From the Shadows: Separate Paths & Convergence

by Kb Shaw

Overview

"AN INSTANT CLASSIC" — ReadersFavorite.com

“YA SCIENCE FICTION AT ITS FINEST” – Chanticleer Reviews

"AN INTELLIGENT, INSPIRING ADVENTURE" — Kirkus Reviews

"THIS SERIES HAS A CHANCE TO MAKE IT BIG" — SFReader

It's been sixteen years since a reclusive child prodigy brought civility back to the digital world with the release of an AI based computer that required a simple "please" and "thank you" to function fully. Now he is about to unleash a new technology that could threaten the world.

Two teens and a female reporter are drawn into an exciting and dangerous adventure. Cameron Rush and Rosa Costas are best friends, even though they have never met in person. Cameron lives in Troy, a small town in Wisconsin, while Rosa lives on a ranch outside Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Cameron's schoolmates call him boring. He's an A/B student, second-seat trumpet in the school band, fourth-string halfback, and tenth-man on the basketball team. He is unbelievably meek and takes grief for it from others. He likes a challenge.

At 5'-1", Rosa Costas is vivacious and petite. She is as outgoing as Cameron is meek. A friend once described her as "a hundred-pound package wrapped in a ton of personality." Rosa is also deceptively tough. Her mantel full of rodeo trophies attests to this fact. On the weekends and during vacations, she works as a cowgirl on a ranch. She is adept at languages and, like Cameron, enjoys solving puzzles and overcoming challenges.

Meagan Fletcher, technology reporter for the World Broadband Network, has never named her multiCom AI. Because she knows the potential dangers technology can pose, she prefers to use her multiCom in manual mode, bypassing the AI altogether. She doesn't trust it--and she trusts GundTech even less. It is a company that seems too good to be true. Meagan is on a mission to expose the mysterious inventor behind GundTech and discover the computer company's true intent.

As Rosa, Cameron, and Meagan race toward their destiny, they are oblivious to the dangers that lie ahead.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780692977156
Publisher:	Ipulpfiction
Publication date:	02/20/2018
Series:	Gundtech Binary
Edition description:	Turtleback School & Library Bi ed.
Pages:	306
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.75(d)
Age Range:	13 - 16 Years

About the Author

Keith (KB) Shaw spent the first 15 years of his adult life as a theater designer, director, teacher, playwright and, occasionally, bit actor. He secretly dreamed of winning an Oscar or Emmy for Best Screenplay. Early on, he learned "a great play isn't written, it's rewritten." He discovered that he drew greater satisfaction from writing fiction than from writing plays and screenplays. For the last 20 years, he has been writing for the education market, completing more than 1,200 lessons, interactive modules, and educational video scripts, most for the world's largest education company, Pearson. Shaw also hosted live educational broadcasts into K-12 classrooms across the country. His education writing experience instilled in him a concern for the reluctant male reader, which is now a part of his writing DNA. It also led Shaw to found The Spectrum Children's Book Club in 1996. The website, which was cited in The Chronicle for Higher Education, ran for over a decade. It reviewed books and published short stories by such writers as Bruce Coville, David Lubar, Orson Scott Card, and Pete Hautman.Shaw's goal is to write YA fiction that can entertains, enlightens, and appeals to both boys and girls. He is the author of two YA science fiction series: Neworld Papers and From the Shadows [ISBN: 978-0-692-97715-6] and numerous short stories. Shadows started as a web series on the Spectrum and drew more than 20,000 readers.

Read an Excerpt

Excerpted from From the Shadows : by KB Shaw. Copyright © 2003. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One
The Remarkable Room

Hidden away in a gleaming white building was a remarkable room. Only one person knew of this room's existence and the precise location of its secret entrance. It was concealed in the wall of a glass-domed meeting hall on the building's top floor. But the fact that the room was a secret room was not what made it remarkable.

In stark contrast to the sun-bathed, circular hall, the room was boxy and windowless and was almost entirely shrouded in shadow. The darkness made it difficult to tell the room's size. In some ways the room seemed large, almost cavernous and in others it felt small and claustrophobic. The wood-paneled walls were dark-stained and disappeared into shadow before they met the ceiling, giving the sensation of great height while the musty smell of accumulated dust and the enveloping darkness felt stifling and coffin-like. But this was not what made the room remarkable.

The room was made remarkable by one object - the painting. It was the only ornament in the room. It was the only decoration gracing the dark-stained walls. It was lit by a solitary lamp secreted somewhere in the high ceiling and it glowed vividly under the lamp's warm light. On close inspection, the yellow tinge and slight cracking of its lacquered glaze betrayed the age of the painting. It was centuries old. But neither the painting's age nor its dazzling brightness was what made it remarkable.

In the center of the room, barely visible at the edge of reflected light, stood the only piece of furniture. It was a high wingback chair, which seemed to swallow the person sitting in it. It seemed to pull the person deeper into the shadowed recesses of the room. The person hidden in the inky blackness of the chair knew what made the painting remarkable. In fact, the person in the chair was the only person in the world who knew.

What made the painting and, therefore, the secluded room in which it was displayed remarkable was its subject. It was a portrait, a portrait of four people - a man, a woman, a teenage boy, and a teenage girl. The owner of the painting was certain of the identity of the man and woman; however, the identity of the two young people was still a mystery.

Are you aware of whom you are? Of what you are about to do and what you may have already done? How can you be? The painting's possessor often pondered such questions while sitting alone in the dark room gazing upon the painting. Where do you live? Do you know each other? Have you even met? Usually these thoughts led to a sense of frustration, but this day was different. You're so young and innocent. You're ignorant of the odyssey upon which you are about to embark; unaware of where you are going. Perhaps the announcement will start you on your journey. Yes, I'm sure it will. It has to. The person felt the growing anticipation of today's events - events that would change the world and, hopefully, bring the people in this old painting together.

And that's what was remarkable about the subjects of the painting. They had not yet met. They had not yet sat down and had their portrait painted. But still, there they were, faces glowing warmly under the spotlight.

Yes, the people in the painting made it remarkable - the people... ...and the message of danger that lie hidden beneath the paint.

Editorial Reviews

“An instant classic with all the desired ingredients for great young adult fiction.” — readersfavorite.com

"An intelligent, inspiring adventure." – Kirkus Reviews

"Those who would like a bit more than merely a great story, who want to think as well as enjoy, will certainly find From the Shadows to be an exciting and compelling novel." – LongAndShortReviews.com

"A thoughtful, intelligent work that balances characters and ideas with an unrelenting plot." – OnlineBookClub.org

“I won't be surprised if the name KB Shaw emerges from the shadows into the limelight of the young adult publishing world.” — Paul Goat Allen, Barnes & Noble

"Shaw brilliantly weaves technology, humor, and romance into a hip, age-blind novel." — Nashville Science Fiction Book Club

"This story mixes the empathy for the characters of the Harry Potter stories and the politics of the X-Men." — SFReader.com

From the Publisher