Hieronymus Jones and Gertrude Green, embark on their greatest adventure... since the last one. What do those glyphs carved into millennia old rock mean? What is the ancient mystery the island protects? Why must the hideous slime covered, viciously mutated, uproariously evil, tentacle covered monsters be sooooo obnoxious? Hiero and Gerty have always kept a part of themselves hidden, afraid the truth would drive others away but in a sea of secrets, can their most unusual friendship survive the things they dare not reveal? Hiero and Gerty will seek the answers to these questions and will also ask the most difficult question of all... Are we really just friends? Return to a world of wild magic, hidden creatures and high technology. Return to a world where not everyone is what they appear to be.

What does one do when a small cephalopod decides to make a nest in your cup of tea? Hieronymus Jones is a peculiar boy with a spectacular mind. Extraordinarily intelligent, he has secrets, dark and deadly, wonderful and pure. Secrets of hidden worlds and lost civilizations, ones that were not entirely human. Secrets of magic. When Hieronymus sees Gertrude Green for the first time, something tells him that she has secrets too. Together, they discover a connection, one that extends far deeper than either could have imagined. A connection that just might save the world. Tea-dwelling squids, mysterious pendants, and school bullies are one thing. However, when an army of maliciously malformed unpleasantness threatens to tear the two young friends apart, it’s clear the universe is against Hieronymus and Gertrude simply hiding away in the belltower to share their lunch in peace. Will they overcome all the obstacles in their way? The first book in an urban fantasy romance series, awash with bleeding-edge technology, magic, humor, and hideous tentacle-laden, Lovecraftian nightmares. Start reading now to enter Hiero and Gerty’s world today.

Readins in high & low

Aliens, flying saucers, ESP, the Bermuda Triangle, antigravity ... are we talking about science fiction or pseudoscience? Sometimes it is difficult to tell the difference. Both pseudoscience and science fiction (SF) are creative endeavours that have little in common with academic science, beyond the superficial trappings of jargon and subject matter. The most obvious difference between the two is that pseudoscience is presented as fact, not fiction. Yet like SF, and unlike real science, pseudoscience is driven by a desire to please an audience – in this case, people who “want to believe”. This has led to significant cross-fertilization between the two disciplines. SF authors often draw on “real” pseudoscientific theories to add verisimilitude to their stories, while on other occasions pseudoscience takes its cue from SF – the symbiotic relationship between ufology and Hollywood being a prime example of this. This engagingly written, well researched and richly illustrated text explores a wide range of intriguing similarities and differences between pseudoscience and the fictional science found in SF. Andrew May has a degree in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University and a PhD in astrophysics from Manchester University. After many years in academia and the private sector, he now works as a freelance writer and scientific consultant. He has written pocket biographies of Newton and Einstein, as well as contributing to a number of popular science books. He has a lifelong interest in science fiction, and has had several articles published in Fortean Times magazine

The nineteenth century witnessed a proliferation of alternative religious currents and practices, appropriating earlier traditions, entangling geographically distinct spiritual discourses, and crafting a repository of mindscapes eminently suitable to be accommodated by later generations of thinkers and practitioners. Penned by specialists in the field, this volume examines important themes and figures pertaining to this occult amalgam and its resonance into the twentieth century and beyond. Global guises of the occult, ranging from the Americas and Europe to India, are variously addressed, with special attention to the crucial role of mesmerism and the origins of modern yoga.

A profound understanding of the surrealists’ connections with alchemists and secret societies and the hermetic aspirations revealed in their works • Explains how surrealist paintings and poems employed mythology, gnostic principles, tarot, voodoo, alchemy, and other hermetic sciences to seek out unexplored regions of the mind and recover lost “psychic” and magical powers • Provides many examples of esoteric influence in surrealism, such as how Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon was originally titled The Bath of the Philosophers Not merely an artistic or literary movement as many believe, the surrealists rejected the labels of artist and author bestowed upon them by outsiders, accepting instead the titles of magician, alchemist, or--in the case of Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo--witch. Their paintings, poems, and other works were created to seek out unexplored regions of the mind and recover lost “psychic” and magical powers. They used creative expression as the vehicle to attain what André Breton called the “supreme point,” the point at which all opposites cease to be perceived as contradictions. This supreme point is found at the heart of all esoteric doctrines, including the Great Work of alchemy, and enables communication with higher states of being. Drawing on an extensive range of writings by the surrealists and those in their circle of influence, Patrick Lepetit shows how the surrealists employed mythology, gnostic principles, tarot, voodoo, and alchemy not simply as reference points but as significant elements of their ongoing investigations into the fundamental nature of consciousness. He provides many specific examples of esoteric influence among the surrealists, such as how Picasso’s famous Demoiselles d’Avignon was originally titled The Bath of the Philosophers, how painter Victor Brauner drew from his father’s spiritualist vocation as well as the Kabbalah and tarot, and how doctor and surrealist author Pierre Mabille was a Freemason focused on finding initiatory paths where “it is possible to feel a new system connecting man with the universe.” Lepetit casts new light on the connection between key figures of the movement and the circle of adepts gathered around Fulcanelli. He also explores the relationship between surrealists and Freemasonry, Martinists, and the Elect Cohen as well as the Grail mythos and the Arthurian brotherhood.

This is the first comprehensive reference work to cover the entire domain of “Gnosis and Western Esotericism” from Late Antiquity to the present. It contains critical discussions of all its major authors, currents and manifestations, from Gnosticism to the New Age.This one volume edition is an unabridged version of the two volume edition published in 2005.

Spiritualism is often dismissed by literary critics and historians as merely a Victorian fad. Helen Sword demonstrates that it continued to flourish well into the twentieth century and seeks to explain why. Literary modernism, she maintains, is replete with ghosts and spirits. In Ghostwriting Modernism she explores spiritualism's striking persistence and what she calls "the vexed relationship between mediumistic discourse and modernist literary aesthetics."Sword begins with a brief historical review of popular spiritualism's roots in nineteenth-century literary culture. In subsequent chapters, she discusses the forms of mediumship most closely allied with writing, the forms of writing most closely allied with mediumship, and the thematic and aesthetic alliances between popular spiritualism and modernist literature. Finally, she accounts for the recent proliferation of a spiritualist-influenced vocabulary (ghostliness, hauntings, the uncanny) in the works of historians, sociologists, philosophers, and especially literary critics and theorists.Documenting the hitherto unexplored relationship between spiritualism and modern authors (some credulous, some skeptical), Sword offers compelling readings of works by James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, W. B. Yeats, H.D., James Merrill, Sylvia Plath, and Ted Hughes. Even as modernists mock spiritualism's ludicrous lingo and deride its metaphysical excesses, she finds, they are intrigued and attracted by its ontological shiftiness, its blurring of the traditional divide between high culture and low culture, and its self-serving tendency to favor form over content (medium, so to speak, over message). Like modernism itself, Sword asserts, spiritualism embraces rather than eschews paradox, providing an ideological space where conservative beliefs can coexist with radical, even iconoclastic, thought and action.

Wiggerman's study of Mesopotamian monsters bridges the gap between text and image. Wooden and clay figures of monstrous spirits such as Hairy-One (lahmu), Bison-Bull (kusarikku), and Furious-Snake (mushussu) stand guard at the entrances to buildings to protect the inhavitants from demonic intruders. Deriving his information from the ritual texts that describe the production and installation of these figures, the author identifies the monsters of the texts with objects from the archaeological record and presents a detailed discussion of the identities and histories of a variety of Mesopotamian monsters.