One man's struggle to accept his wife's death, and the cost of bringing her back to life.
While in the process of bringing his wife, Sandra, back to the living, Arthur journals about moments from his past that changed him. During the journal writing, he rediscovers how, as an orphan, his ability to animate objects and people to life may have ultimately destroyed the lives of the few who grew close to him. The old stuffed teddy bear that helped him assemble puzzles when he was a child might have been too much of a secret for his adoptive mother to keep. His friend Quincy, who had abilities similar to his, might have been scared away by Arthur’s abilities. And his grade school teacher is still harboring a secret about his biological father that she can only hope to be true. Once Sandra is alive again, things become more complicated. She claims Arthur is not who or what he thinks he is. Her ire shines a spotlight on the insidious but most likely true, unspoken nature of their relationship. In the meantime, a mysterious smell envelopes the community—a stench so heinous it can be fatal. As the number of deaths from the stench mounts, Arthur must decide who to animate back to life and who remains dead.
Sometimes, to truly live, you need to die a little.
Katy's father claims he created her out of special clay, literally with his hands. Adding that she will soon slip into another world because of it does not make his assertion any less farfetched, not even to a highly creative art student such as her. Nevertheless, she suddenly finds herself in that other world with nothing more than skills as an artist and her father's insistence she travel across this incredible landscape to an old family refuge.
Not long into the journey, she discovers the inhabitants are fleshy ghosts forced to perpetually relive murder and suicide. It is in this violent environment where she comes to terms with an unusual benefit of her artistic talent-with it, she can free ghosts from their deaths.
In this reality bending tale of magical realism and horror, Katy will learn answers to questions she has never been brave enough to ponder, all while traveling through a bizarre world with only a sketchbook and pen to defend herself.
What would you do to save your soul?
Like any other person in the community of Tre-erde, Janae believes each tree in the Tre-wood Forest grows from the soul of a buried ancestor, from a deceased friend, or a relative.
Like any person in Tre-erde, she believes she belongs in the community, despite them shunning her for the nature of her estranged father.
But unlike others in Tre-erde, she can’t believe what the Prime, the wisest person in all the communities, is telling them: the mythical dragon from childhood stories will finally arrive and eat the trees in the Tre-wood. It will then carry their souls in its belly across the sea to the other world, that promised better world.
When the mother and father of her friend Daneel take their own lives, it signals what might be a trending kind of travesty that will happen in anticipation of the dragon’s arrival. Not accepting this fate for Tre-erde, Janae and Daneel travel to Kahlil, the community near the sea, to find proof that the dragon is not real and is merely part of a story.
In their journey, they discover half-truths that shaped Tre-erde’s past, and unprecedented changes in the world around them. All this while gathering knowledge of a near future event that threatens, not just the lives of all those in Tre-erde, but the nature of what it means to have a buried soul.
What they discover is that the world is much smaller than they knew, and Tre-erde's past is riddled with half-truths and lies. But what they discover about the dragon will change the very nature of the reality in which they live.
Tired of watching his ailing grandfather wither away from Alzheimer's, 19 year old Langley Jackson moves from his middle class home and subsequently struggles to survive in downtown Long Beach. Here he finds himself part of a social movement bent on destruction and retribution. Through all of this, Langley must decide on trying to subsist in a complicated and unlawful new world of graffiti and poetry or endure in a disheartening old one outlined by the death of his mother and his sick grandfather.