"Twelve-year-old Jack Sawyer embarks on an epic quest--a walk from the seacoast of New Hampshire to the California coast--to find the talisman that will save his dying mother's life. Jack's journey takes him into the Territories, a parallel medieval universe, where most people from his own universe have analogs called "twinners." The queen of the Territories, Jack's mother's twinner, is also dying" -- Author's webpage.

When a repairman at Corman Towers finds a talisman and takes it home, the portal opens and an army of skeletons emerges--so it is up to Furry and Flo to retrieve the gem that controls them and send it and the skeletons back to the other world.

Batu is just an ordinary kid in present-day Almaty, worried about bullies, school, and his mom's new baby? until the day he meets Aspara, the Golden Warrior. Aspara steps straight out of Batu's notebook cover, and out of Kazakhstan's past. Aspara has been waiting hundreds of years to be summoned to the human world and to finally get his chance to search for the Golden Cup, a magical talisman sent down from the heavens. When the Golden Cup was lost,...

"In this collection of sharply observed essays, Jaya Saxena reflects on and challenges the ideas associated with eleven popular stones, including unconditional love (rose quartz), happiness and success (citrine), balance (amethyst), self-care (black tourmaline), purity (pearl), imposter syndrome (pyrite), toxic positivity (carnelian), change (opals), traditional concepts of marriage (diamonds), presentation versus identity (obsidian), and death (amber)."...