A haunting debut, "Charm & Strange" is the story of a young man discovering who he is and how to keep a dark past from defining his future.

"Niall Petersen's whole life has been turned on its head by the revelation that he can do magic. Now a Warder for the ancient Courts of the Feyre, duty and honour must be upheld. His daughter Alex, newly awakened to her own magical powers,has been saved from the terrifying Bedlam prison, but in freeing her, Niall has released others of their kind into the population--half-breed fey who have been mistreated, abused and tortured by the very instituion that was supposed to help them. Now Niall must track them down and persuade them to swap their new-found liberty for the security of the Courts--but is the price of sanctuary merely to swap one cage for another?"--P. [4] of cover.

When a suspected heart attack leads him into the hidden world of the Feyre, a legendary place that lurks just beyond the surface of everyday life, Niall Petersen is stunned to discover that he is the only one who can save the ancient people from war.

With a New Afterword "Our knowledge of fundamental physics contains not one fruitful idea that does not carry the name of Murray Gell-Mann."--Richard Feynman Acclaimed science writer George Johnson brings his formidable reporting skills to the first biography of Nobel Prize-winner Murray Gell-Mann, the brilliant, irascible man who revolutionized modern particle physics with his models of the quark and the Eightfold Way. Born into a Jewish immigrant family on New York's East 14th Street, Gell-Mann's prodigious talent was evident from an early age--he entered Yale at 15, completed his Ph.D. at 21, and was soon identifying the structures of the world's smallest components and illuminating the elegant symmetries of the universe. Beautifully balanced in its portrayal of an extraordinary and difficult man, interpreting the concepts of advanced physics with scrupulous clarity and simplicity, Strange Beauty is a tour-de-force of both science writing and biography.

After Alex is kidnapped by the Untainted because of her own magical powers, her father Niall must use his own magic, and enter Bedlam, to save her.

Hawkwind emerged in 1969 from Ladbroke Grove, the heartland of London’s counterculture, to become a ‘people’s band’ supported by bikers and hippies alike as they staged free gigs, benefits and protests and welcomed the involvement of any number of creative people – writers, poets, dancers – from within their community. They insisted upon all these things even with the Top Three success of 1972’s enduring anthem Silver Machine and the pioneering Space Ritual projects. They have had more line-up changes than their only remaining founder member Dave Brock, can remember. Motorhead’s Lemmy and legendary Cream drummer Ginger Baker were just two of the musicians sacrificed along the way as the band went head to head with the police, customs, the taxman – and each other. With the memories of many of those who were there, this is the story of an extraordinary 35-year career, the music and the band, whose fans still loyally turn out for conventions and are rewarded with ‘private festivals’, set against a background of sex, drugs, madness, writs, rage and revenge.