Sequel to New York Times bestselling author Alison Goodman's acclaimed The Dark Days Club—a smashing combination of Buffy and Jane Austen! Summer, 1812. After the scandalous events at her presentation ball in London, Lady Helen has taken refuge at the fashionable seaside resort of Brighton, banished from her family and training as a Reclaimer with the covert Dark Days Club. She must learn to fight the dangerous energy-wielding Deceivers and prepare to face their master, the elusive Grand Deceiver. As she struggles to put aside her genteel upbringing, Helen realizes that her mentor, Lord Carlston, is fighting his own inner battle. Has the foul Deceiver energy poisoned his soul, or is something else driving him towards violent bouts of madness? Either way, Helen is desperate to help the man with whom she shares a deep but forbidden connection. When Mr. Pike, the hard bureaucratic heart of the Dark Days Club, arrives in Brighton, he has a secret mission for Helen: find the journal left by a mad rogue Reclaimer, before it falls into the hands of the Deceivers. Coerced by Pike, Helen has no choice but to do as ordered, knowing that the search for the journal may bring about Lord Carlston’s annihilation.

Brighton, July 1812: Lady Helen Wrexhall is spending the summer season in Brighton, where she will continue her Reclaimer training and prepare for her duties as a fully fledged member of the Dark Days Club. Her mentor, Lord Carlston, believes that a Grand Deceiver has arrived in England, and there is no time to lose in preparing Helen to fight it. As she rushes to complete her training, Helen finds herself torn between her loyalty to Carlston and the orders of the Home Office, who wish to use her to further their own agenda. Meanwhile, the Duke of Selburn seems determined to try and protect her, irrespective of the risk to himself. With so much at stake, Helen must make an agonising choice between duty and devotion.

The thrilling, genre-bending conclusion to Lady Helen's demon-hunting adventures, set in the glittering Regency world. Lady Helen has retreated to a country estate outside Bath to prepare for her wedding to the Duke of Selburn, yet she knows she has unfinished business to complete. She and the dangerously charismatic Lord Carlston have learned they are a dyad, bonded in blood, and only they are strong enough to defeat the Grand Deceiver, who threatens to throw mankind into chaos. But the heinous death-soaked Ligatus Helen has absorbed is tearing a rift in her mind. Its power, if unleashed, will annihilate both Helen and Carlston unless they can find a way to harness its ghastly force and defeat their enemy. In the final book of the trilogy that began with The Dark Days Club and continued with The Dark Days Pact, the intrepid Lady Helen's story hurtles to a shocking conclusion full of action, heartbreak, and betrayal.

Once upon a time, in a land Down Under, from the depths of the Clan cave, Clan Destine Press issued a challenge to Australian and Kiwi authors to write cliff-hanging, Australian-flavoured, action-packed adventure stories for two protagonists; stories of the What If, What Now, And Then... kind. This was a catnip call, an irresistible lure, a kid-in-a-candy-store kind of a challenge: what writer wouldn't want to take a crack at that? To make it that little bit more intriguing, the editors decreed the stories could be contemporary, historical, realistic, far-out, spec-fic, horror, SF, or urban fantasy; and, in a spirit of mischief, that at least one of the two protagonists must be human. You'd think that would cover all bases. But writers are a contrary bunch: they pushed these very broad boundaries even further. The result is not one, but two volumes of kick-arse, action-packed stories: And Then... The Great Big Book of Adventure Tales. This is Volume 2: a fascinating collection of genre-bending adventure stories garnered from a mix of sf, fantasy and crime writers, happily encroaching upon each other's territories, and then some.

Updated with the latest archaeological research new chapters on the most influential yet widely unrecognised people of the British isles, In Search of the Dark Ages illuminates the fascinating and mysterious centuries between the Romans and the Norman Conquest of 1066. In this new edition, Michael Wood vividly conjures some of the most important people in British history such as Hadrian, a Libyan refugee from the Arab conquests and arguably the most important person of African origin in British history, to Queen Boadicea, the leader of a terrible war of resistance against the Romans. Here too, warts and all, are the Saxon, Viking and Norman kings who laid the political foundations of England: Offa of Mercia, Alfred the Great, Athelstan, and William the Conqueror, whose victory at Hastings in 1066 marked the end of Anglo-Saxon England. Reflecting the latest historical, textual and archaeological research, this revised and updated edition of Michael Wood's classic book overturns preconceptions of the Dark Ages as a shadowy and brutal era, showing them to be a richly exciting and formative period in the history of Britain.

