Books Tagged With what - topic - legend

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Summary: The Nomad wants peace from the darkness within himself he can't control. That quest for a cure leads him back into the Land of the Five Suns to unearth an ancient weapon before it falls into the hands of a madman. The weapon may hold clues to a final solution. The Nomad's path to victory lies in a young thief and rescuing the boy's sister from the Rav Teneshag's harem. Sinister plans unravel around every turn, threatening to level everything and everyone.

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Summary: Step into a world beyond the material realm with 'Noncorporeal, ' a spine-chilling anthology packed with haunting tales of ghosts and other ethereal beings. Prepare to be captivated as you journey through stories that will keep you wide-awake, make you question reality, and even elicit a chuckle or two. Get ready for an unforgettable ride into the realm of the supernatural with 'Noncorporeal' - your next stop for spooky delights.

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Summary: Chloe’s first memory is of being carried hurriedly by Tashuhunka through sleeting rain with echoing blasts of thunder as an epic battle raged overhead. Tash, the only boy that wasn’t caught that night, raised her in secret as he also hid in the woods. She is devastated years later when he sends her to live with a family. She feels like she was orphaned twice. Now eighteen, Chloe is starting to hear things that other’s can’t. She feels drawn places she was warned about, and she dreams of boys...but there aren’t any boys in the realm - other than Tash. All the other boys were imprisoned by the witch who believes one of them is the emperor's heir and she wants that power. After the witch won the battle and imprisoned the boys, she cast a spell making everyone forget about them. Now, Chloe has seen the boys in visions. Her friends think she's imagining. Tash knows better. This is what he was afraid of. He tried to protect her from a perilous fate written in ancient prophecies, but as she comes of age, destiny propels her to solve the mysteries of the realm and free the boys. But, how? Magic doesn't work without dust, which is scarce now, and Chloe doesn't have superpowers. She's just a misfit, from the wrong side of the pond. Something inside drives her. She doesn't know she's being brave. She's just following her heart, and not thinking how scary it all is.

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Summary: A Paranormal Excursion in Four Acts. It should have been a simple field experiment. Go in, prove I can do what I claim, and walk out with the cash. If they could see what I see. Feel the helplessness I do when something else takes over. I’ll bet they’re not kept awake at night by the voices in this place. They don’t see the darkness with eyes that follows us all around this estate as we gather proof. This money was going to help my little sister with her surgery. Good intentions and the road to Hell.

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Summary: RISE (noun / verb) Eight definitions to inspire writers around the world, and an unlimited number of possible stories to tell: 1) An upward slope or movement 2) A beginning or origin 3) An increase in amount or number 4) An angry reaction 5) To take up arms 6) To return from death 7) To become heartened or elated 8) To exert oneself to meet a challenge Rise features 300-word speculative flash fiction stories from across the rainbow spectrum, from the minds of the writers of Queer Sci Fi.

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Summary: Duncan Kyle is an ordinary twenty-something whose simple life of sports, job, and girlfriend comes to a crashing halt late one night when he falls through the floor of his apartment. He finds himself in Malkuth, a desolate, desiccated world where the only living beings are a sardonic Sphinx and her invisible caretakers, who in this frigid place are drawn to anything warm. He is told by the Sphinx that he will have to make his way through ten worlds before he can return to life as he knows it—the ten emanations of the Sephirot. On his journey, Duncan encounters a wild huntress torn between making love to him or killing him; an elderly woman who tries to convince him that he has been ill and dreamed the whole thing; a scarlet-robed judge who sentences him to be whipped and executed for performing evil magic; a kind potter and his daughter who take him in and heal his injuries; and a timid, soft-spoken Methodist minister who helps him survive in a place where all hell breaks loose—literally—once the sun goes down. In every world he visits, though, one thing stays the same. Duncan has to rely on his wits alone to stay alive and find his way to the next portal, and he has to summon the strength of will to keep going—because if he falls for the snare each world represents, he'll never find his way home.

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Summary: When Shea Ashcroft refuses the queen's brutal order to gas a rioting crowd, he's exiled to the border with an impossible task: overseeing the construction of the largest defensive tower in history. Drakiri refugees hate and fear the tower—it mirrors one from their past that opened a gateway to an unimaginable threat.

