"Ahead of its time...James figures out what really makes some of the greatest minds in Magic tick." --Autumn Burchett, Magic Pro League member and two-time English National Champion "For the Magic The Gathering player who is a part of this community, who loves not just the cards but the world of Magic itself, this is a great pickup for reading." --Tolarian Community College, YouTube video review "James fills a gap in the Magic the Gathering world with his work behind the scenes, not only with CardBoard Live, but also with his ethnographic research into the lives of Magic personalities." --Vincent "Deathsie" Chu, professional Magic Arena streamer 12 of Magic: The Gathering's finest players. 12 interviews. Michael Bonde Paulo Vitor Damo Da Rosa Andrew Elenbogen Jon Finkel Bryan Gottlieb Emma Handy Bob Huang Wilson Hunter Luis Scott-Vargas Jonathan Sukenik Gerry Thompson Noah Walker

The award-winning New York Times bestseller about the extraordinary things that can happen when we harness the power of both the brain and the heart Growing up in the high desert of California, Jim Doty was poor, with an alcoholic father and a mother chronically depressed and paralyzed by a stroke. Today he is the director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) at Stanford University, of which the Dalai Lama is a founding benefactor. But back then his life was at a dead end until at twelve he wandered into a magic shop looking for a plastic thumb. Instead he met Ruth, a woman who taught him a series of exercises to ease his own suffering and manifest his greatest desires. Her final mandate was that he keep his heart open and teach these techniques to others. She gave him his first glimpse of the unique relationship between the brain and the heart. Doty would go on to put Ruth’s practices to work with extraordinary results—power and wealth that he could only imagine as a twelve-year-old, riding his orange Sting-Ray bike. But he neglects Ruth’s most important lesson, to keep his heart open, with disastrous results—until he has the opportunity to make a spectacular charitable contribution that will virtually ruin him. Part memoir, part science, part inspiration, and part practical instruction, Into the Magic Shop shows us how we can fundamentally change our lives by first changing our brains and our hearts.

The first book in a seafaring fantasy trilogy that George R. R. Martin has described as “even better than the Farseer Trilogy—I didn’t think that was possible.” Bingtown is a hub of exotic trade and home to a merchant nobility famed for its liveships—rare vessels carved from wizardwood, which ripens magically into sentient awareness. Now the fortunes of one of Bingtown’s oldest families rest on the newly awakened liveship Vivacia. For Althea Vestrit, the ship is her rightful legacy. For Althea’s young nephew, wrenched from his religious studies and forced to serve aboard the Vivacia, the ship is a life sentence. But the fate of the ship—and the Vestrits—may ultimately lie in the hands of an outsider: the ruthless buccaneer captain Kennit, who plans to seize power over the Pirate Isles by capturing a liveship and bending it to his will. Don’t miss the magic of the Liveship Traders Trilogy: SHIP OF MAGIC • MAD SHIP • SHIP OF DESTINY

Discover a land of enchantment, legend, and adventure in this first book of the Immortals series, featuring an updated cover for longtime fans and fresh converts alike, and including an all-new afterword from Tamora Pierce. Thirteen-year-old Daine has always had a special connection with animals, but only when she’s forced to leave home does she realize it’s more than a knack—it’s magic. With this wild magic, not only can Daine speak to animals, but she can also make them obey her. Daine takes a job handling horses for the Queen’s Riders, where she meets the master mage Numair and becomes his student. Under Numair’s guidance, Daine explores the scope of her magic. But she encounters other beings, too, who are not so gentle. These terrifying creatures, called Immortals, have been imprisoned in the Divine Realms for the past four hundred years—but now someone has broken the barrier. And it’s up to Daine and her friends to defend their world from an Immortal attack.

In this enchanting novel from the Booker Prize–winning author, a group of world-weary travelers discover the meaning of life in a mysterious Swiss mountain village. The Age of Magic has begun. Unveil your eyes. Eight weary filmmakers, traveling from Paris to Basel, arrive at a small Swiss hotel on the shores of a luminous lake. Above them, strewn with lights that twinkle in the darkness, looms the towering Rigi mountain. Over the course of three days and two nights, the travelers will find themselves drawn into the mystery of the mountain reflected in the lake. One by one, they will be disturbed, enlightened, and transformed, each in a different way. An intoxicating and dreamlike tale unfolds. Allow yourself to be transformed. Having shown a different way of seeing the world, Ben Okri now offers a different way of reading.

