The perfect introduction to magic and the occult, it explores forms of divination from astrology and palmistry to the Tarot and runestones, mystical plants and potions such as mandrake, the presence of witchcraft in literature from Shakespeare's Macbeth to the Harry Potter series, and the ways in which magic has interacted with mainstream religions.The most comprehensive illustrated history of witchcraft available, A History of Magic, Witchcraft, and the Occult will enthrall and fascinate you with its lavish illustrated, accessible entries, whether you are a believer or a skeptic.

    Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

    But as the city enveloped it, the residents built a gate to keep the world out. With each passing year, the subdivision grew stranger and stranger—until it began to look like a time capsule of the 1890s. In these houses are a husband and wife who fight constantly, and another couple who hasn’t spoken to each other in two decades. There is a widow in permanent mourning and a daughter whom the newspapers call psychotic. And there is a bedridden old woman who is about to be killed with an axe.When her murder shatters the quiet of the little enclave, the tabloids delight in trumpeting the neighborhood’s peculiarities. But as the search for the killer intensifies, the area’s strangest secrets have yet to be revealed.

    With over 100,000 readers, the Max Porter Paranormal Mysteries is a highly addictive series that’ll keep you turning pages late into the night. Fun, funny, suspenseful, and scary, this omnibus edition includes the first THREE books in the bestselling series with hundreds of excitement-filled pages! "Southern Bound gets it right! A great blend of ghosts and gumshoes. If you like haunting mysteries you'll love Southern Bound!" - Edgar-nominated author, Joel Goldman SOUTHERN BOUND (Book 1) When Max and Sandra Porter moved down to North Carolina, they thought they were getting a new beginning - good job, good pay, and a lovely little place in Winston-Salem. But the family that hired him to research land deals in North Carolina is not all that they seem. And when Max discovers that his office is haunted by Marshall Drummond, PI - a ghost from the 1940s - what started as a simple research job sinks him neck-deep in a world of old mysteries and dangerous enemies. One in which ghosts, witches, curses, and spells exist. One in which something as innocent as a book can turn deadly. SOUTHERN CHARM (Book 2) When Max and the gang are hired by an art forging ghost to find a lost painting, Max thinks it'll be easy money. But villains old and new come out, and the race is on for the painting and the secrets it contains. A race that will lead Max into a mess of magic spells, haunted houses, ancient curses, and even Blackbeard the Pirate. SOUTHERN BELLE (Book 3) Max thought he had enough trouble dealing with one witch in Winston-Salem. But a new case brings to light an entire coven of witches. Angry, cursed, dead witches. Lucky for Max he has the aid of his partner, the ghost of 1940s detective Marshall Drummond, and his sharp-witted wife, Sandra. Together, they'll face enemies at every turn, and things only get worse when the mysterious Hull family and the FBI start poking into Max's life. He'll need all his team can give with a case that involves the theft of a cursed bell, dark magic, spirit possession, and ghastly murders. All in all, just another day at the office for Max Porter. Grab your copy now and save over 40% against buying the individual books!

    Certainly its poignant romance touched many hearts and stirred deepening interest in the Maine-born Harvard educator who, in his lifetime, would become America's most famous poet. This book contains the complete Evangeline and a number of other widely admired Longfellow poems.Included are the memorable "The Skeleton in Armor," "The Arsenal at Springfield," "Mezzo Cammin," and "Aftermath." Here, too, is Divina Commedia, the six sonnets on Dante that are among the poet's finest works. All have been reprinted from an authoritative edition of Longfellow's poems.

    Together with her quirky sidekick, Doris Pemberley, she's determined to solve mysteries and chase down criminals in the sleepy English village of Compton Poppleford. *** A new cozy mystery series from the author of the Penny Green Series, Emily Organ. *** 1932. Growing bored in the autumn of her years, Londoner Annabel Churchill decides to buy a private detective agency in a Dorset village. The purchase brings with it the eccentric Doris Pemberley and it’s not long before the two old ladies have their first case. No one has made more enemies than the local busybody, Mrs Furzgate, but when she suffers a fatal fall at Piddleton Hotel everyone assumes it was an accident. The detective duo, Churchill and Pemberley, suspect murder and are soon on the case. But is it possible they’ll upset even more people than Mrs Furzgate managed to? With the subtlety of two bulls in a china shop, Churchill and Pemberley employ unconventional sleuthing techniques. What appears to be a shortcoming is actually a skill: being consistently underestimated enables them to spring a clever surprise. For fans of light-hearted mysteries and sharp-witted elderly sleuths. Tragedy at Piddleton Hotel is the first book in the Churchill & Pemberley cozy mystery series. Book 1: Tragedy at Piddleton Hotel Book 2: Murder in Cold Mud

    On her sister's wedding day, Lassair meets an attractive and enigmatic stranger who brings a breath of the fascinating outside world to her backwater Fenland village. When he asks Lassair to use her unique talents to help locate a mysterious treasure she accepts, despite the dangers. But this is no ordinary treasure hunt; the object of the perilous search is five hundred years old and has a terrifying power of its own . . .

    Its mission: to cut the lifeline of British shipping and win the war with one mighty blow. How the Royal Navy tried to meet this threat and its desperate attempt to bring the giant Bismarck to bay is the story C. S. Forester tells with mounting excitement and suspense!

