From the author of Off Trail comes a hilarious mystery about what happens when a chilling trip leads to a lost fortune.
Nate and Lily knew their mother was different. All it took was a hunch or a bad feeling and the family would be uprooted and moving to a different apartment or even a different town. But when the two are torn out of their life in the ritzy North Bay for the summer and dropped in “the Mississippi of California” on the Sacramento River Delta, Nate Caldwell and his sister Lily see it as one more move in a series of lurching disruptions driven by their mother’s suspicion that something or someone is after them.
When they settle into life around their uncle’s House of Illusion roadside attraction, Nate meets Mia—who makes all the girls he knew in the North Bay seem shallow and dull—and begins to connect with local teens who couldn’t be more different than the privileged classmates he left behind.
It’s not until they learn that the story behind the attraction is more than just a tale for the tourists, that Nate begins to figure out what drove his mother’s suspicious nature.
“An entertaining, comic, but also thoughtful coming-of-age tale.” – Kirkus Reviews on Polito’s Off Trail.
As a career journalist and a former newspaper reporter, Rick Polito has covered everything from political scandals and natural disasters to taking his dog to a pet psychic seminar. Polito attended the University of Missouri School of Journalism and worked at newspapers in Arizona and California. Along the way, he won multiple state and national feature and news writing awards and fit in a stretch as a syndicated humor columnist. Jokes from that column have been quoted in places as varied as The Tonight Show and The New Yorker, with his viral Wizard of Oz synopsis tweeted, posted and shared hundreds of millions of times. Once told that he “views the world through smartass glasses,” Polito took it as a compliment and prides himself on “thinking three jokes ahead,” a skill he has taken on stage as an occasional standup comic. Off Trail is his first published novel, and Polito says he writes in the young adult genre because he appreciates the “urgency” of the teen years and believes it takes readers to a place that is both dramatic and familiar to everyone. A father of two and a native of Arizona, the setting for Off Trail, Polito now lives in Denver, sharing his COVID bubble with his girlfriend Angela and Rocket, the insane Jack Russell Terrier.
Leraine has finally returned home, but the welcome is not as she imagined it. Tension is rising within the Mochedan Federation as many advocate for an end to the long peace and a return to the glory of war.
She sets off to the most important festival of the Mochedan, hoping to preserve the peace for at least a little while longer. Eurik joins her, to help his friend and to finally find the answers about his parents he’s been chasing since he left the island.
What they find is theft, murder, and a conspiracy to end their world.
“Ah, so we’re heading for smithies,” Misthell said.
Startled, Eurik glanced over his shoulder at the blade. “We are. How did you know?”
“We’re looking for my makers, that’s the point of this whole story. Also, there were at least two carts laden with iron bars and coal we passed heading the same way we are.”
Looking past Misthell, Eurik spotted one of the carts in question. “Right. I should have noticed that.”
“You’re too focused on one thing. Or should I say, one Way. Why don’t you try Dance of the Whirlwind to find what you’re looking for?”
He hesitated for a moment as the people flowed around him. But these past weeks, what little time he’d had for training had been taken up by Silver Fang. And on the Road, even wind chiri didn’t quite work as it should.
Taking a deep breath, he reached out only to have Misthell whistle sharply in his ear. Eurik flinched away. “What was that for?”
“Because you’re starting wrong. The wind is motion, so if you’re trying to become one with the wind . . .”
He sighed. He should know this and he did. “So must I.” Eurik moved forward, arms hanging loose at his side, fingers lightly splayed, and felt for the flow of wind chiri. Though flow was the wrong word for the chaotic mess swirling around him, a chaos he added to with every step, every breath. On reflex, he closed his eyes to better concentrate on his other sense.
He tried feeling for the ringing of steel, of hammers striking hot iron. But the wind chiri shied away from his reach, his flow rebuffing those around him.
Eurik sidestepped a group walking toward them, their wake washing over him. A sharp flow snaked its way out of a tavern to his left, carrying a jaunty tune. Behind him an ox exerted himself, hot air blasting out with every huff.
