There are creatures lurking in our world. Obscure creatures long relegated to myth and legend. They have been sighted by a lucky-or unlucky-few, some have even been photographed, but their existence remains unproven and unrecognized by the scientific community. These creatures, long thought gone, have somehow survived; creatures from our nightmares haunting the dark places. They swim in our lakes and bays, they soar the night skies, they hunt in the woods. Some are from our past, some from other worlds, and others have always been with us-watching us, fearing us, hunting us. These are the cryptids, and Systema Paradoxa tells their tales. *** Academia can be ruthless. Academia in Russia... can be perilous. An internship overseas at a Moscow university becomes so much more when Ella Trigiani is invited on an expedition to the Gobi Desert. Torn between her mammalian studies and the opportunity for real fieldwork experience, she joins the search for an elusive and deadly creature most consider the stuff of legends. Led by what may or may not be love, driven by what is definitely ambition, will Ella thrive or become one more secret lost beneath the sands?