Alex Shvartsman

The Middling Affliction Alex Shvartsman

GUARD BROOKLYN, FIGHT MONSTERS, TAUNT BAD GUYS

"Shvartsman delivers real magic action and surprise twists... You're going to want more."--Esther M. Fiesner, Nebula-award winning author of the national bestseller, Warchild.


What would you do if you lost everything that mattered to
you, as well as all means to protect yourself and others, but still had to save
the day? Conrad Brent is about to find out.


Conrad Brent protects the people of Brooklyn from monsters
and magical threats. The snarky, wisecracking guardian also has a dangerous
secret: he's one in a million - literally.

Magical ability comes to about one in every 30,000 and can
manifest at any age. Conrad is rarer than this, however. He's a middling, one
of the half-gifted and totally despised. Most of the gifted community feels
that middlings should be instantly killed. The few who don't flat out hate them
still aren't excited to be around middlings. Meaning Conrad can't tell anyone,
not even his best friends, what he really is.

Conrad hides in plain sight by being a
part of the volunteer Watch, those magically gifted who protect their cities
from dangerous, arcane threats. And, to pay the bills, Conrad moonlights as a
private detective and monster hunter for the gifted community. Which helps him
keep up his personal fiction - that he's a magical version of Batman. Conrad
does both jobs thanks to charms, artifacts, and his wits, along with copious
amounts of coffee. But little does he know that events are about to change his
life...forever.

When Conrad discovers the Traveling
Fair auction house has another middling who's just manifested her so-called
powers on the auction block, he's determined to save her, regardless of risk.
But what he finds out while doing so is even worse - the winning bidder works
for a company that's just created the most dangerous chemical weapon to ever
hit the magical community.









Before Conrad can convince anyone at
the Watch of the danger, he's exposed for what he really is. Now, stripped of
rank, magical objects, friends and allies, Conrad has to try to save the world
with only his wits. Thankfully though, no one's taken away his coffee.