Nicholas Penn

Shantago Nicholas Penn

Jordan Brady is a young man on the verge of losing his mind. After suffering a terrible loss, the death of his fiancé, Piper, in a catastrophic accident, Jordan struggles to keep his life together - attending therapy sessions with his psychiatrist, reuniting with his childhood friends, meeting weekly with a beautiful and mysterious young woman named Abigail, getting a therapy dog to help cope with his grief, and dealing with his roommate's crazy and vicious cat, Mr. Dimples. Unfortunately for Jordan, one of his childhood friends happens to be a brutal murderer with a very large grudge against him, the girl he calls Abigail is someone he's never met but only shared glances with at a traffic intersection, the dog is almost immediately kidnapped by a flock of birds, and Mr. Dimples may not even exist - the very real scars and scratches on Jordan's hands notwithstanding. At least the therapy sessions seem to be working... As Jordan's life spins further and further out of control, the one constant - aside from his grief - are the stories his grandfather told him as a child, stories of a strange race of creatures called toggles. Jordan begins to see evidence that maybe his grandfather hadn't been making up stories. Maybe the toggles are real. And maybe their ruler, the evil one, an ancient and horrible creature consumed by vengeance, is responsible for the tragic and inexplicable things that have been happening in his life. Because everywhere Jordan turns and everywhere he looks, one name keeps appearing over and over: Shantago.