Title: Worlds of Light: The Cleansing

Author: J.W. Elliot

Genre: Young Adult Fantasy

Release Date: July 2020

Some secrets are written in ash and fire.

Kell Crawford lives alone with his mother, who has a bizarre fascination with light. When she is murdered by a mysterious stranger, Kell goes on the run to escape the murderer and find the father who abandoned him as a baby. Chasing his mother’s last cryptic message, Kell finds his way into an underground tomb, which transports him to a strange temple where skeletal priests worship the Light and think he is their Promised One. But something has gone wrong. Some other being has possessed a portion of his soul. The priests fear and hate him, and a terrible darkness seeks to claim him—all while an ominous power is growing inside him. Now, Kell must learn to harness that power before he loses everything—even his soul.

James is a twenty-nine-year-old stuck in an older man's body. He loves to paddle his canoe, shoot his handmade longbows in the woods, make knives, study martial arts, and generally enjoys challenging himself. When not teaching or writing about the real past, he is imagining worlds and histories that might have been, should have been, or may yet be.

James has two homes (though only one house)--the mountains of Idaho and the forests of New England--where he canoes, hikes, camps, rock climbs, and shoots the longbows he makes himself. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife. ​

James is a professional historian whose published works include two histories of the Inquisition, a documentary history of Columbus's first voyage, a transcription of a colonial era account book from Weymouth, Massachusetts, and a global history of piracy. This means that he is a professional teller of stories, both real and imagined.

James's favorite author is J.R.R. Tolkien, though he will never be able to watch the Peter Jackson Hobbit films again. The first viewing nearly gave him a fit. He loves The Giver and The Book Thief. He has read all the Hunger Games novels, but thinks Katniss should have ended up with Gale. (Sorry Peeta fans.) He enjoys Harry Potter, and thinks magic should be real--so long as he owns the Elder Wand.

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