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Summary: She tried to steal treasure from the dragons’ hoard… and stole their hearts instead. To save her sister from a lascivious lord, Venya must steal a piece of treasure from a legendary dragon’s hoard. Dragons haven’t been seen in several generations, so imagine her surprise when she wakes not one, but two dragons from their hibernation. While the battle-honed Onyx is intent on having her for lunch, the graceful Gold appears more curious than angered by the theft. Abyss and Ray have very different ideas about what to do with the thief when they catch her. Abyss wants to punish her while Ray is intrigued by her audacity. After Ray turns his mate’s anger to desire, the dragons set out on a rescue mission, intent on capturing the brazen thief and learning more about her. And to see if her Song matches theirs. Neglected and discarded by her parents, Venya has never bonded with anyone except her sister. Now she has two mighty dragons wanting to woo her and take her as their mate. While she finds delight in their company, she must reassess her own self-worth before she can trust them enough to love them. But the dragons have exposed themselves to the outside world, and many covet not only their hoard but Ray’s golden scales. And when Venya’s closely held secret is revealed, she becomes a prize worth killing for.

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Summary: The world is wide and full of wonders Fleeing her country in order to save it, Princess Jade of Sharren discovers a greater threat. SONG OF JADE: RED WOLF is a standalone DRAGON AGE prequel to the WOODSPELL SERIES and one of the TALES OF ARDONNA. Content Advisory: Contains adult themes and situations and spoilers for River’s Roar  

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Summary: There’s something magical about that sense of terror that grips you in the middle of sleep, when your heart pounds, you can’t catch your breath, and you know the monster is seconds away from grabbing you. While this anthology occasionally records the odd hallucination or vision from beyond, you’ll find no dream sequences here. These nine stories are designed to induce nightmares. Table of Contents: In “La Japonesa” by Lisa Morton, a college professor chasing tenure comes face to face with something with sharp claws and even sharper teeth. Weston Ochse cuts deep in “Glue and the Art of Supermodel Maintenance.” Officer Warren Hastings can’t escape the crime he didn’t prevent in Yvonne Navarro’s “Recall.” In Jennifer Brozek’s “Twenty Questions,” Sara discovers some games must be played until the end. E.S. Magill reminds us that every civilization has its myths of supernatural protectors of the natural world. During a hiking expedition, Harris Kimball encounters the spectral guardians of California’s Santa Lucia Mountains, whose mission is to stop the greatest threat to nature: humans. In Angel Leigh McCoy’s “The Haunting of Mrs. Poole,” Amelia seems to have it all: wealthy husband, devoted sister, perfect daughter…and a gothic mansion on the shore of the James River where nothing is what it seems. The line between reality and delirium blurs for an exhausted new mother in Alison J. McKenzie’s “Into the Quiet.” In Bill Bodden’s “The House on River Road,” Ed and Jerry discover some urban legends are more than legendary…and some abandoned houses are better left alone. Finally, Loren Rhoads grew up in a small town. She remembers how they can be in “Elle a Vu un Loup.”

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Summary: The Big Cinch embeds readers in a magic-laced St. Louis, once known as Mound City, home of the indigenous Americans’ Mississippian ancestors. Little evidence of their civilization survives in 1924, apart from the popular Piasa monster image, invoked to sell plows as well as ornament civic pageants. Sean Joye, a recent Irish immigrant, tried to avoid fae attention and ignore his magical abilities since childhood. A young veteran of 1922’s Irish Civil War, he aims to atone for his assassin past and make a clean life in America.  Sean helps a wealthy, powerful, magic-dabbling family—founders of the most exclusive club in town, the Piasa Lodge--with a discreet inquiry or two. Sexually involved with a secretive, high-society flapper, he falls hard for her fiancé, a Great War flying ace with a few secrets of his own. But Sean asks the wrong questions about a kidnapped toddler and missing Native American artifacts and becomes a suspect in his lover’s bludgeoning and a tycoon’s murder. Can he master the paranormal abilities he’s rejected for so long in time to protect the innocent and save his own skin?