Managing Humans is a selection of the best essays from Michael Lopp's popular website Rands in Repose(www.randsinrepose.com). Lopp is one of the most sought-after IT managers in Silicon Valley, and draws on his experiences at Apple, Netscape, Symantec, and Borland. This book reveals a variety of different approaches for creating innovative, happy development teams. It covers handling conflict, managing wildly differing personality types, infusing innovation into insane product schedules, and figuring out how to build lasting and useful engineering culture. The essays are biting, hilarious, and always informative.

From the duo behind the massively successful and award-winning podcast Stuff You Should Know comes an unexpected look at things you thought you knew. Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant started the podcast Stuff You Should Know back in 2008 because they were curious—curious about the world around them, curious about what they might have missed in their formal educations, and curious to dig deeper on stuff they thought they understood. As it turns out, they aren't the only curious ones. They've since amassed a rabid fan base, making Stuff You Should Know one of the most popular podcasts in the world. Armed with their inquisitive natures and a passion for sharing, they uncover the weird, fascinating, delightful, or unexpected elements of a wide variety of topics. The pair have now taken their near-boundless "whys" and "hows" from your earbuds to the pages of a book for the first time—featuring a completely new array of subjects that they’ve long wondered about and wanted to explore. Each chapter is further embellished with snappy visual material to allow for rabbit-hole tangents and digressions—including charts, illustrations, sidebars, and footnotes. Follow along as the two dig into the underlying stories of everything from the origin of Murphy beds, to the history of facial hair, to the psychology of being lost. Have you ever wondered about the world around you, and wished to see the magic in everyday things? Come get curious with Stuff You Should Know. With Josh and Chuck as your guide, there’s something interesting about everything (...except maybe jackhammers).

When Arnold wishes he had more information for his family tree, Ms. Frizzle revs up the Magic School Bus and the class zooms back to prehistoric times. First stop: 3.5 billion years ago!There aren't any people around to ask for directions. Luckily Ms. Frizzle has a plan, and the class is right there to watch simple cells become sponges and then fish and dinosaurs, then mammals and early primates and, eventually, modern humans. It's the longest class trip ever!This is the story of a species, of our species, as only Ms. Frizzle can tell it. Joanna Cole and Bruce Degen tackle this essential topic with the insight and humor that have made the Magic School Bus the bestselling science series of all time.Hop on board for a class trip that spans billions of lifetimes!

Readers around the world have fallen for Kelley Armstrong’s intoxicating, sensual and wicked tales of the paranormal, in which demons and witches, werewolves and vampires collide – often hilariously, sometimes violently – with everyday life. In Armstrong’s first six novels, Elena, Paige and Eve have had their way with us. Now get ready for Jaime Vegas, the luscious, lovelorn and haunted necromancer. . . Jaime, who knows a thing or two about showbiz, is on a television shoot in Los Angeles when weird things start to happen. As a woman whose special talent is raising the dead, her threshold for weirdness is pretty high: she’s used to not only seeing dead people but hearing them speak to her in very emphatic terms. But for the first time in her life – as invisible hands brush her skin, unintelligible fragments of words are whispered into her ears, and beings move just at the corner of her eye–she knows what humans mean when they talk about being haunted. She is determined to get to the bottom of these manifestations, but as she sets out to solve the mystery she has no idea how scary her investigation will get, or to what depths ordinary humans will sink in their attempts to gain supernatural powers. As she digs into the dark underside of Los Angeles, she’ll need as much Otherworld help as she can get in order to survive, calling on her personal angel, Eve, and Hope, the well-meaning chaos demon. Jeremy, the alpha werewolf, is also by her side offering protection. And, Jaime hopes, maybe a little more than that. “As I knelt on the cobblestones to begin the ritual, I opened not some ancient leather pouch, but a Gucci make-up bag. . . . I know little about the geography and theology of the afterlife, but I do know that the worst spirits are kept secured, and my risk of “accidentally” tapping into a hell dimension is next to nil. Even if I do bring back some depraved killer’s spirit, what can it do to me? When you deprive someone of the ability to act in the living world, he’s pretty darned helpless. In death, even the worst killer plummets from lethal to merely annoying. Yet whatever had been trying to contact me apparently could cross that barrier, could act in the living world. . .at least on me. I added an extra helping of vervain to the censer.” —from No Humans Involved

Four young misfits find themselves living in a strictly disciplined temple community where they become friends while also learning to do crafts and to use their powers, especially magic