Aisling Lorrah resents having to spend the summer in the wilds of the Big Horn Mountains. Despite the beauty of the place and her fondness for her great-aunt and uncle, Colleen and Andrew, she resists giving up her summer with her friends. But this is the most fateful summer in her life. The Lorrah family spiritual guide, Crow Indian medicine man Black Bird Shows, guides Aisling, Colleen, and Andrew to many revelations through stories and visions. These dreams under the open skies of eastern Montana transforms each of them. In this prequel to The Magpie Odyssey and Mountain Medicine, the history of the Lorrah family unwinds from the action-packed and violent times of the early twentieth century to the present. Irish and Crow Indian secrets and legends join for an explosive showdown against evil. The result is a powerful emotional odyssey that explores the parallels between these two cultures and the spirits that haunt them. Magpie Genesis is a heady tale that explores the bond of the Lorrah family to its remarkable past. These pages reveal the magic that exists in everyone, and the mysteries that await disclosure in the mists of the past.

Something is attacking and killing elders who possess ancient and magical knowledge. When her own family elders and those of the Crow tribe tell Aisling Lorrah she will have to confront the unknown threat, she is bewildered and terrified. Her journey will take her to familiar places in the Big Horn Mountains and less familiar destinations in Ireland. Realms of past and present define her role in this battle as she ventures out alone. Without the help of her teachers and mentors, Aisling draws upon what she knows and what she learns in order to face the shocking adversary on a battlefield unlike any other. Ultimately, what she has been taught is combined with her own mysterious gifts to bring this story to its final conclusion.

As Aisling Lorrah enters her first semester at the University of Montana, she wants nothing more than to fit in seamlessly. Sadly, no one seems to understand her family traditions and profound familial connection with the Crow Indian people. It is only after she is given a challenging class assignment that the mysterious forces of past and present collide and send Aisling on a journey through time that will change her forever. Assigned to write a paper describing her familys philosophy and beliefs, Aislings research leads her straight to Willow, an enigmatic ancestor who both believed in and rebelled against her familys values. But when Aisling discovers something dark and frightening lurking in the shadows, she soon finds her spirit and personal safety in jeopardy. In a potent struggle between her familys magic and the sinister threat to her life, she turns to two parallel sources of powerful and ancient knowledge for the answers. In this poignant tale, what Aisling finds in her search for the truth will illuminate her path forward into an unexpected revelation and a new view of the world.

First Published in 1990. This is a book about the meaning of our lives as consumers. It is about leisure, lifestyle, and markets in today’s consumer culture. In 1986 one measure of people’s use of time in Britain identified television watching as the major activity for both men and women outside paid employment and sleeping.

Rather than providing a dictionary of superstitions, of which there are already numerous excellent, exhaustive and, in many cases, academic works which list superstitions from A to Z, Bainton gives us an entertaining flight over the terrain, landing from time to time in more thought-provoking areas. He offers an overview of humanity's often illogical and irrational persistence in seeking good luck and avoiding misfortune. While Steve Roud's two excellent books - The Penguin Dictionary of Superstitions and his Pocket Guide - and Philippa Waring's 1970 Dictionary concentrate on the British Isles, Bainton casts his net much wider. There are many origins which warrant the full back story, such as Friday the thirteenth and the Knights Templar, or the demonisation of the domestic cat resulting in 'cat holocausts' throughout Europe led by the Popes and the Inquisition. The whole is presented as a comprehensive, entertaining narrative flow, though it is, of course, a book that could be dipped into, and includes a thorough bibliography. Schoenberg, who developed the twelve-tone technique in music, was a notorious triskaidekaphobe. When the title of his opera Moses und Aaron resulted in a title with thirteen letters, he renamed it Moses und Aron. He believed he would die in his seventy-sixth year (7 + 6 = 13) and he was correct; he also died on Friday the thirteenth at thirteen minutes before midnight. As Sigmund Freud wrote, 'Superstition is in large part the expectation of trouble; and a person who has harboured frequent evil wishes against others, but has been brought up to be good and has therefore repressed such wishes into the unconscious, will be especially ready to expect punishment for his unconscious wickedness in the form of trouble threatening him from without.'

Colleen Lorrah's childhood in the blended white and Native American cultures of Montana's Crow Indian reservation, was marked by omens that held important clues to her future. Her family was Irish-American, but the multi-generational history between the Lorrahs and tribal members provided her the gift of access and participation in rituals and practices of the tribe. Like many young people from the rural West, a successful executive-level career took Colleen away from her family's sprawling sheep ranch on the Reservation. Only her dying father's mysterious request launches her on a mission to trace the family's Irish history, causing her memories to surface and map her destiny. In The Magpie Odyssey, her epic journey weaves her personal history among the Crow Indians together with ancient beliefs still held in tiny pockets of Ireland. The quest brings her face to face with the Irish struggle for peace and with the mysterious McCumhaill, a shadowy hero whose face has never been seen. He is locked in a battle with those who would create violence and chaos in opposition of peace in Ireland. Events unite them, as their passion for Ireland and for each other reaches a violent and astonishing crescendo.