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Summary: Corentin is a scholar with a secret—his magical Talent allows him to turn into a dragon, and he isn’t alone in that ability. Long ago, dragons were hunted fiercely, until they went into hiding, becoming things of legend. Corentin has traveled the world with one aim—to protect his people and keep their secret safe. Drawn to the principality of Tournai by news of someone close to discovering that secret, he hopes to avert suspicion. His attraction to the too-serious Bastien isn’t convenient for his purpose, but it isn’t something he can ignore either. Lord Bastien, Earl of Ardesia, inherited his title unexpectedly when his parents were killed in a sailing accident along with the parents of his cousin, Prince Philip. Since then, Bastien has devoted his life to the obligations of his family and estate—so much so, that it has caused tension between him and his siblings. His world is further shaken when he receives an anonymous letter informing him that the tragic boating accident may, in fact, have been murder. Bastien throws himself into investigating whether the allegations are true and finding out who killed his parents. As Corentin and Bastien become closer, the mystery of Bastien’s parents’ death draws him further into danger. Corentin feels compelled to protect Bastien, but the threat is closer than they know. Now, Corentin must decide whether preserving his secret—and potentially his people’s safety—is more important than saving the man he loves.

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Summary: Portents of evil. Dreams of destruction, chaos, death. Feelings of terrible foreboding, heavy as the dark skies before a storm hits. Within twenty-four hours, the sudden and nearly universal presentiment of doom experienced by folks in the peaceful beach town of Furness, California is found to be horrifyingly accurate when a handful of people wake up to find that their friends, families, and loved ones—in fact, most of the inhabitants of the Earth—have simultaneously vanished without a trace. Left behind to make sense of a strange and depopulated world are an odd assortment of people. A wry and jaded psychic who knows good and well that her fortunetelling is a sham—until the day it begins to come true. A kind, idealistic registered nurse. A thirteen-year-old science nerd. A church custodian. An outspoken, pragmatic physicist. A volatile and unpredictable bakery owner. A tough-as-nails ex-Army man with a terrible secret, who is determined that he'll survive this, even if it's at the cost of the others. But they soon discover that they're not the only ones trying to find their way through the empty streets of Furness. Because the cataclysm that took 99% of the Earth's inhabitants did one other thing. It released the monsters.

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Summary: The Fright Factory is here to help you as you labor in the control room, on the assembly line, or mixing the chemicals of inspiration and imagination in huge vats that give off dark and eerie vapors. Here you'll find guidance in drawing up the blueprints of your story along with a selection of tools to help you customize your design. The elements of horror include the setting, the tingle of suspense building into genuine fear, and of course the Monster. Those are the basics. From there horror can become ghost stories, tales of suspense, splatter and/or gross-out horror, and what might be called the O. Henry approach (twist endings). Cross-genre writing mixes in police procedurals, P.I. stories, and medical horror. Romance with monsters has become popular. You can also throw in the weird western, the Elder Gods, and Joe R. Lansdale - a category unto himself. Whether you're telling a weird tale in the classic tradition of Clark Ashton Smith or creating cutting edge steampunk frights, the long and venerable history of the horror story has also spawned a set of clichés you'll want to avoid. Now the whistle shrieks, signalling the beginning of a new shift. Time to set the machinery of the factory in motion as we explore the art and craft of building better horror.

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Summary: Silya comes into her own, but will she be enough? Silya finally has everything she always wanted: She's the Hencha Queen, head of the Temple, and is mastering her newfound talents. So why does the world pick now to fall apart? Her once-nemesis Raven is off riding dragons, and their mutual friend (and her ex) Aik is nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, a new threat menaces the Heartland from the East. If she can't convince a reluctant city council to prepare for the worst, she may lose everything—and everyone—she's ever cared about. As Silya wields her abilities, dry wit, and sheer determination to save her city, she's joined by Raven and his new friends, just as a dark storm threatens to sweep them all away. Will their aid help tip the scales? And will she and Raven finally find out what happened to Aik? Forget messy. Things just got apocalyptic.

