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Take a trip into the fantastical world of the imagination in this lavishly illustrated gift book. Enter the elaborate “found” notebooks of the formerly fact-bound professor Dawn Gable and follow her on nine nightly journeys to extraordinary worlds. From King Arthur’s Round Table at Camelot to the majestic hall of slain heroes in Asgard, visit marvelous lands from myth, legend, and fairy tale. Intricate vistas and diagrams usher readers into a city of intelligent machines, the ancient African city of Kor, the miniature world of Lilliput, the flying island of Laputa, a mountainous home of mythical beasts, the primeval island of Buyan, the island of Atlantis, Captain Nemo’s Nautilus, and more. A mesmerizing gift for anyone who believes in the transformative power of stories, this is a book that readers will pore over again and again.

When Gloria passes away, it falls to her British-born children to host the traditional Jamaican Nine Night celebration. Family and friends, familiar and unfamiliar, arrive to celebrate the life of the woman who connects them all and deal with unfinished business along the way. Nine Night is at once moving and raucously funny. Gordon paints the rituals of grief, the tensions of family and the complexities of identity with an acute eye and razor-sharp wit.

Shapeshifter Keller meets her match in Iliana Dominick, who might be the legendary Witch Child--and a rival for Kellen's affection for Galen--but Kellen resists her animosity to convince Iliana to join Circle Daybreak.

"Pulls you into the depths of a secret world from the first page. Ian Smith’s novel is unmissable." —Harlan Coben, author of Missing You Spencer Collins thinks his life at Harvard will be all about basketball and pre-med; hard workouts and grinding work in class. The friends he’s made when he hits the storied ivy-clad campus from a very different life in urban Chicago are a happy bonus. But Spencer is about to be introduced to the most mysterious inner sanctum of the inner sanctum: to his surprise, he’s in the running to be “punched” for one of Harvard’s elite final clubs. The Delphic Club is known as “the Gas” for its crest of three gas-lit flames, and as Spencer is considered for membership, he’s plunged not only into the secret world of male privilege that the Gas represents, but also into a century-old club mystery. Because at the heart of the Delphic, secured deep inside its guarded mansion club, is another secret society: a shadowy group of powerful men known as The Ancient Nine. Who are The Ancient Nine? And why is Spencer—along with his best friend Dalton Winthrop—summoned to the deathbed of Dalton’s uncle just as Spencer is being punched for the club? What does the lore about a missing page from one of Harvard’s most historic books mean? And how does it connect to religion, murder, and to the King James Bible, if not to King James himself? The Ancient Nine is both a coming of age novel and a swiftly plotted story that lets readers into the ultimate of closed worlds with all of its dark historical secrets and unyielding power.

The Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard trilogy may have concluded, but we haven't heard the last of our favorite einherji and his friends. The nine Norse worlds are rich with lore, as this collection of nine original stories, each told from a different character's point of view, will prove.

Whether as the mothers of the Norse God Heimdall, Morgan and her sisters on Avalon, the nine sisters at the heart of the founding myth of the Gikuyu of Kenya, or witches battling with the Irish St Patrick, stories of nine women, often attending a goddess or linked to a heroic or divine male, exist across much of our world. Triggered by a local story still told in his native Dundee, Stuart McHardy has traced what seems to be memories of groups of nine women, most likely some kind of priestesses, across much of Europe and as far as Siberia, Korea, India and Africa. Whether as Pictish saints, Muses, Valkyries, Druidesses or witches, the tales of these groups of nine women transcend a vast range of cultural and linguistic boundaries. The painting of nine women dancing round a priapic male in a Catalonian cave painting over fifteen thousand years old suggests these groups may well have been one of the oldest cultural institutions humanity has known.

Lupine sorcerer Cullen Seabourne and FBI Agent Cynna Weaver are just coming to terms with having a baby, when they are lured to another realm where magic is commonplace and night never ends. Their only way home lies in tracking down a missing medallion-one also sought by powerful beings who will do anything to claim it.

An experiential guide to the wisdom preserved in Europe’s far north • Includes shamanic journeys to connect with deities and your ancestral shamans • Provides step-by-step instructions to prepare for and conduct a seiðr ceremony • Draws on archaeological evidence and surviving written records from Iceland • Reveals the long tradition of female shamans in northern European shamanism Shamanism is humanity’s oldest spiritual tradition. In much of the Western world, the indigenous pre-Christian spiritual practices have been lost. Yet at the northern fringes of Europe, Christianity did not displace the original shamanic practices until the end of the Viking age. Remnants of Norse shamanic spirituality have survived in myths, folk traditions, and written records from Iceland, providing many clues about the ancient European shaman’s world, especially when examined in conjunction with other shamanic cultures in northern Eurasia, such as the Sami and the tribes of Siberia. Reconstructing the shamanic practices of the hunter-gatherers of Scandinavia, Evelyn Rysdyk explores the evolution of Norse shamanism from its earliest female roots to the pre-Christian Viking Age. She explains how to enter Yggdrasil, the World Tree, to travel to other realms and provides shamanic journeys to connect with the ancestral shamans of your family tree, including the Norse goddess Freyja, the very first shaman. She offers exercises to connect with the ancient goddesses of fate, the Norns, and introduces the overnight wilderness quest of útiseta for reconnecting with the powers of nature. She explains the key concepts of Ørlög and Wyrd--the two most powerful forces that shape human lives--and provides exercises for letting go of harmful behavior patterns and transforming simple knowledge into profound wisdom by connecting with Óðinn. Thoroughly examining the shamanic rituals of seiðr, the oracular magic of the Nordic cultures, the author provides step-by-step instructions to prepare for and conduct a seiðr ceremony, including creating your own seiðr staff and hood, and explores the ancestral use of shamanic songs or varðlokur to accompany the ceremony. Woven throughout these exercises, Rysdyk provides archaeological evidence from Neolithic sites supporting the long tradition of venerating wise women, grandmothers, and mothers in ancient cultures and the important role of female shamans at the heart of northern European shamanism. Providing an accessible guide for anyone trying to fulfill their shamanic callings, these powerful rituals can provide personal healing and a clear path for finding our way into a harmonious relationship with the natural world.