It’s 1965 and the Rat Pack isn’t drawing at the Sands like they used to. Now Dino’s playing golf, and Frank is playing the Sahara. And the marquee at the Sands advertises SAMMY DAVIS JR. & JERRY LEWIS. Eddie G. never got Jerry Lewis. Didn’t think he was funny, didn’t think Dean needed him. So he had no intention of seeing the show, or of meeting Dean’s ex-partner. But Sammy comes to Eddie and asks him to help Jerry with a problem—one that might lead to murder. Because he likes Sammy, he agrees. At the same time Eddie’s P.I. friend, Danny Bardini, comes to Eddie looking for a pretty girl to use as bait in a case he’s working on. He ends up getting Eddie’s blessing to recruit Gina, a waitress at the Sands who is waiting for a spot to open up on the line at the Riviera. Only when the spot finally becomes available, Gina’s gone missing. Eddie, Danny and Jerry Epstein, Eddie’s Brooklyn mob connection, end up working together to hopefully find Gina alive, and keep Jerry Lewis from committing murder.
Things are not right at the Strega-Borgia castle. Signor Luciano Strega-Borgia has been kidnapped. Signora Baci Strega-Borgia is struggling with her spells at the Advanced Witchcraft Institute.Titus and Pandora don’t like their suspiciously cheerful and fearless new nanny. Baby Damp has been accidentally shrunk, e-mailed, and lost on the World Wide Web. And to top it off, there’s a gangster in a bunny suit lurking about. . . . This seriously over-the-top, gothic romp is sure to have readers clamoring for the next Strega-Borgia adventure.
It's 1965 and the Rat Pack isn't drawing at the Sands like they used to. Now Dino's playing golf, and Frank is playing the Sahara. And the marquee at the Sands advertises SAMMY DAVIS JR. & JERRY LEWIS. Eddie G. never got Jerry Lewis. Didn't think he was funny, didn't think Dean needed him. So he had no intention of seeing the show, or of meeting Dean's ex-partner. But Sammy comes to Eddie and asks him to help Jerry with a problem-one that might lead to murder. Because he likes Sammy, he agrees. At the same time Eddie's P.I. friend, Danny Bardini, comes to Eddie looking for a pretty girl to use as bait in a case he's working on. He ends up getting Eddie's blessing to recruit Gina, a waitress at the Sands who is waiting for a spot to open up on the line at the Riviera. Only when the spot finally becomes available, Gina's gone missing. Eddie, Danny and Jerry Epstein, Eddie's Brooklyn mob connection, end up working together to hopefully find Gina alive, and keep Jerry Lewis from committing murder.
In the vein of Neil Strauss’ The Game and Joshua Foer’s Moonwalking with Einstein comes the fascinating story of one man’s colorful, mysterious, and personal journey into the world of magic, and his unlikely invitation into an underground secret society of revolutionary magicians from around the world. Magic Is Dead is Ian Frisch’s head-first dive into a hidden world full of extraordinary characters and highly guarded secrets. It is a story of imagination, deception, and art that spotlights today’s most brilliant young magicians—a mysterious club known as the52, who are revolutionizing an ancient artform under the mantra Magic Is Dead. Ian brings us with him as he not only gets to know this fascinating world, but also becomes an integral part of it. We meet the52’s founding members—Laura London, Daniel Madison, and Chris Ramsay—and explore their personal demons, professional aspirations, and what drew them to their craft. We join them at private gatherings of the most extraordinary magicians working today, follow them to magic conventions in Las Vegas and England, and discover some of the best tricks of the trade. We also encounter David Blaine; hang out with Penn Jillette; meet Dynamo, the U.K.’s most famous magician; and go behind the scenes of a Netflix magic show. Magic Is Dead is also a chronicle of magic’s rich history and how it has changed in the internet age, as the young guns embrace social media and move away from the old-school take on the craft. As he tells the story of the52, and his role as its most unlikely member, Ian reveals his own connection with trickery and deceit and how he first learned the elements that make magic work from his poker-playing mother. He recalls their adventures in card rooms and casinos after his father’s sudden death, and shares a touching moment that he had, as a working journalist, with his childhood idol Shaquille O’Neal. “Magic—the romanticism of the inexplicable, the awe and admiration of the unexpected—is an underlying force in how we view the world and its myriad possibilities,” Ian writes. As his journey continues, Ian not only becomes a performer and creator of magic—even fooling the late Anthony Bourdain during a chance encounter—he also cements a new brotherhood, and begins to understand his relationship with his father, fifteen years after his death. Written with psychological acuity and a keen eye for detail, Magic Is Dead is an engrossing tale full of wonder and surprise.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • From one of America’s iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion that explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage—and a life, in good times and bad—that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child. Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill with what seemed at first flu, then pneumonia, then complete septic shock. She was put into an induced coma and placed on life support. Days later—the night before New Year’s Eve—the Dunnes were just sitting down to dinner after visiting the hospital when John Gregory Dunne suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, this close, symbiotic partnership of forty years was over. Four weeks later, their daughter pulled through. Two months after that, arriving at LAX, she collapsed and underwent six hours of brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center to relieve a massive hematoma. This powerful book is Didion’ s attempt to make sense of the “weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness ... about marriage and children and memory ... about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself.
THE DAYS BETWEEN Christmas and New Year’s Eve are dead days, when spirits roam and magic shifts restlessly just beneath the surface of our lives. A magician called Valerian must save his own life within those few days or pay the price for the pact he made with evil so many years ago. But alchemy and sorcery are no match against the demonic power pursuing him. Helping him is his servant, Boy, a child with no name and no past. The quick-witted orphan girl, Willow, is with them as they dig in death fields at midnight, and as they are swept into the sprawling blackness of a subterranean city on a journey from which there is no escape. Praise for The Book of Dead Days: “Beautifully paced and sometimes blood-soaked. . . . A very tangible sense of evil.”—The Guardian “Subtle menace and power.”—The Independent “Packed with drama, mystery, and intrigue.”—The Bookseller
Return to the Steam Punk world of Magnellum for the second book in the "Witch-Born" series. Magic is gone and Valeda Quinlan knows it, she just can’t prove it. Determined to learn the truth, Valeda finds herself at the mercy of Elsie Delgora, the last known Witch to have ever seen Magic. Scrambling for survival amidst the noble Houses of Magnellum, Valeda agrees to help Elsie in return for Magic’s location. But the help Elsie needs is more than Valeda bargained for. Sent on a mission to find Lord Winslow Agoston, Valeda is confronted by powers far beyond any Witch-Born and forced to take on an even larger role in the fate of Magnellum.
Welcome to a new America that is built on blood, sweat, and gears... In steam age America, men, monsters, machines, and magic battle for the same scrap of earth and sky. In this chaos, bounty hunter Cedar Hunt rides, cursed by lycanthropy and carrying the guilt of his brother's death. Then he's offered hope that his brother may yet survive. All he has to do is find the Holder: a powerful device created by mad devisers-and now in the hands of an ancient Strange who was banished to walk this Earth. In a land shaped by magic, steam, and iron, where the only things a man can count on are his guns, gears, and grit, Cedar will have to depend on all three if he's going to save his brother and reclaim his soul once and for all...
