sudden uproar over Merimeethia's throne--an uproar which she believes to be caused by the very person she set out to find. But will anybody believe her? Even if they do, will it be too late?

Mason Jerah is a Shade, a mythical healer, living in secret in Northern California. Alaric Lambrecht is a Shadow, an empath and psychic, working alongside his family in the suburbs of Sacramento. After a serial killer is caught, and discovered to be a Shade, it sets in motion an unexpected tidal wave that affects them both. As the United States begins to tear itself apart with violence and xenophobia, Mason and Alaric are yanked out of their comfortable lives and cast into the turbulent waters of political intrigue and conspiracies, setting them on a collision course with each other and civil war.