Alma Alexander's life so far has prepared her very well for her chosen career. She was born in a country which no longer exists on the maps, has lived and worked in seven countries on four continents (and in cyberspace!), has climbed mountains, dived in coral reefs, flown small planes, swum with dolphins, touched two-thousand-year-old tiles in a gate out of Babylon. She is a novelist, anthologist and short story writer who currently shares her life between the Pacific Northwest of the USA (where she lives with two obligatory writer's cats) and the wonderful fantasy worlds of her own imagination. You can find out more about Alma and her books on her website (www.AlmaAlexander.org), at her Amazon author page (https://amzn.to/2N6xE9u), on Bluesky (@almaalexander.bsky.social), at her Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/AuthorAlmaAlexander/), or at her Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/AlmaAlexander)

Alma Alexander's life so far has prepared her very well for her chosen career. She was born in a country which no longer exists on the maps, has lived and worked in seven countries on four continents (and in cyberspace!), has climbed mountains, dived in coral reefs, flown small planes, swum with dolphins, touched two-thousand-year-old tiles in a gate out of Babylon. She is a novelist, anthologist and short story writer who currently shares her life between the Pacific Northwest of the USA (where she lives with two obligatory writer's cats) and the wonderful fantasy worlds of her own imagination. You can find out more about Alma and her books on her website (www.AlmaAlexander.org), at her Amazon author page (https://amzn.to/2N6xE9u), on Bluesky (@almaalexander.bsky.social), at her Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/AuthorAlmaAlexander/), or at her Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/AlmaAlexander)

The Were Chronicles by Alma Alexander

"Everything I knew about the Were was wrong"

A Were of no fixed form, a Random, able to Turn into any warm-blooded creature it sees...

A young Random whose failure to Turn forces him into taking his destiny into his own hands and becoming full Lycan in the name of pride and fury, learning things he never thought were possible...

A true Shifter, the wild card, Turning into anything he chooses at will...

Together, they work to turn back a shattering tragedy, solve a conspiracy-shrouded mystery rooted in their own kind, and work to preserve their own existence against a rising tide of superstition and hatred.

All they wanted to do, in the end, was save a life. Instead... they started a war.

 

REVIEWS

  • Alma Alexander gives you what you want to read in a page-turning book. It would be a great series to read in school!"

    – Michelle Randall (Readers Favorites)

  • "You will never read another shapeshifter book like this. Every surprise will catch you unwary. And, like me, you will find that others will have to pry it out of your fingers."

    – Tamora Pierce, author

  • "The experience of being an immigrant, of being different, of being treated unfairly by self-righteous authority and being powerless to do anything about it, are all here, unflinchingly described, shown with all their terrible consequences."

    – Mike Reeves-McMillan (www.Fantasyliterature.com)

  • "The best books leave a hole in you when they're over, and Shifter certainly left a gaping void in me. The experience is worth it, though. And look at it this way - once you're finished you can always go back and re-read the book's perfect last line over and over again."

    – Angela C (Angela's Library)
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

Prologue:

The Boy in The Basement



Vivian Ingram, the family caretaker and my babysitter, arrived just before the ascent of the full Moon, as usual – locking everybody except me (including poor Mal yet again) into their Turning Rooms in the basement and making sure everything was secure.

Charlie was with her.

The first time she'd brought him, he had been thirteen and I was only eleven. You'd think that a newly-teenaged boy would have disdained the company of a kid like me, but we somehow bucked the odds – we missed out on the standard boy-from-girl-from-boy recoil in response to unnamed cooties, and we had become buddies instead. Of course, he was going on sixteen now, and he'd Turned – at his proper new-Moon trigger, only a few months before – into a vampire bat, like the rest of his family.

My older brother Mal had glowered at Charlie as he was escorted into his Turning room in the hope that this time would finally prove the charm. Mal, almost eighteen, still un-Turned, visibly chafing at having to be marched off into yet another attempt at becoming an official adult in the Were community, being watched by a boy two years his junior who had already passed him on that road.

Charlie knew better than to offer any commentary while Mal was still in hearing range – but once my brother and his temper were safely locked away behind secured doors, he gave me one of his crooked smiles, half sympathy, half mischief.

"Still no joy for him?"

"Nope. And he's kind of running out of time. They're not sure what they're going to do if he passes his eighteenth birthday and is still… like this. Is it even possible for someone to un-Were?"

"What is he trying for this time?"

"Still a weasel. It's been quite a come-down, really. He started out all gung-ho, with the wolverine, but after my folks had to keep hiring the wolverine for months it got…a little expensive. So he's had to bring his sights down some. He wanted something with teeth, though, so – well – weasel."

"And if that doesn't work, what, a rat?" Charlie asked.

"Don't be mean," I said sanctimoniously.

"Shall we stay and see how he and the weasel are getting on? The Moon ought to be up by now – or is about to be, anyway. It should be fun."

I smacked him on the shoulder. "You know how he hated seeing us peering in the last time."

"We'll be careful," Charlie said. "Come on."

Vivian was busy – one of her other sons fortuitously picked a perfect moment to call her on the phone, and while she was talking to him she had momentarily lost track of Charlie and me. We hadn't really bothered to check on the Moon's status in the sky – it was close enough for our purposes. We stood jostling outside the door of Mal's room, and I stood on tiptoe to peer inside through the glass window set into the door.

"What's he doing?" Charlie asked, crowding in beside me, careful to keep to the edges so he could duck away if Mal showed signs of looking up and seeing us there.

"Nothing," I said. "As usual."