    To Adrian she represented the chance to get away froma City shop and a suburban lodging by exploiting her theatrical talent and experience. To Rosy their progress towards the gayer South Coast resorts offered undreamed-of opportunities for drink and destruction. So the Monkspepper Hunt is driven to delirium and Lady Fenneltree's stately home reduced to a shambles. In due course the always efficient local constabulary caught up with the pair, whose ensuing trial was a like a triumph of the law and of the author's comic genius. The verdict was--but the story has to be read to be believed, if then. Even though the author does maintain that it is entirely credible, indeed that this, his first novel, is 'an almost true story'.

    Alex Moore, a Sin City actor with a secret, wants agency representation from Catherine – and maybe something more. But everything changes after he finds himself the target of a murder investigation. When the two team together to solve the serial murders, Alex introduces Catherine to a paranormal underworld she never knew existed. Can Catherine prove Alex’s innocence before losing her heart…or her life? Short & Sweet Paranormal Romance with Supernatural Suspense This is the first book in the Paranormal Talent Agency series. Much like on television, each episode contains a complete sweet paranormal romance and supernatural murder mystery. But the crossover characters and hints of a larger story suggest reading these in order.

    He faces a second hurdle—he is slowly being poisoned with arsenic. A double mystery unfolds when it comes to light Lady Emma’s deceased husband was also suffering from arsenic poisoning. Is there a curse on the Earls of Farnworth or are there other forces at work that will rob Gabe and Emma of their chance to find true love?

    Especially when he learns that he must marry within a year or be forever dealing with trustees.As the new Marquis of Athelney, the captain takes command of Kingscastle and discovers much to be done to set it in order. He must also contend with his aunt, Lady Willoughby Hawksmoor, who is determined that her daughter will be his wife. When she discovers he is far more interested in Eleanor Burgess, her underpaid and much put-upon companion, Lady Willoughby shows she will stop at nothing to keep them apart.

    But when his father forces him to attend the Adventurers’ Academy, where warriors, enchanters, and rogues learn how to fulfil quests to become heroes, Dagdron must face a whole new life. When Dagdron is accused of stealing the Arch of Avooblis, he and his ever-honourable roommate, Earl, embark on a quest to recover the magical crystal. Along the way, they must deal with the mysterious Headmaster Gwauldron, a snobby princess-enchantress, and the fact that their involvement with the Arch of Avooblis may very well cost them their lives.

    It is the best concise introduction to Lincoln in print, a must-have volume for anyone interested in American history or in our greatest president.Best-selling author James M. McPherson follows the son of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks from his early years in Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois, to his highly successful law career, his marriage to Mary Todd, and his one term in Congress. We witness his leadership of the Republican anti-slavery movement, his famous debates with Stephen A. Douglas (a long acquaintance and former rival for the hand of Mary Todd), and his emergence as a candidate for president in 1860. Following Lincoln's election to the presidency, McPherson describes his masterful role as Commander in Chief during the Civil War, the writing of the Emancipation Proclamation, and his assassination by John Wilkes Booth. The book also discusses his lasting legacy and why he remains a quintessential American hero two hundred years after his birth, while an annotated bibliography permits easy access to further scholarship.With his ideal short account of Lincoln, McPherson provides a compelling biography of a man of humble origins who preserved our nation during its greatest catastrophe and ended the scourge of slavery.

    Following in the tradition of such classics as Arthur Huff Fauset’s “Negro Folk Tales from the South” (1927), Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men (1935), and Virginia Hamilton’s The People Could Fly (1985), acclaimed scholars Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Maria Tatar assemble a groundbreaking collection of folktales, myths, and legends that revitalizes a vibrant African American past to produce the most comprehensive and ambitious collection of African American folktales ever published in American literary history. Arguing for the value of these deceptively simple stories as part of a sophisticated, complex, and heterogeneous cultural heritage, Gates and Tatar show how these remarkable stories deserve a place alongside the classic works of African American literature, and American literature more broadly.Opening with two introductory essays and twenty seminal African tales as historical background, Gates and Tatar present nearly 150 African American stories, among them familiar Brer Rabbit classics, but also stories like “The Talking Skull” and “Witches Who Ride,” as well as out-of-print tales from the 1890s’ Southern Workman. Beginning with the figure of Anansi, the African trickster, master of improvisation—a spider who plots and weaves in scandalous ways—The Annotated African American Folktales then goes on to draw Caribbean and Creole tales into the orbit of the folkloric canon. It retrieves stories not seen since the Harlem Renaissance and brings back archival tales of “Negro folklore” that Booker T. Washington proclaimed had emanated from a “grapevine” that existed even before the American Revolution, stories brought over by slaves who had survived the Middle Passage. Furthermore, Gates and Tatar’s volume not only defines a new canon but reveals how these folktales were hijacked and misappropriated in previous incarnations, egregiously by Joel Chandler Harris, a Southern newspaperman, as well as by Walt Disney, who cannibalized and capitalized on Harris’s volumes by creating cartoon characters drawn from this African American lore.Presenting these tales with illuminating annotations and hundreds of revelatory illustrations, The Annotated African American Folktales reminds us that stories not only move, entertain, and instruct but, more fundamentally, inspire and keep hope alive.The Annotated African American Folktales includes:Introductory essays, nearly 150 African American stories, and 20 seminal African tales as historical backgroundThe familiar Brer Rabbit classics, as well as news-making vernacular tales from the 1890s’ Southern WorkmanAn entire section of  Caribbean and Latin American folktales that finally become incorporated into the canonApproximately 200 full-color, museum-quality images