The Civil Rights Movement is now remembered as a long-lost era, which came to an end along with the idealism of the 1960s. In Dark Days, Bright Nights, acclaimed scholar Peniel E. Joseph puts this pat assessment to the test, showing the 60s -- particularly the tumultuous period after the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act -- to be the catalyst of a movement that culminated in the inauguration of Barack Obama. Joseph argues that the 1965 Voting Rights Act burst a dam holding back radical democratic impulses. This political explosion initially took the form of the Black Power Movement, conventionally adjudged a failure. Joseph resurrects the movement to elucidate its unfairly forgotten achievements. Told through the lives of activists, intellectuals, and artists, including Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton, Amiri Baraka, Tupac Shakur, and Barack Obama, Dark Days, Bright Nights will make coherent a fraught half-century of struggle, reassessing its impact on American democracy and the larger world.

In the late nineteenth century, many Italian immigrants settled in Newark. For these newcomers, the Church became a source of community and strength. Feasts of Patron Saints from their paese, or village in Italy, were a tradition that helped make the new country feel more like the old. At St. Lucy's Church, parishioners held the first Feast of St. Gerard Maiella--the unofficial patron of mothers, children and the unborn--in October 1899, and it has been held every year since. As the decades have passed, generation after generation of Italian Americans return annually to celebrate their heritage and Catholic faith and express their gratitude for St. Gerard's powerful intercession. In this way, the Feast of St. Gerard, the treasure of their grandparents, has become part of their descendants' heritage.

Sequel to New York Times bestselling author Alison Goodman's acclaimed The Dark Days Club--a smashing combination of Buffy and Jane Austen! June 1812. Just weeks after her catastrophic coming-out ball, Lady Helen Wrexhall--now disowned by her uncle--is a full member of the demon-hunting Dark Days Club. Her mentor, Lord Carlston, has arranged for Helen and her maid, Darby, to spend the Summer Season in Brighton, where Helen can sharpen her Reclaimer powers. Then the long-term effects of Carlston's Reclaimer work takes hold and his sanity begins to slip. At the same time, Carlston's Dark Days Club colleague and nemesis will stop at nothing to bring Helen over to his side--and the Duke of Selburn is determined to marry her. The stakes are ever higher for Helen, and her decision will truly change the world . . .

This book looks at explanations of the black arts as they existed during early medieval centuries in Western Europe. It objectively examines the historical development of magic and witchcraft and emphasizes the reality of these black arts. Stressing the historiographical significance of the modern literature of the occult, this book provides a solid display of the leading role of rationalism in modern literature. The author employs studies in anthropology and examinations of writings of medieval encyclopedists, code of pagan law, and the Church Fathers from the fourth to the eighth centuries. By remaining objective and employing such historiographical and theological details to his work, Duke creates a high quality and unique study which supports refutations of rationalist historians who see middle-age witchcraft as a delusion. His book will appeal to students and scholars of medieval history, as well as anyone interested in the black arts. Contents: Abbreviations; Acknowledgments; MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT OF CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY; Introduction; The Modern Literature of Witchcraft; The Roman and Christian Background; The Western Fathers and Magic and Witchcraft A.D. 300-450; St. Augustine on Magic and Miracles; Magic, Miracles and the Ecclesiastical Witchcraft; Heirs of the Latin Fathers; Conclusions; Bibliography; Index.

Combining Jane Austen's high society and Cassandra Clare's supernatural underworld, Alison Goodman's second novel in the Lady Helen trilogy will delight fans of historical fiction and fantasy. Brighton, July 1812. Lady Helen Wrexhall is spending the summer season in Brighton, where she will continue her Reclaimer training and prepare for her duties as a fully fledged member of the Dark Days Club. Her mentor, Lord Carlston, believes that a Grand Deceiver has arrived in England, and there is no time to lose in preparing Helen to fight it. As she rushes to complete her training, Helen finds herself torn between her loyalty to Carlston and the orders of the Home Office, who wish to use her to further their own agenda. Meanwhile, the Duke of Selburn seems determined to try and protect her, irrespective of the risk to himself. With so much at stake, Helen must make an agonizing choice between duty and devotion.