When the shadows come alive, Ava and Caleb discover the only safe place is in each other’s arms.
But the closer they get, the darker the truth becomes.
All the Shadows We Become
by Dustin Blackwall
Genre: YA Romantasy Thriller
Caleb Ward is trying to forget the night he almost died.
Ava Lin is trying to understand why he survived.
But Hollow Creek isn’t letting either of them move on.
What starts as a strange blackout spirals into a trail of eerie clues, shifting shadows, and a connection between Ava and Caleb that grows hotter and more undeniable with every new secret uncovered.
Something happened
that night.
Something dangerous.
And it’s waking up.
The lights exploded into darkness so fast it felt like the whole world had been switched off. One second, the fairgrounds pulsed with noise; the next, a hush dropped over everything – thick, heavy, wrong. Ava’s breath caught in her throat as the shadows around the tents stretched, bending in directions that didn’t match the lanterns flickering overhead.
Static rolled through the air, not sound but pressure, brushing across her skin like cold fingertips. The wind picked up and carried the faint smell of scorched leaves and metal. Somewhere behind them, a ride creaked slowly, even though nothing was moving it.
All around them, people shouted – fragmented cries swallowed by the dark. A string of carnival lights fizzled overhead, sputtering blue sparks that made the shadows jump like living ink.
Caleb turned, pulling her with him, and in that split-second flash of dying light, she saw his face – terrified, determined, and somehow still looking at her like she was the one thing in this chaos he trusted.
The ground trembled.
The shadows bent again.
And together, hand in hand, they ran toward whatever waited in the dark.
Light Years to Midnight
by Dustin Blackwall
Genre: SciFi Thriller
When data itself begins to speak, who decides what it’s trying to say?
Light Years To Midnight — a globe-spanning thriller where science, faith, and
code collide in a race against a countdown written into the fabric of reality.
The wind whipped dust across the plateau as Jonas crested the ridge, breath burning in his throat. Below him, the satellite dishes of the abandoned relay station stretched into the dark like a field of frozen giants. Their metal frames groaned under the rising storm, each bent toward the same invisible point on the horizon.
He wasn’t alone.
A faint beam of light—too controlled to be an accident—flickered between the dishes. Jonas crouched, heart thudding, watching as a woman stepped into view, her silhouette sharp against the skeletal machinery. She moved with the alertness of someone who had been running for far too long.
Elena.
He had seen her face in files, in encrypted packets, in the warnings that had chased him across continents. But seeing her here, in the flesh, felt unreal—like walking into a photograph he wasn’t meant to understand.
Before he could speak, a second figure emerged from the opposite end of the array. Maya paused only when she spotted Elena, recognition flaring across her face. They had never met, not really, but the anomaly had braided their paths tightly enough that the moment felt inevitable.
Jonas stood and lifted a hand, but movement in the distance froze him mid-step.
Engines.
Low, tactical, deliberate.
A convoy approached from the north, its headlights dark, its tires crunching through gravel like muffled gunfire. Special operations—unmarked, unhurried, confident. Not hunters, but collectors.
Maya stepped closer, her breath sharp in the cold air. “Does it matter?”
Something pulsed beneath the earth—three beats, a pause, three more—vibrating up through the metal frames of the dishes. The sky above them shimmered, faint but unmistakable, as if answering the rhythm.
Jonas swallowed hard.
“No,” he said. “It doesn’t matter anymore. It’s already found us.”
Dustin is a lifelong fan of science and speculative fiction, blending his fascination with astronomy, technology, and the unknown into stories that explore the edge between logic and wonder. When he’s not writing, he’s reading, stargazing, or chasing trails on his dirt bike — always searching for what lies just beyond understanding.
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Book Reviews by the Reluctant Retiree 