New Releases by Royce Buckingham

HUNTED! Wexford Stoli has the power to move the very darkness with his quill and ink, but whenever he draws, chaos and ruin soon follow. When he and his rag-tag company of freaks, gypsies and soldiers are hunted by a vengeful Vill Magnan and his savage Murk army, will Wex face the villain without his magic or risk falling into darkness himself?

Wexford Stoli has a talent, and it''s not raising pigs. He joins palace soldiers as a cartographer to map the lands of the kingdom for Overlord Kryst. The Veil in the Angry Mountains is said to hide the blasphemies of a bygone age, and the dark curtain has remained for hundreds of years. Those drawn into the Veil of darkness do not return. The company includes a magician of dubious skills, a Count''s daughter, and an unlikely group of misfits. Wex becomes the mapper when his sketching unexpectedly moves the Veil and the company encounters deadly Rotters, River People that time has forgotten, river-dancing Adara of the Walther, and horned beasts. Vill Magnan has emerged from the Veil with a singular desire for vengeance against the man who had unfairly betrayed him. His beastly Murks are simple creatures but are trained as an army to become a powerful force. X marks a treasure or disaster as Wex must continually map away from danger, trying to return to his own land. The unknown world changes and they head toward a deadly confrontation.

Cameo leaves her theater troupe for the performance of a lifetime. She will become the Red Queen in the midst of intrigue to unite a people. Failure will mean her death. She must send armies to war to conquer the city of Skye in Abrogan, a fabled land of dragons, wizards and monsters across an endless ocean. As the Queen flees with Captain Scarlet, a bizarre Jumper has left one body for another, seeking power while the world changes mysteriously. The map of the world has disappeared from the castle. As an azure desert appears, a mountain explodes, and the city is overrun, a powerful force continues to rise. A dark army emerges from The Dales, and it may be too late to escape.

A haunted bog, flesh-eating insects, and a melting mountain test Queen Cameo, Vill, Tobias and Adara while an enemy that drains blood to feed dark sorcery is on the road. Someone powerful is rallying forces to retake the city that has been occupied by the Royal Majesty Blackpool and his dark army. As the past and present collide, a heroic man and an imposter queen try to save an entire people. Can the mapper change the world one last time or will the darkness of the past forever doom Abrogan? In the end, they may all have to face the darkness in themselves.

Guided by a massive clan book containing tales of their ancestors, the Hilltoppers arrive in Abrogan, pledging allegiance to their King. They have crossed a forbidding ocean to another land where birds speak messages, poisonous sleep-animals lurk, warriors struggle for power and Lords bend the truth on a whim. Ian Krystal, leader of the Hilltoppers, becomes an unlikely leader, charged with building roads, clearing a menacing bog full of savages, chasing down bands of thieves and in the process emerges a champion of the people. Petrich is the clan''s scribe, meant to chronicle their journeys while learning the fine art of mapping from a renegade Lord. As a child, darkness sheltered him from marauding tribesmen and he carries it with him. The emerging City of Skye is being built in the new land. King Blackpool''s nephew struggles with his power and the King arrives determined to double his empire. Can an honest man of integrity prevail in a land of intrigue? And the dark is hungry.

As Ian Krystal and his Clansmen travel the outskirts of the kingdom, he discovers that his father''s legacy of conquest has left many of the people scattered and bitter. The Lord of Maps charts the kingdom and the clan chronicles continue. But it may be that they are changing the past and creating the future. Krystal vows to make amends but the wrath of a winged beast causes Petrich to invoke the dark for their protection. A new start for the King means recalling the clansmen to Skye but their disappearance defies his will and they must battle for their lives. King Blackpool plans an arranged marriage and an outpost to expand his kingdom which includes Little People, River traders, hidden beasts and a mysterious dark curtain that will cloak the mountains. Krystal''s allegiance to the undeserving King requires them to slay gnarled beasts, tame cannibals, cheat death and challenge a dragon in a battle they are sure to lose. As Blackpool''s kingdom shatters, the Clansmen return as champions of the people to avenge all that they have lost. The King might flee, but the darkness could swallow them all.

There''s a Troll under the bridge, a Wedge causing earthquakes, Char that''s burning through town, and they''re all demons on the run. As the mayhem escalates, Lilli, a hippie Demonkeeper arrives on the scene. Her interest is in peaceful demons but something dangerous is stalking the Seattle streets. Can Nat, Sandy and Richie see past their differences to find the Demoneater that is threatening to destroy the panicked demons? Mr. Calamitous seems to know something, but a ravenous Demoneater could end it all. Nat may be in over his head.

