Watch Them Wander

Book excerpt: Samantha is not living the life she thought she was living. Teenager Samantha Rhodes has wandered the desert since her war-torn childhood in bleakest solitude, until the day she discovers an animatronic genie in the sand capable of reversing her fortunes, and fulfilling her wildest wishes. After a chance encounter with a starving stranger named Ryder begging for help from a distant village, Samantha and her genie Adam rediscover the outside oases in all their revenge-driven brutality. And from the curious way the lizards and birds watch her with glassy eyes, the way the stars in the sky grow exponentially in number during nights of tragedy, and the way captured raiders whisper of a blue goddess wandering in the darkness, Samantha finds herself drawn deeper into a superstitious world filled more with mystery than with terror. And within the wreckage of secret, ancient tunnels beneath the moonlit sands, Samantha discovers why the god of her oasis has given her a magical, weaponized genie. Along with the frightening truth about the stars in their midnight skies.