Malasz

Surgeon Robert Emmerling’s death at age 86 in The Girl in the Photo ’s opening chapter serves as a catalyst for a series of discoveries by his two children. While clearing out their father’s home, David and Abbie find a memoir he had written about being stationed in Japan during the Korean War, years before he met their mother. It describes his involvement with Masami, a woman he met there. David and Abbie also turn up Masami’s photograph and a letter she had written to Dr. Emmerling after he returned to the U.S. This previously unknown episode in their father’s life raises questions for the siblings: Why did the romance end, and what happened to Masami afterward? The novel draws the reader into this family’s story through plot elements that span past and present-day action. In the present, Abbie and David deal with their grief, pursue the truth about Masami and try to resolve dilemmas in their personal lives. But the past mingles freely in the form of frequent flashbacks to the siblin...

It is a summer of the Dark Ages when an old vagabond appears in Beewicke offering the parents of the boy, Thaddeus, the promise of a fine education and a trade for their son. Gold exchanges hands and the stranger and the boy go off in the old man's cart, pulled by the sentient mule, Asullus. On the journey, he is joined by two others recruited by their new Master—Anders of Brightfield Manor, a scholar, and Rolland of Fountaindale, a street thief. The three boys are unaware they are all the ultimate descendants of this very same Sorcerer. Silvestrus begins the instruction of his charges by stating that the use of Sorcery is governed by Belief. If one has the inborn talent and the strength of Belief, one’s desires can take form—assuming any size, any shape and for any purpose. But he also warns them that each use of Sorcery shortens a Sorcerer’s life span by an unknowable quantity. The old man pronounces one last requirement—before he or she can command the use of Sorcer...