There is a menagerie of demons in an old house where Nat has been trained to be a Demonkeeper. Seemingly inanimate objects in his house are really little demons that cause chaos if they are loose. Most of them are relatively harmless, like the ones that produce weird smells or make you stub your toe. But some can kill. Nat is their keeper, with three mischievous minions for company, charged with preventing these creatures of chaos from wreaking havoc out in the normal world. Only a gifted demonkeeper can see and hope to control the hidden chaos so Nat has a thankless and lonely job. Local boys accidentally release the Beast from the basement and the Thin Man is out there, hunting demons for his own evil purposes. No longer alone, Nat must team up with Sandy, the library assistant and Richie, a tough street kid to capture the deadly Beast before it''s too late.

The demons have been released and have taken over the city. They are in the library, the dump and even the water. Nat is trapped at sea and his friends must use their wits to recapture the escaped demons. The Demonkeeper Journal may hold some clues if only they can be translated in time. Richie, Sandy and Lilli are a team and need to hold on until Nat gets back. The little minions step in, but when the elements collide and the chaos escalates, the destruction could be complete.

In Royce Scott Buckingham''s Impasse, a man is left to die in Alaska while on an "adventure vacation" and must somehow survive to get his revenge on those who betrayed him. Forty and facing a mid-life crisis, Stu Stark has lost his mojo. He simply gave up after being fired from his prestigious job as a prosecuting attorney for losing the biggest case of his career. So when Stu''s best friend gifts him a one-week trip into the Alaskan wilderness to rediscover his manhood, Stu thinks it just might do him some good. But after a horrible week, Stu is crushed when he realizes that no one is coming back for him. Dying, Stu is found by a grizzled old hunter who informs that winter has set in, and they''re not going anywhere for a while. So begins Stu''s training to become the man he never was...and to get revenge on those who betrayed him. This adult debut by the internationally bestselling YA author is a modern day take on The Count of Monte Cristo.

In The Terminals, Royce Buckingham tells the riveting story of a covert team of young, terminally ill teens who spend their last year alive running dangerous missions as super-spies for an organization that may not be all it seems. When 19 year-old Cam Cody is diagnosed with a terminal illness, he expects to spend the rest of his shortened life in an adjustable bed. Then one night, a mysterious man offers Cam one chance to join a covert unit of young "terminals." They are like him, only they spend the last year of their lives executing exciting and dangerous missions to make the world a better place. With nothing to lose, Cam is in. A helicopter flies Cam to a secret tropical location, where he''s tossed out with a parachute and an instruction manual. After a rough landing, he meets his nine teammates. The other terminals don''t seem sick; Zara is beautiful, Donnie is an amazing athlete, and Calliope sings like a bird. He soon learns that they''re enhanced with an experimental super steroid TS-8, which suppresses their illnesses'' symptoms and heightens their physical and mental abilities. It''s also fatal if taken for more than a year. Cam joins this extreme spy team, and they begin pulling dangerous operations in multiple countries. As his teammates fall around him, he starts to receive cryptic messages from a haggard survivor of last year''s class hiding in the forest. She reveals that the program isn''t what it seems, leading Cam to question whether any of them are really sick at all.

Arrrrgh!Get ready for an adventure featuring the most ferocious, savage, and slightly stupid, creatures under the earth!Cruising through the woods in a borrowed police car, teenage PJ and twelve-year-old Sam accidentally run down a bizarre creature. When Sam''s curiosity gets the best of him, he crawls down its tunnel and is quickly captured by a mob of the ferocious beasts. PJ reluctantly goes underground after him, teaming up with a group of mysterious humans who have kept the creatures from discovering the surface of the earth for centuries, until the boys royally messed it up! Now both boys must use all of their ingenuity, and learn a few lessons, to escape the treacherous underground land and save the world!

In the desert town of Richland, Washington, there stands a giant sycamore tree. Horribly mutated by nuclear waste, it feeds on the life energy of boys that it snags with its living roots. And when Teddy Matthews moves to town, the tree trains its sights on its next victim. From the start, Teddy knows something is very wrong with Richland-every kid he meets disappears before his eyes. A trip to the cemetery confirms that these boys are actually dead and trying to lure him to the tree. But that knowledge is no help when Teddy is swept into the tree''s world, a dark version of Richland from which there is no escape . . .

While cruising through the woods in a ?borrowed? police car, PJ and Sam accidentally hit what looks like a mutant gorilla with a bad attitude. But this is no ape?it?s a goblin, escaped from the city of Argh in UnderEarth, a place beneath the world?s surface. When Sam is captured by a gang of goblins, PJ must go after him. But can PJ save Sam before he becomes dinner for a bunch of hungry goblins?

Ever since his mentor?the original Demonkeeper? mysteriously disappeared, Nat has been in charge of the demons that live in his house. Most of them are just nuisances, but the Beast who lives in the basement is very dangerous. When Nat goes out one night, a clueless burglar breaks into the house and unwittingly sets the Beast free. Meanwhile, a vicious villain, the Thin Man, wants to use the Beast for his own evil purposes. Can Nat defeat the Thin Man and return the Beast to the basement without any major casualties?