"I think something might have happened to me Saturday night. Something bad." Private Investigator Dani Ripper's client list is nuttier than the Looney Tunes conga line, but she diligently solves one crazy case after another, waiting for a game-changer. Enter Riley Freeman, 17-year-old honor student. Saturday afternoon Riley quietly placed a little strawberry sticker on her private area and pretended it was a tattoo. She didn't tell anyone about it. That night she went to a slumber party that featured drinking and boys. Riley fell asleep, woke up the next day with no reason to think anything happened... ...Until Monday, at school, when a classmate called her Strawberry. Coincidence or crime? Dani agrees to investigate. And the roller coaster ride begins.

Cara’s mother has disappeared. Her father isn’t talking about it. Her big brother Max is hiding behind his iPod, and her genius little brother Jackson is busy studying the creatures he collects from the beach. But when a watery specter begins to haunt the family’s Cape Cod home, Cara and her brothers realize that their scientist mother may not be who they thought she was—and that the world has much stranger, much older inhabitants than they had imagined. With help from Cara’s best friend Hayley, the three embark on a quest that will lead them from the Cape’s hidden, ancient places to a shipwreck at the bottom of the sea. They’re soon on the front lines of an ancient battle between good and evil, with the terrifying “pouring man” close on their heels. One chapter will be posted Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays until all 10 chapters are up. These will be followed by the second book in the series, The Shimmers in the Night. A Junior Library Guild Pick; Kirkus Reviews Best of 2011; Selected for the ABC Best Books for Children Catalog; Locus Notable Books.

This novella was a Hugo and Nebula nominee twenty years ago. I lost both to Charles Sheffield -- whom I married five years later. Life sometimes really is just as strange as fiction.

Eighteen-year-old Rose Davies is a fresher at the prestigious Cambridge University. She dreams of punting on the river, reading Shakespeare in the famous library, and getting to know a town steeped in history. But Trinity College's newest professor, Christian Howard, is a dream of a very different kind - and, impossibly, the image of the man who saved her life when she was only six years old. Soon, Rose is swept into a world she never expected to find; filled with angels and demons, a war raging eons, and a discovery that will change her life forever... She is the key to ending the Eternal War, but Heaven & Hell will do whatever it takes to ensure the other can't have her...