Books Tagged With who - religion - pagan

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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: THE TIME TO STAND UP FOR YOURSELF IS NOW – AND ALWAYS! Past and present shatter like glass as Iria and Madge, lovers and witches in modern-day San Francisco, send their friend and ally Emperor Norton back in time to snatch a key to the city’s soul from one of its most turbulent events: the Compton’s Cafeteria riots! As the abused and exploited LGBTQIA+ people of the Tenderloin neighborhood rise up against their violent oppressors, our heroes find their plans foiled by Mammon, their demonic foe, when he sends his lieutenant Etta Place to ambush them in the present while he attacks them in the past. As Norton and Place dance a deadly duel in the shadow of one of the city’s greatest monuments, Iria and Madge must use their most powerful arts and quickest wits to wage a battle of wills and weapons across multiple moments in time. Betrayals abound and secrets are revealed as everyone involved—good and evil, wicked and wise—joins the battle for their own soul, the soul of the city, and their place in its future! Servant/Sovereign is the time-bending urban fantasy series from award-winning author Michael G. Williams, set in the Shadow Council World of Quincy Harker.

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Summary: Free bird? Don't make me laugh. I'm Mavis Merlini and I want out. Of my shady family, this rowdy school, maybe even the world. My brother got kicked out of Gallows Hill School for inciting mermaid violence. I'm determined to cut out all distractions and be the first of my six siblings to actually graduate. Which means living on campus and ignoring my extroverted roommate. All my plans are doomed to failure when a goth lion shifter in a trench coat drops his feather. Of course I pick it up. It's shiny and I'm a raven shifter. I swear I meant to give it back. But now it's magically bonded to me and I can't. Now I've got obligations to a Faerie Monarch on top of everything else. And if I shirk them, I'll spend a hundred years in his dungeon. Can I soar through this double life, or will I end up failing to launch?

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Summary: Varon Cambeul has made it to the top: Royal Magician of the Kingdom of Lothia, at the right hand of the King, who is his lover. He has always kept the promise he made to his mother and his apprenticeship master: he has used his magic for good. This promise is tested when the King asks him to make a curse, a curse that will be cured by the King and so everyone will love him. Helping the King is using his magic for good, right? But, is Varon doing this because he has fallen in love with the King? What about those who will suffer from the curse and slowly transformed into ghosts, people like Theo and Russell in the town where the curse is released?   Can Varon undo this great wrong? Can he save Theo and Russell and the others as they turn invisible? How can he love someone who is not doing good?

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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: Poems written by Cyborgs in the future, melding sci-fi and poetry, human and machine. The Cyborg Anthology takes place in a future where there was a thriving world of Robots and Cyborgs living peacefully beside Humans, but a disaster destroyed all Robot and most Cyborg life. The book is organized like a typical anthology of literature, split into sections that include a biography of each poet and a sample of their poetry. It covers early Cyborg poetry, political, celebrity, and pop culture poets, and ends with the next generation of Cyborg poets. The narrative takes place in the time after a cataclysmic event, and the collection wrestles with this loss. Through the lives of the poets, the book chronicles the history of personhood for technological beings, their struggle for liberation, and demonstrates different ways a person can be Cyborg. The poems and biographies together tell the story of a complex and enthralling world-to-come, exploring topics that are important in the future, and also urgent right now. “With mordant wit and a playful satiric touch, these Cyborg poems showcase a dazzling range of poetic forms and ideas: imaginative and charmingly subversive. Move over Norton Anthology of Poetry, there’s a new force in town, and they are a delight.” —Renée Sarojini Saklikar, author of Listening to the Bees and Children of Air India “The premise of this collection alone is fabulous. The poems are potent and powerful. With echoes of Le Guin, Brunner and Monáe, Lindsay B-e’s debut is layered and smart, provocative, and deeply satisfying. I was moved and fascinated. Speculative poetry at its best.” —Hiromi Goto, author of Chorus of Mushrooms and Darkest Light

