THE BOOKS

The 18th Shadow is a cyberpunk / action science fiction series by author, Jon Lee Grafton. 

You can download The 18th Shadow Box Set for FREE on Amazon Kindle. Prefer e-pub format?  Smashwords, Barnes & Noble & KOBO have you covered! The box set includes the first three episodes; Dawn of the Courtezan - Phase 01, Voices in the Stream - Phase 02 and Absorption - Phase 03.

Tara Dean had a gift.  She used it to escape. The vile memory of the behavioral modification hospital was only fifteen kilometers behind her as the EMP projectile detonated and her stolen 2079 Mustang flipped off the hovroad floating 199 kph. Halfway through the first mid-air rotation, charges exploded along crumple junctions in the silver hovcar’s roof and the polyaluminum cabin blew free. Ejected into the sky, away from the disintegrating Ford, Tara Dean's unconscious body was enveloped in an emergency collision sphere.  Clear of the wreckage, her shrouded form bounced into a ditch and was immediately surrounded by the pack of waiting Coyotes. The animals began to savage the sphere's elastiframe fabric with their dulled teeth.  They had come for a reason.  These were the Coyotes of cyborg legend, the vanished products of Darkpool Laboratories, drawn at long last from the darkness by the unique scent of her blood. Welcome to the Dawn of the Courtezan.

William Angevine was a quiet man, some would say a hard man.  He was a hunter, born for this life. As the THOR class incursion cyborg stepped from the shadows cast by the vodka still's fractionating columns, the air in the warehouse chilled. He saw the massive creature's blue vidorbs first, then it moved further into the light. The cranial fuselage was aerodynamic, smooth, based on the skull structure of a dire wolf. The skull and chassis itself were made of reinforced, unpolished titanalum the color of slate. The beast was designed to inspire terror on a battlefield. Yet William Angevine felt no terror. A human tether, he alone could hear the cyborg's thoughts. They called to him, like Voices in the Stream.

October 16, 2082. On this day in history, The War of the Dolphin began. Joan, a Maui Hector's dolphin, floated to the surface of the aquarium and placed her head between the electroencephalogram terminals, aligning her consciousness with a quantum supercomputer as she pushed terabytes of dark code across the holostream, searching for the Israeli. The fusion core brightened momentarily from the power draw as contact was made. “It begins today,” the dolphin said. The Israeli's voice responded slowly, deep and resonant, its inhuman timbre filling the aquarium chamber, “Are you afraid to die, dolphin?” “No,” replied Joan flatly. “There is no death. You of all should know this. In the end, there is only Absorption.”

2087 – The Lunar Gladiatorial Arena. Two cyborgs face off. They will fight to the death. Each moves with the fluidity of smoke. One contestant is a centaur.  One is a conscious android.  They blur across the alabaster sands, weapons drawn… and in the moments that follow, the fate of all life on Earth is decided.  Hypatia 5 is The North American Union’s most violent prison - a Utopia for the savage and sadistic.  That is why the Architect constructed it around a vast crater on the Moon.  It is a perfect vault for the darkest of humanity’s secrets, tucked far away and twinkling in the innocent blackness above us all.  When you go to Hypatia 5 – you do not return.  Unless you are born with two lives.     

2083 - Dead means dead. Peace has settled over the skies of Kansas. Or has it? The black market vodka flows from a new and more powerful rebel still guided by the eyes of the master dolphins who trained Joan. In the slums of North Lawrence, a fugitive sheriff's deputy, his holographic wife and an AI race to find the lost Coyotes who hold the only key to a vital reunion. CNED rules the streets and a murdered priest brings a change of heart as bitter enemies become the best of friends, wounds are healed and old alliances betrayed. Above it all, the empress dolphin sisters, Gaea and Eris reign supreme. New dogs, new warriors and new friends... Phase 5 - Xanthous Moonshine is a deep dive into the battle for North American freedom. A Lunar ore freighter has landed west of Salina and soon its horde will be dispelled into the winter fields. The mythic war has begun. In the end, only one color shall remain.