When twelve-year-old Farah and her two best friends get sucked into a mechanical board game called The Gauntlet of Blood and Sand, a puzzle game akin to a large Rubik's cube, they know it is up to them to defeat the game's diabolical architect in order to save themselves and those who are trapped inside, including her baby brother Ahmed.

In September 1970, ex-Harvard professor and 'High Priest of LSD' Dr. Timothy Leary escaped from prison with the aid of the radical Weather Underground. Spanning twenty-eight months, President Nixon's careening, global manhunt for Dr. Timothy Leary winds its way among homegrown radicals, European aristocrats, a Black Panther outpost in Algeria, an international arms dealer, hash-smuggling hippies from the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, and secret agents...

Unwilling to become the prince of Tanbarun's possession, beautiful red-haired herbalist Shirayuki seeks shelter in the woods of the neighboring kingdom, where she gains an unlikely ally--a mysterious young man named Zen, who might be more than he seems.