In the News

NEW YORK – Father’s Day 2020 promises to be like no other, with families staying close at home even as shelter-in-place rules are relaxed for the start of summer. With streaming movies, video games, and even phone distractions starting to lose their allure, those looking for a fresh bonding experience with Dad should get their hands on an exciting new time travel adventure novel that happens to have been co-authored by a father-son duo.

Prominent New York attorney Jay Eisenhofer and his 10-year-old son Mark have collaborated on an intergalactic tale called Black Shadow, a fast-paced, action-filled novel that invites readers to “imagine flying from solar system to solar system pirating stolen goods from soldiers, thieves, and police.”

Available at select bookstores, Apple Books and Amazon (both in paperback and on Kindle), as well as blackshadowadventures.com, Black Shadow showcases the escapades of Terry, a wisecracking and brave young space pilot “known across 115 galaxies.”

Terry knows he has a bad boy reputation, admitting, “Most of what they say about me is not true. I wish I could say only the bad parts are false, but a lot of the good parts aren’t true either.”

Still, he is on a mission – to pilot his ship through exotic galaxies, battling the forces of Dark Justice and its clever master, Dr. Z, a brilliant adversary who “gave up science for crime.” Yet even working overtime to save various worlds, young Terry – who becomes Black Shadow – manages to fall for a beautiful but treacherous redhead named Lata.

Although aimed at young readers, Black Shadow appeals to anyone craving a fantastic voyage away from current headlines and storylines about an earthly virus. And with professional sports still sidelined, the high-stakes planetary contests between Terry and Dark Justice make for thrilling competition. As one of the book’s reviewers notes, the book’s warp-speed story makes for “spectacular, amazing” reading.

The father-son partnership behind Black Shadow came together unexpectedly. Managing partner of one of the country’s leading investor litigation law firms, Jay Eisenhofer had previously authored one other book intended for a different type of heroism – a 2005 volume on investor rights called The Shareholder Activism Handbook.

“We didn’t set out to write a novel,” Jay says, noting the constraints of running an international law firm and with four other children in his life. “But then Mark and I started to have a running conversation about space pirates – he loves to conjure impossible scenarios and I enjoy writing. For several years, Mark had been telling me stories about a group of space criminals called Dark Justice and a pirate named Terry. Before we realized it, we were fleshing out a full-bodied story – Mark created the characters and unusual plot lines, and I developed the backstory and dialogue.

“For sure, Terry is Mark’s creation,” Jay adds. “Terry is a boy so smart he tests into an elite sector of society. After being taken to a luxurious space camp on a distant planet, Terry rebels and finds his true calling as a space pirate anti-hero, the Black Shadow.” Like all great Sci Fi stories, Black Shadow has its own vocabulary, geography, and mythology.

“Telling my dad about Black Shadow was a lot of fun and it was a project we worked on — just the two of us,” said Mark. “It’s a story I’ve been thinking about for a long time and he helped me make it into a book that I would want to read.”

During the recent lockdown, Jay and Mark found one surprise benefit of hunkering down for weeks in their New York apartment. “We’ve started tossing ideas around for a sequel,” Jay says.

Readers can follow Terry and Black Shadow at blackshadowadventures.com or on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads. ​

About Mark and Jay Eisenhofer

Mark Eisenhofer, now 10, is a fourth grader at Horace Mann in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. He was seven years old when he first began sharing with his father stories about a young boy named Terry who was selected to join a super-intelligent group of kids on the planet Xaralien.

Jay Eisenhofer is co-founder and managing partner of Grant & Eisenhofer P.A., one of the world’s most successful plaintiffs’ law firms, long known for representing institutional investors in securities and corporate governance actions. The firm has recovered more than $27 billion for clients. G&E also leads more cases outside the US than any other U.S. firm.

Jay is co-author of the Shareholder Activism Handbook, a comprehensive guide on shareholders’ rights, published by Aspen in 2005. He was named one of “The 100 Most Influential People on Corporate Governance” by Directorship Magazine and one of the “100 Most Influential People in Finance” by Treasury & Risk Management. He is regularly named one of LawDragon’s Top 500 lawyers in America. Jay lives with his wife, Anne, and five children in New York City.