Twelve-year-old Danny Woo had an unusual childhood. His parents were the star performers in the Mysterium circus—and they taught Danny plenty of tricks. But his parents' skills couldn't save them from dying in a suspicious fire. Now Danny and his aunt Laura, a journalist, are heading to Hong Kong so Laura can research the dangerous gang called the Black Dragon. Almost immediately, she's kidnapped and Danny realizes that the gang may be connected to his family's past. With the help of an old friend, Danny tries to free his aunt, and he uses every trick he knows to face off against the international criminal network that might be responsible for his parents' deaths.
In this “astonishing fantasy debut,” a mother and a mysterious Chinese man—who is more than he appears—search for her missing daughter in San Francisco (Locus). Offering “a deft blend of the oldest of magicks in a dragon, and the newest of sorceries in computers” (Anne McCaffrey), this is the incomparable novel that garnered Nebula, Hugo, World Fantasy, and Philip K. Dick Award nominations, and earned its author the John W. Campbell Best New Writer award. Martha Macnamara knows that her daughter, Elizabeth, is in trouble—she just doesn’t know what kind. Mysterious phone calls from San Francisco at odd hours of the night are the only contact they've had for years. Now, Elizabeth has sent her mother a plane ticket and reserved a room for her at the city’s most luxurious hotel. Yet, since Martha checked in, she still hasn’t been contacted by her daughter, and is feeling lonely, confused, and a little bit worried. But Martha meets someone else at the hotel: Mayland Long, a distinguished-looking and wealthy Chinese man who is drawn to Martha’s good character and ability to pinpoint the truth of a matter. They become close quickly, and he promises to help her find Elizabeth. Before he can solve the mystery, though, Martha herself disappears—and Mayland realizes that he’s in love with her. Now, a man whose true nature and identity is unknown to those around him will embark on a potentially dangerous adventure in a city on the verge of exploding with its own sort of magic as technology spreads through the region that will become known as Silicon Valley. An elegant, delightful, and unusual novel that blends ancient myth with modern wizardry, Tea with the Black Dragon is “a small masterpiece, setting a fantasy story against a contemporary background” (Booklist).
When Saba Watanabe, a once-powerful witch, is attacked by white dragons in human form, she is forced to turn to Malcolm, a black dragon who once made her his love slave, and together they must search for a mysterious book, filled with profound secrets, that is the key to their survival. Original
Chronicles modern racial profiling developed by New Jersey State Troopers that was used against minority motorists on the New Jersey Turnpike, also known as the Black Dragon. Also covers the war between black and white troopers and the New Jersey Senate hearings into the profiling and how that resulted in the impeachment of a New Jersey Supreme Court justice.
“As the book’s subtitle indicates, Mr. Ziegler uses one of the world’s great rivers as a vehicle to pursue this story—and what a vehicle it is. . . . [He] writes beautifully, and with the fervor of a naturalist.” —The Wall Street Journal “The writing is superb . . . a true labour of love, Black Dragon River is a triumph.” —The Spectator Black Dragon River is a personal journey down one of Asia’s great rivers that reveals the region’s essential history and culture. The world’s ninth largest river, the Amur serves as a large part of the border between Russia and China. As a crossroads for the great empires of Asia, this area offers journalist Dominic Ziegler a lens with which to examine the societies at Europe's only borderland with east Asia. He follows a journey from the river's top to bottom, and weaves the history, ecology and peoples to show a region obsessed with the past—and to show how this region holds a key to the complex and critical relationship between Russia and China today. One of Asia’s mightiest rivers, the Amur is also the most elusive. The terrain it crosses is legendarily difficult to traverse. Near the river’s source, Ziegler travels on horseback from the Mongolian steppe into the taiga, and later he is forced by the river’s impassability to take the Trans-Siberian Railway through the four-hundred-mile valley of water meadows inland. As he voyages deeper into the Amur wilderness, Ziegler also journeys into the history of the peoples and cultures the river’s path has transformed. The known history of the river begins with Genghis Khan and the rise of the Mongolian empire a millennium ago, and the story of the region has been one of aggression and conquest ever since. The modern history of the river is the story of Russia's push across the Eurasian landmass to China. For China, the Amur is a symbol of national humiliation and Western imperial land seizure; to Russia it is a symbol of national regeneration, its New World dreams and eastern prospects. The quest to take the Amur was to be Russia’s route to greatness, replacing an oppressive European identity with a vibrant one that faced the Pacific. Russia launched a grab in 1854 and took from China a chunk of territory equal in size nearly to France and Germany combined. Later, the region was the site for atrocities meted out on the Russian far east in the twentieth century during the Russian civil war and under Stalin. The long shared history on the Amur has conditioned the way China and Russia behave toward each other—and toward the outside world. To understand Putin’s imperial dreams, we must comprehend Russia’s relationship to its far east and how it still shapes the Russian mind. Not only is the Amur a key to Putinism, its history is also embedded in an ongoing clash of empires with the West.
Danny Woo has just escaped from the jaws of death. But he's still haunted by the suspicious deaths of his parents, who were the star performers in a radical traveling circus, the Mysterium. When he discovers that the Mysterium is re-forming in Barcelona—without him—he's devastated. But after learning that the Mysterium's enemies may be active in Barcelona, he rushes to warn his friends. Could there be a traitor within the company itself? If Danny wants to live long enough to find the answers, he will need all the skills his parents taught him. He senses that everything is linked to his parents' deaths . . . and to the clues they left behind.
Deluxe Edition: Limited to 196 hand-numbered copies, full gilt-blocked goatskin, special endpapers, silk ribbon bookmarker, with slipcase. Fine condition New....This substantial work expounds the sorcerous ethos and praxes of the Crooked Path ritual system. Its contents include a cycle of ten extensive Mystery-rites, each accompanied by adjunctive solitary rituals and detailed commentaries. Additional texts relate the intricacies of Sabbatic ritualization, as well as an extensive body of stellar lore and ritual.
When a wounded dragon falls from the sky, Claire Evans runs into a cornfield to rescue it. This isn't just any dragon, he's a shifter, one of six royal protectors, and helping him has consequences. Claire finds herself traipsing--or rather, flying--across the kingdom of Dragonwall. She must face Dragonwall's king. King Talon is not like those before him. Troubled and temperamental, he is scarred by more than the events that shaped him. Worst of all, he is mateless. With no queen and no heir, his subjects are demanding he abandon tradition and marry into nobility. There is a rising threat at his borders and whispers of a sorcerer. Soon, he will have greater problems than that of finding a wife. Modern meets medieval in this seven-book series filled with magical creatures and adventure. This epic fantasy is a slow burn romance that follows multiple POVs, woven together around Claire, a small town Indiana gal. If you've ever wondered what it might be like to get sucked into a fantastical world beyond our own, look no further!
