The Veiled Web

Part of the Stand Alone Stories

Ballerina Lucia del Mar has two great passions: dance, which consumes most of her waking hours, and the World Wide Web, which brings the outside world into her tightly regimented life. Lucia’s two passions collide when a White House performance and reception leads to an encounter with handsome Moroccan businessman Rashid al-Jazari, creator of a brilliant technology that has set the Internet rumor mill afire.

A second, seemingly chance meeting with Rashid will plunge Lucia into a deadly world of desire and intrigue. For although his work has implications she cannot foresee, there are those who do understand and would turn its great power to their own destructive purposes. As she is drawn deeper and deeper into Rashid’s life and work, cut off from the outside world, she finds herself becoming more attracted to him. But is her seclusion within Rashid’s well-guarded Moroccan home intended to ensure her safety…or her silence? And is it already too late to stop the terrible consequences his new technology could unleash?

“Thoughtful and imaginative…a near future layering of East and West…and of love and loss—all woven into an intriguing tapestry”—Diana Gabaldon, author of the Outlander series.

“The two main plot elements mesh perfectly; the story of two individuals attempting to find common ground in which they can be together, and the idea, the dream, of a new technology that can help all humanity find a common understanding.”—Jeri Wright, SF Site Reviews

Winner of the Homer Award for Best Science Fiction Novel.