Extraordinary pony farm manager Audra Dawson does it all, training ponies, teaching children to ride and looking after the livestock at Silver Lake Pony Ranch. She sets her sights on the man of her dreams—a man she adores, despite the fact he has other plans. He sees her as a friend, a potential sister-in-law, and a woman more capable than most Army generals—a cross between Gunga-Din and Alexander the Great—but not someone he wants to be involved with romantically. Meanwhile her employer’s two mischievous kids are determined to find the “perfect” man for her and they cast the Hero Spell. The Magic is Back! A legend in his own mind, veterinarian Joe Watkins knows his destiny when he sees Audra again. She needs him as much as he does her. He'll capture her stubborn heart. Between Audra's family who puts the "fun back in dysfunctional," apparently random animal poisonings, a stranger who claims to have traveled through Time, and the trials and tribulations of the summer season on the pony farm, tensions increase with the summer heat. Will the magic last this time or is it just a fling brought about by the Hero Spell?

Piers Anthony’s bestselling Xanth series is one of the cornerstones of fantasy, a lively and whimsical interpretation of a genre often criticized for taking itself too seriously. Anthony’s first Xanth novel, A Spell for Chameleon, was initially edited to target a more traditional audience. Now, in an eBook exclusive, A Spell for Chameleon has been reworked line by line—its language matching the simpler, playful way with words that made Piers Anthony an enduring fan favorite. Xanth is an enchanted land where magic rules, a land of centaurs and dragons and basilisks where every citizen has a unique spell to call their own. For Bink of North Village, however, Xanth is no fairy tale. He alone has no magic. And unless he gets some—and fast!—he will be exiled. Forever. But the Good Magician Humfrey is convinced that Bink does indeed have magic. In fact, both Beauregard the genie and the magic wall chart insist that Bink has magic as powerful as any possessed by the King, the Good Magician Humfrey, or even the Evil Magician Trent. Be that as it may, no one can fathom the nature of Bink’s very special magic. This is even worse than having no magic at all . . . and he still faces exile!

This book describes how computer programs can generate narratives and how studies of computational narrative can illuminate how humans tell stories. Combining an introduction to relevant concepts related to automatic storytelling with accessible descriptions of well-known computer programs that illustrate how such concepts are employed, the book is aimed at an interdisciplinary audience and assumes little or no background in computer science. The book introduces the most relevant techniques employed over the last 60 years for the development of computer models for narrative generation, including narrative templates, problem-solving, planning, author engagement and reflection, and statistical methods such as deep neural networks, ending with an examination of the societal implications of the development of automatic narrative generator systems.

More than any other book of the last fifty years (and perhaps ever), the Harry Potter novels have captured the imagination of children and adults around the world. Yet no one has ever been able to unlock the secret of Harry's wild popularity . . . until now. Updated and expanded since its original publication as Looking for God in Harry Potter (and now containing final conclusions based on the entire series), How Harry Cast His Spell explains why the books meet our longing to experience the truths of life, love, and death; help us better understand life and our role in the universe; and encourage us to discover and develop our own gifts and abilities.

An intoxicating blend of fairy tale magic, lively wit, and romance spice up this companion novel to Enchanted.

Make every day magical with a spell from Llewellyn's Witches' Spell-A-Day Almanac. Spellcasters of all levels can enhance their daily life with these easy bewitchments, recipes, rituals, and meditations. Deborah Lipp, Elizabeth Barrette, Thuri Calafia, and other experienced magic practitioners offer simple spells for every occasion that require minimal supplies. For convenience, the 365 spells are crossreferenced by purpose, including love, health, money, protection, home and garden, travel, and communication. Beginners will find advice on the best time, place, and tools for performing each spell. With space to jot down notes, this unique spellbook can be used as a Book of Shadows. There are also daily color and incense recommendations and astrological data to enhance each day's magic.

Fairy tales are supposed to be magical, surprising, and exhilarating, an enchanting counterpoint to everyday life that nonetheless helps us understand and deal with the anxieties of that life. Today, however, fairy tales are far from marvelous—in the hands of Hollywood, they have been stripped of their power, offering little but formulaic narratives and tame surprises. If we want to rediscover the power of fairy tales—as Armando Maggi thinks we should—we need to discover a new mythic lens, a new way of approaching and understanding, and thus re-creating, the transformative potential of these stories. In Preserving the Spell, Maggi argues that the first step is to understand the history of the various traditions of oral and written narrative that together created the fairy tales we know today. He begins his exploration with the ur-text of European fairy tales, Giambattista Basile’s The Tale of Tales, then traces its path through later Italian, French, English, and German traditions, with particular emphasis on the Grimm Brothers’ adaptations of the tales, which are included in the first-ever English translation in an appendix. Carrying his story into the twentieth century, Maggi mounts a powerful argument for freeing fairy tales from their bland contemporary forms, and reinvigorating our belief that we still can find new, powerfully transformative ways of telling these stories.

This revised, expanded, and updated edition of the 1979 landmark Breaking the Magic Spell examines the enduring power of fairy tales and the ways they invade our subjective world. In seven provocative essays, Zipes discusses the importance of investigating oral folk tales in their socio-political context and traces their evolution into literary fairy tales, a metamorphosis that often diminished the ideology of the original narrative. Zipes also looks at how folk tales influence our popular beliefs and the ways they have been exploited by a corporate media network intent on regulating the mystical elements of the stories. He examines a range of authors, including the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson, Ernst Bloch, Tolkien, Bettelheim, and J.K. Rowling to demonstrate the continuing symbiotic relationship between folklore and literature.

A cornucopia of spelling challenges—from the deceptively simple to the truly vexing—for good, better, and exceptional spellers (or those who want to be). So You Think You Can Spell? is a handy way to go one on one, pencil to paper, against hard, harder, and heartless words. The challenges vary from three- and five-word mini-quizzes to fifty-worders, from tests of quite familiar (but ever misspelled) words to those rife with vowel, consonant, or silent-letter booby traps. This unique volume also tests one's spelling smarts in the arts and sciences, international cuisine, and geography. All in all, this is a book to settle the ultimate question: Just how good a speller are you?

The Legacy of Heroes is a Fantasy Role Playing Game with a singular focus: imagination. The Legacy of Heroes Player's Guide offers everything you need to bring the myriad characters from movies, literature, mythology and anything else you can imagine to life on the page before you. This book contains 11 races, 11 classes, 40 heroic arcs and all the spells, styles, equipment, magic items and more you need for your own brave heroes to move from character to legend. The Legacy of Heroes exciting Heroic Talent and Heroic Moment systems empower the players to create truly memorable role-playing experiences like never before. This book facilitates that collaboration by giving you, the player, the tools you need for the stories you imagine in an efficient, simple, and familiar system based on the OGL license. The only question is, are you ready for your own legacy? Visit www.thelegacyofheroes.com for support, downloads and more!