Born at a family D&D table.
Grown into a world of books, songs, and legend.
Set in the world of Gurindry ✦ An octalogy in progress ✦ Stories for every reader
The Collection
Two novels published, four companion volumes planned, and a full octalogy unfolding. Every book is designed to be accessible — written by neurodiverse authors, for every kind of reader.
Book One
Main Series · #1
"A Storm is Rising. Three Lost Souls Must Stand Against It."
Draenic, Shadowhunter, and Silverstrings are drawn together at the foot of the Bryneira mountains as a dragon's wrath, a hidden cult, and an unnatural darkness threaten to consume Gurindry.
Book Two
Main Series · #2
"A Web Is Woven. Every Step Leads Deeper Into the Trap."
After defeating the dragon, the heroes pursue justice into an Orc-held hometown — and encounter three new companions whose secrets run as deep as the dangers that follow them.
Main Series · #3
The next chapter in the story of Gurindry.
The shadows deepen. The web tightens. The full truth of what has been woven in the dark is about to come to light.
Main Series · #4
Lights, illusions, and something very wrong beneath them.
The adventure continues — and the world of Gurindry reveals new depths of wonder and darkness.
Companion
Companion Volume
Short Stories About Time
Fantasy tales illuminating real science — gravity, entropy, quantum entanglement, the arrow of time. Not a textbook. A storybook for the curious. An in-world artefact.
Companion
Companion Volume
By Shilvara Dewfoot
Five stories for young readers in a forest thrown into disarray. What if it isn't the forest that has forgotten — but us? A real book that exists inside the story.
Meet the Party
Six adventurers. Each carrying secrets, scars, and something the world will need before the story is done.
Draenic
Nwnaf Druid
Book 1A fierce Nwnaf ("NOO-naf") druid with a past tangled in secrets — and a power that answers to something older than memory.
Shadowhunter
Ranger
Book 1A hardened ranger haunted by loss, pursuing justice across the ruins of a home he once knew.
Silverstrings
Bard
Book 1A bard running from a power he fears to wield — whose songs have a habit of becoming prophecy.
Patch
Healer
Book 2A healer with no memory of who she once was, and no idea why the past now hunts her dreams.
Shade
Artist
Book 2An artist touched by strange powers — and by secrets even she does not understand. Author of The Hundred Hollow Wood.
Chops
Warrior
Book 2A butcher by trade, with a strong arm and an even stronger thirst for revenge. Chops arrives with Patch and Shade — and a score that isn't settled yet.
The Universe
A world of mountain ranges, ancient tombs, hidden cults, and a darkness that twists the land from within.
The world of Gurindry begins with adventure and humour, and grows darker and more complex with every book. Ancient races with their own languages and histories. An unnatural force twisting the land. A bard who composes songs that become real music in our world.
The Bryneira mountains region is where the main story begins — but the world is vast, and the series has six more books to unfold it.
The Shadows & Thorns universe also extends beyond the novels into companion books that exist as real-world objects and as in-world artefacts — books that characters in the story can hold, just as you can.
Silverstrings' Songbook
Every chapter ends with an original song — composed by Silverstrings the bard, from within the story itself. Then made real.
Silverstrings is a bard. The songs at the end of each chapter are his songs — written from the perspective of characters and events within the story. They are diegetically consistent. They are canon.
The Shadows & Thorns YouTube channel is the canonical extension of the series — Silverstrings' real songbook, made audible. Every track has a story behind it. Every story has a song to close it.
Whether you've read the books or not, the songs stand on their own. But for readers, hearing them is something else entirely.
Each composition comes from within the world of Gurindry — the bard's real songbook, made audible for you.
Written for Every Reader
Created by neurodiverse authors, with neurodiverse readers deliberately at the heart of every decision about how these books are built.
The series is co-authored by neurodiverse writers. That's not a footnote — it shapes every choice, from pacing and chapter length to layout and the way information is layered.
Short chapters with a sense of completion at every turn. Readers who struggle with longer books report finishing full chapters — sometimes for the first time. Formatting that helps, never hinders.
Reader reviews specifically mention children on the autism spectrum finishing their first full chapter book because of how Shadows & Thorns is structured. That matters more than anything else.
Written for children, teens, and adults alike. The tone grows darker and more complex as the series progresses — but the door is always open, whatever your reading experience.
How It Began
Every legend has an origin. Ours started at a kitchen table, with a dungeon master's notebook and a family who kept showing up.
Shadows & Thorns began not on a page, but around a table. Alexis Kingsbury started running a Dungeons & Dragons campaign for their children — building a world, voicing characters, and weaving stories that grew more complex with every session.
As the campaign expanded to include friends and other families — notably the Hunts — the world of Gurindry took on a life of its own. Characters became beloved. Decisions had consequences that lasted for months. Songs were written. Lore was built, piece by piece, around the real choices of real children sitting at a real table.
The decision to turn that campaign into a book series brought new possibilities: to make those stories accessible to children who find reading difficult, to extend the world into music and companion volumes, and to give the characters — some of them based on real people sitting in real chairs — a permanent home.
The result is a creative universe that is simultaneously a published book series, a live D&D campaign, a musical project, and a family endeavour. It is still growing. New children join the game. New friends find their way into the story. The world of Gurindry keeps expanding, one session at a time.