Something Evil is Loose in the Magical Town of Runewood

A dragon that foretells destinies, streets suddenly cluttered with thousands of dead birds, a plague of malevolent insects, ghosts arising in the town cemetery, demons haunting the woods of the White Forest — these are only some of the dangers that thirteen-year-old Alex Ravenstar and his friends in The Young Sorcerers Guild must overcome in order save the secluded magical town of Runewood from an ancient, soul-enslaving evil in The Dark Shadow of Spring.

After a nearly-disastrous adventure to wake the local dragon from its hibernation in hopes that it will tell them their destinies, Alex and his friends accidentally encounter the dark force that was responsible for burning the magic out of the world beyond the Rune Valley thousands of years ago. Known as the Shadow Wraith, the evil force was cast from this world and imprisoned in another realm at the end of the war fought to stop it. Once again, the Shadow Wraith is trying to escape its prison to enslave the world, and Alex and the Young Sorcerers Guild are the only ones who can defeat it.

Upon discovering that her handwritten novel (a gift from her father) may be an unpublished, autobiographical manuscript by Miguel Cervantes, an American schoolgirl and her Spanish teacher submit it to experts for analysis. Throughout the course of evaluating the novel, a fantasy life filled with dragons, natural phenomena, and unbelievable tales of accomplishment unfolds through the eyes of the author, and re-writes 16th century history.