Amber Shadows and the Missing Wands
Edition: Paperback, Casebound, Kindle, E-book
Series: Book One
Publisher: Outskirts Press
Published: July 20, 2007
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 460
ISBN-13: 9781432703547
Subjects: Fantasy - General; Fiction / Fantasy / General; Magical adventure; Suspense; Fantasy
Genres: mid-grade to young adult
First sentence: My dear children, in Magia there are two types if magic--Dark Magic and White Magic.
Description: Imagine yourself as a thirteen-year-old White Magic Witch-in-training, left in the care of your older sister and brother. You attend Candlebury Junior High school during the weekdays, and Magia Sessions for Young Witches and Wizards on the weekends. With only two nights left to complete your assignment for Professor Whittlesworth on an extraordinary White Magic witch or wizard relative, you find yourself in a bind. You rack your brain as to where to look for the information needed, since the Spellbound Library had no records on any relatives for you to write about. You go up into the attic after your cat, (who is also a wizard) transforms himself into a wizard and hints for you to look in a place that is long ignored, dusty, and definitely not found in the living room. Upon searching the attic you find an old trunk with two journals belonging to a relative you just may be able to write about. Let us not forget to mention that your birthday campout is also coming up on the weekend, and while your two best mates stay over, you are led to a third secret just beyond the backyard in the eldest rings of wood. Meanwhile, the Dark Magic Sorceress who has a grudge against you and your family is rumored to be back from the dead seeking vengeance and you fear she has abducted your family. What would you do?

Amber Shadows attempts to create and write about a fictional relative, having found no information on anyone in her family. Zapphorya, the family wizard cat who can vaporize into wizard form, hints to Amber that she should search the one place collecting dust and the like. Amber determines that he is referring to the dark attic, the same attic her brother and sister used to tell her harbored Dark Magical Monsters and Dark Magical Ghouls.  Reluctantly, she heads up into the attic and stumbles upon an antique trunk. She opens the trunk and finds two journals belonging to Jocelyn Shadows, her great-great grandmother. Amber secretly keeps the two journals with the belief that there is a connection between the whereabouts of her parents and grandparents (missing for nearly a year now), and the two mysterious, missing wands she’s read about in the journals. What Amber stumbles upon during the night of her birthday campout, initiates the first of at least four quests in which she, and her two best friends face danger, learn the true meaning of friendship, and develop trust in each other’s judgment when facing the notorious Sorceress Lady Gondara. Amber sets out alone until Marianna and Jasper join her on a quest to rescue her parents and grandparents while trying to survive the wrath of Lady Gondara. 

It is somewhat a dark piece with a light of hope for the middle grade-young adult genre, a fantasy fiction with a hint of humor, suspenseful moments, and turmoil wrapped inside a fantastical world of magic, ghosts, and unusual beasts conjured up by Dark Magic. Readers will turn page after page as they experience a magical and dangerous adventure along with our White Magic Witch, Amber Shadows, as she takes on Lady Gondara, the most vengeful Dark Sorceress of the hidden Magian World. Will Amber, her two best mates, and her abducted family survive?

Check out Authorsden.com for a free, 10 chapter Sneak peek into this award winning book of the year.  Amber Shadows and the Missing Wands won the 2008 Spinetinglers Book of the Year Award, and Authorsandbooks.net Book of the Year Award in the young adult genre category. It is available for purchase most everywhere online.
Notes: This five-star rated book has won Spinetinglers 2008 Book of the Year Award, and has just won the 2009 Book of the Year in the young adult genre category through AuthorsandBooks.net's Best Books of the Year contest. Amber Shadows is a first book in a series of four planned and is available on Amazon.com and most online stores.