The 49th Mystic

April 2, 2018
Dekker (Water Walker) returns to the Circle universe in this enthralling first installment of a two-part series. Rachelle Matthews, a blind woman living in the utopian community of Eden, Utah, started having horrific nightmares of a Shadow Man at age six. Her nightmare comes to life when the Shadow Man, Vlad Smith, arrives at her home and promises her she will regain her eyesight, even offering his own sight for hers. During a risky procedure designed to restore her sight, which had already been planned before Vlad’s appearance, Rachelle slips into a coma and wakes up in a different reality 2,000 years in the future. Each time she sleeps, she awakens in the other world, alternating between the present and the future. In the future world, she discovers that she is the 49th Mystic and that she must rediscover the five seals of truth in order to show people the way beyond fear and rescue both worlds (the contemporary world and the future world she imagines) from imminent darkness. Vlad declares the world of Eden will end in only six days. Rachelle’s treacherous journey to find the five seals mirrors a Christian on a quest to discover who he or she is in God’s eyes. Creatively entwined with teachings from scripture, Dekker’s book will appeal to readers looking for a thrilling, faith-driven adventure.

April 15, 2018
Nearly a decade after he published the final book in the acclaimed Circle series, Dekker launches a new, two-volume series, Beyond the Circle. In Utah, in a self-contained community known as Eden, a girl who's been blind since shortly after birth undergoes a risky procedure to get her sight back. But something happens, something so unbelievable that no one could have expected it. The girl, Rachelle, starts to have extremely vivid dreams of another place, and soon she learns the truth about herself. She is chosen. She alone can save this world and the world she dreams about. But she has to risk her own death to do it. This first volume leaves a lot hanging at the end, but that won't bother most readers, who know they can trust Dekker to wrap things up in an appropriately spectacular way. A welcome return to the world of the Circle and a fine novel in its own right.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)