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Summary: WILL YOU BE ONE OF THE INVITED? A forbidden midnight market is coming to town. The Night Bazaar isn't new. In fact, it's as old as civilization. Its first recorded appearance was in Sana'a, around 700 B.C.E. with secretive merchants from the East who presented covered stalls of exotic goods and arcane services. Various mentions appear in obscure and controversial works from around the world. The only common element is that the market opens at midnight, closes before sunrise, and may appear for up to a week in the same city . . . Paris, 1796 . . . London, 1888 . . . Berlin, 1936 . . . San Francisco, 1906 . . . but never in the same venue each night. And never again in the same city. There's just one catch: In order to find it, you must be Invited. Tonight, The Night Bazaar opens in a parking garage somewhere in Manhattan. A whole subterranean city full of antique costumes, alchemical treatments, magical dentistry, palmistry, Tarot, tea leaf-reading, and water-, glass-, and crystal-gazing, oddities and objets d’art, medical curiosities and surgical instruments. Other lost arts and body alterations are offered in certain alcoves. Through the narrow aisles throng jongleurs, freaks, charlatans, mountebanks, faeries, prostitutes, and acrobats. The scents of opium, perfume, tobacco, greasepaint, incense, plastic explosive, alcohol, and sex permeate the air. But each object or service comes with a gift, a curse, or a haunting. (This is the summary of volume one. However, The Night Bazaar anthologies need not be read in any particular order; they are all designed to stand alone as well.) The Bazaar sells that which cannot be had elsewhere. Everything you’ve read about but thought had passed away, or perhaps never existed. How wrong you were! Your guide is Madame Vera, a tall, thin woman of uncertain age, ethnicity, and trustworthiness. The stories within are your invitation to join us. It seems you have already spotted something you desire . . . but don’t head off that way, not just yet. You have all night . . . but not a moment more.

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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: So you want to write a fantasy novel? A trilogy? A series to rival the Wheel of Time books? Or maybe you’re into gaming and you want to put together the magical elements in a fresh, powerful way that will keep your players guessing? It’s all here. Who, what, and where. How much, how many, how often. While this ebook focuses on creating magic systems, it will also help you understand many of the elements that go into strong worldbuilding. A good foundation in your fictional world will open the doorways of inspiration to more and more plot twists, mythical creatures, cliffhangers and fabulous treasure!

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Summary: Real estate is hell - sometimes literally! Wedged between real estate speculators, startup bros, and gentrified neighborhoods, it’s gotten hard to get by in San Francisco and it’s getting even harder all the time. Now two witches have decided the time has come to do something about it. Using all their arcane skills, Iria – tall, dark, and genderqueer – and their partner and mentor, Madge – the granddaughter of Chinese immigrants and a powerful magician – have summoned back to the world of the living one of San Francisco’s greatest eccentric heroes: Joshua Norton, self-declared Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico. In the 19th century he issued imperial proclamations intended to combat prejudice and advance the interests of the destitute and downtrodden. Binding him to themselves and to the city, Iria and Madge need Norton’s charisma and tireless dedication to the city to help them save the city from a demon of greed. With an exciting combination of spell-slinging and derring-do, Norton and his modern-day patrons embark on a series of adventures across San Francisco’s past and present in search of the keys to the city: objects from its past they can use in the present to save the city’s future from a demon of greed and his tireless efforts to rob San Francisco of its soul forever!

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Summary: Being gay and pagan can make for a lonely holiday season, as Liam knows well. He’s used to celebrating alone. The last place he expects to meet a like-minded guy is at LAX during a twenty-nine-hour layover. Liam’s never felt so comfortable or compatible with another man, even if there is an air of mystery to Race. Race is no stranger to holiday isolation, and he decides they should seize the opportunity they’ve been given and observe the Saturnalia the way it was meant to be. A grand celebration ensues, where every moment is special and every meal a feast. The ancient traditions take on new meaning as the men find meaning in each other. Each of them has a destiny and for their paths to continue together, it’ll take a kind of magic that hasn’t been seen in centuries. Can Race convince Liam to accept that destiny?

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Summary: Runa, alone, survives the massacre. But a traitorous mage has captured her king’s essence—his vital energy, linked to a long line of wolf-shifter rulers. Unless Runa can recover that power by dawn, the mage will command not only her, but also her kindred. Yet Runa is the weakest of the pack. Her quest will fail unless she finds help, and the dark winter woods is deserted but for a small dog and a young soldier.  Prince Paolo is eager for adventure and stirred to action by Runa’s ordeal. As they learn to respect each other’s unique skills, attraction blossoms. But the mage is a trusted figure from Paolo’s past. And he’s filled his lair with marvelous steam-powered machinery and ambitious plans for the prince’s future. Paolo can’t help but have second thoughts about Runa’s story and must choose between his promise to Runa and the life he’d hardly dared to envision. Can Runa recover the king’s essence and protect her kindred?  The answers lie in the wolf’s very heart.