Those flows he could feel, because they mixed and bounced off his own, but they also constrained his world. He pushed, wind ruffling clothes and hair, and he felt his perception expand. So did the chaos, new flows emerging within his flow while more flows beat at it from without.
The wingbeat of a lake gull, the wind blowing over the rooftops of Urumoy, hot air rising from a dozen chimneys, the staccato of a thousand voices whispering, speaking, hollering.
Eurik swayed, and a wagon wheel ground past his toes, almost crushing them. “Look where you’re going!” Opening his eyes, he staggered away as he lost his connection with the world. Out of the flow of traffic, into a narrow, shadowed alley. The air hung in there, thick and fetid. His deep breaths only set him to coughing.
“What did you do wrong?”
“I—” Another cough. Eurik shook his head. “I don’t know.” Breathing through his nose wasn’t better, only made the smell worse, but it helped against the coughing. “I tried to reach out to find the smithy, but I got swamped by the city. There was too much.”
“Wind is not earth,” Misthell said, his voice changing into a familiar one. One Eurik had not heard in months. “It is more like water, flowing from a place of abundance to one where there is absence. The wind dances to its own music, and you must dance with it if you wish to guide it to where you need it.”
Eurik blinked until his sight stopped being blurry. “You talked a lot to sesin.”
“Yeah. What, you thought I’d spent all that time in a box?”
Eurik shook his head. “Hard to imagine. I would have found you within a year or so if that were true. All I would have to do is follow the stream of complaints.” “You mean pointed reminders. Not my fault your fleshy minds leak memories like sieves.”
Pemry Janes grew up on a family-owned farm. He has had a love for history for as long as he can remember and studied it at university. Fantasy he discovered a few years later and now tries to combine the two in his writing.
Amanda Smith is sick of getting chased from town-to-town. So when she lands in tiny Trifle, Arizona, she hopes it’s her last move for a long time. Despite hating the smallness of the town, she settles in and finds a best friend, and even a boyfriend. Normality at its finest.
But for a girl who can shoot snow from her hands and lift a two-ton truck over her head like a bag of feathers—normal is not an option.
The scientists who murdered her mother come barreling into Amanda’s quiet life. She must decide if she’ll run again or stay and fight. The price of either choice might be her life or the lives of those she’s come to love…
“You barely know me, Zach.” And I was so the wrong girl. He just didn’t know it.
“I’m trying to get to know you. You won’t let me.” His dark eyebrow quirked up, and his dimple flared as he offered me his totally addicting half-smile.
He was right, though. So trained to stay protected I’ve pretty much forgotten how to…be. So controlled. So…
I inched closer, which probably looked ridiculous as I scooted across the sand, but if I was going to take a chance, Zach was going to be that chance.
His eyes widened, and he leaned forward as his grip on my hand tightened. Despite the sand mixed in with our hands, his warmth still crept up my arm. But it also left a trail of goosebumps.
Do. Not. Freeze. Him.
I drew in a breath, then pushed that last inch separating us. My reward was the softest pair of lips. The contact, as light as it was, sent a shockwave through my chest, rattling down my spine. The warmth of the sun toasting us, and his now familiar scent, swarmed around my body, filling me with him.
All Zach.
I turned my head a fraction and that angle offered me even more of him. That pouty bottom lip I’d been eyeing since I’d first seen him was all mine to taste. To nibble. And I took full advantage.
New York Times & USA Today Bestselling Author, Lynn Rush, is a full-time writer, wife, and trail runner living in the Sonoran Desert, despite her fear of rattlesnakes. Known as #TheRunningWriter, Lynn can’t resist posting epic sunrise pictures while running in the desert with her trail sisters, even if she has to occasionally hop a scorpion.
When she’s not running or writing, she’s watching movies that fuel her everlasting love of superheroes, vampires, and all things Supernatural. The books she reads usually carry the same theme, but this former college athlete loves reading sweet sports romances as well.
She’s madly in love with her Ironman husband of 20+ years who is the inspiration for what true love is. You can find her on social media as @LynnRushWrites and her website is: www.lynnrush.com
