The Grace Family Chronicles

Set against a backdrop of World War II, the Grace family and friends live in and operate out of Gracestone, a Miami Beach luxury estate. Most of them are "Graced", meaning they have special powers: Navigators can get anywhere without a map and are never lost; Incapacitators are never bested in a fight and can turn any item into a weapon; and Knowers can learn all there is to know about any topic just by concentrating on it for a few moments. In Gracestone 1943, the first book in The Grace Family Chronicles, the characters are focused on protecting the children of Gracestone.

The action continues at Gracestone following the tumultuous ending of Graced 1943. Two Grace family members are in the hospital, and Amandia, the Grace family matriarch, reveals that she indirectly caused the catastrophe that sent them there. Out in Los Alamos, Humboldt, Annelisa’s astrophysicist husband, learns that the wife of Oleg, the Soviet engineer he brought onto the project, is a spy. This reflects well on neither man, and is further complicated when she begs Humboldt for help getting her partly Jewish daughter, who no one knew existed, out of Budapest, where she has reason to believe the girl is in imminent danger.

Annelisa Grace-Betterman writes detective novels to entertain the troops during WWII. When she is whisked to the future by the Conductor of a thought-powered time-traveling boxcar, she learns that she is destined to write novels, and a comic book series, that change the world. Her mother, Amandia, is in St. Augustine, trying to break away from the Atherlings, a race of people with no conscience into which she was born.

Jessie heads to Texas to confront arsonist Antonine, who is been compelled to stop Amandia from unbecoming an Atherling. Breaking into Antonine's house is easy for the experienced Incapacitator, but dealing with what she finds there isn't. Amandia is up in St. Augustine with Anyssa, her on-again personal assistant Nancy, and the ghost of her Aunt Actavia, still trying to unBecome. She's getting closer, although she doesn't realize it in time to save herself, and others, from pain and heartbreak.

After the emergency evacuation of Cinq Terras, the Grace family's secret private island, the underwater experts, Arthur and Carlissa, embark on some research. Below the waves near Cinq Terras they find a new sea villainess. Her name is Ampura and she's making herself at home in the island's charmed waters, along with her small army of enchanted seamerckles. Meanwhile, another villain turns up: Antonine, the infamous Atherling arsonist. Amandia's unBecoming has sparked interest in the fire-fearing Atherling community, and Antonine wants her help.

The Grace family is back, facing some of their biggest challenges yet as World War II peaks, then reaches its cataclysmic finale. Old situations are put to rest while new ones spring up to set the stage for the follow-up series.