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Summary: Faelen, cousin to the prince and son of a diplomat, has finally come home to Tournai after years away. The pull to return was almost tangible, and the sense of rightness at being back is absolute. He wants nothing more than to put down roots and build a life among family while pursuing his linguistic studies. Becoming involved in magic meant to protect Tournai isn’t part of his plans…and falling in love is even more unexpected and unfamiliar, but he finds himself doing just that as his friendship with Maxen deepens into something more. Maxen, second son of a wealthy merchant family, longs to leave Tournai and visit everywhere he can. All his life, he’s found places on maps and dreamed, planning out routes to get to them. For now, he’s tied to Tournai’s capital city by family obligations and his position in their shipping business. Someday, though, he’ll be able to travel. His sudden attraction to Faelen shocks him, but their friendship soon becomes a necessary part of his life. Love, however, has no place in his plans, especially not love for a royal cousin with secrets who wants nothing more than to stay in one place. For Faelen and Maxen to build something real between them, they must resolve their differences, but when magic goes awry and all Faelen’s secrets are revealed, will Maxen remain at his side?

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Summary: Welcome, Gentle Stranger. The Night Bazaar is open to you, once more. But this mysterious midnight gathering isn’t the usual marketplace. It’s a vendor's faire not constrained by geography or time. One week it appears in present-day New York, the next in . . . well, let’s say 14th century Venice, shall we? For this time, Madame Vera and the other peripatetic denizens of The Night Bazaar return to the Bazaar’s roots. Its origin story and inaugural appearance, as the exotic marketplace pitches its colorful tents in La Serenissima, the city of a hundred canals, host to fancy glassworks, masked revelries, and singing gondoliers. And – you guessed it. Unfortunately, in 1348, to the Black Death. The market's aisles are still crowded with vendors of the rare and unusual, exotic dancers, assorted faeries, jongleurs, acrobats, mountebanks, courtesans, and purveyors of curious objets d’art. Booths feature medical oddities and strange instruments of all sorts. Tents offer passersby unusual, uncanny services. But this time, the Plague threatens the complacent citizens of Venice. Who will survive, and at what cost? The Bazaar always sells that which cannot be had elsewhere, at any price. Everything you’ve read about, but thought had passed away, or perhaps never existed. How wrong you were! For Madame Vera and her staff can take you anywhere, and anytime. You need only be Invited . . . and now you have been. (Volumes of The Night Bazaar can be read in any order; each anthology is designed to stand alone as well. Time is relative, after all!)

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Summary: 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, and some from other worlds, and others that have always been with us-watching us, fearing us, hunting us. These are the cryptids, and Systema Paradoxa tells their tales. *** Life and Death and Family Secrets... Sheridan Cascaden faces more than memories when she receives a call in the darkest hours summoning her home. Sent away five years prior to safeguard her from the evil that claimed her mother, Sheridan hasn't been back since. She returns to find her home in a disturbing state and her father straddling the Veil, with no explanation of what happened. Not only must she deal with her own demons, but she will have to delve into his if she is to unlock the mystery and save Papa's life. But where lies the line between truth and madness among the shifting shadows? And can Sheridan navigate it before it's too late... for both of them?

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Summary: No one wants to be fooled, but that’s what Frankenstein did to you all. Victor's words were the mere ravings of a coward and madman. The truth is a fickle mistress. I was the one that raided the graveyards and robbed the dead of their terrestrial remains. It was I who pursued your creation across continents when you hadn't the spine to see to it yourself. It was I who held my begotten son in my hands that day. Frankenstein took the glory, took the fame, and horded the money from our misfortunes. The time for my retribution has come.

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Summary: What magic does the Library hold? Adopted at birth by a loving family of magic users, fifteen year old Ryn desperately wants to fit in, but the law is clear: only those with documented bloodlines use magic. If Ryn’s birth parents remain unknown, she will be denied the use of magic along with the knowledge and training those ancestors could provide. When Ryn receives an unexpected invitation to search for her legacy in the closely guarded ancestral Library, she leaps at the chance. With its odd passageways and hidden treacherous rooms, the Library holds powerful knowledge, keys to ancient mysteries, and potentially, Ryn’s heritage. To her dismay Ryn’s quest is thwarted by the very tutor who committed to mentoring her. Time is short, and access to the Library will end with her tutor’s departure. If Ryn can’t find her heritage before she comes of age, her chance to become a magic user will disappear. Find out what happens in The Slayer's Magic by C.J. Hosack! Genres: Epic Fantasy / Young Adult / Fantasy Adventure / Gay / LGBT Market: YA, Adult