The first book in a new paranormal romance series by New York Times bestselling author Lynn Viehl. In the Provincial Union of Victoriana, a steampunk America that lost the Revolutionary War, Charmian “Kit” Kittredge makes her living investigating crimes of magic. While Kit tries to avoid the nobs of high society, she follows mysteries wherever they lead. In the Provincial Union of Victoriana, a steampunk America that lost the Revolutionary War, Charmian “Kit” Kittredge makes her living investigating crimes of magic. While Kit tries to avoid the nobs of high society, she follows mysteries wherever they lead. Unlike most folks, Kit doesn’t believe in magic, but she can’t refuse to help Lady Diana Walsh, who claims a curse is viciously wounding her while she sleeps. As Kit investigates the Walsh family, she becomes convinced that the attacks are part of a more ominous plot—one that may involve the lady’s obnoxious husband. Sleuthing in the city of Rumsen is difficult enough, but soon Kit must also skirt the unwanted attentions of a nefarious deathmage and the unwelcome scrutiny of the police chief inspector. Unwilling to surrender to either man’s passion for her, Kit struggles to remain independent as she draws closer to the heart of the mystery. For the truth promises to ruin her life—and turn Rumsen into a supernatural battleground from which no one will escape alive.

Mega-Infrastructure Projects (MIPs) represent a central element of globalized development. MIPs like the Chinese driven `Belt and Road Initiative' (BRI) include large-scale agrarian, road, rail, port and energy networks. They are complex ventures involving international capital and multiple stakeholders. `Disenchanted Modernities' presents 16 case studies showing that the promise of a sustainable modern development by MIPs leave many local users disenchanted: They don't profit from the MIPs but lose access to their resources often held in common. The book describes the strategies of states and companies as well as local responses to MIPs in Asia, Africa, Americas and Europe.

In Book Two of the Disenchanted & Co. steampunk series, Charmian (Kit) Kittredge confronts native magics and mechanical menaces in Toriana—an alternate America that lost the Revolutionary War. As the proprietor of Disenchanted & Co. in a steampunk version of America, Charmian “Kit” Kittredge makes her living solving magical crimes. But when a snobbish lady begs for help, saving her reputation might very well cost Kit her life. Doing a favor for deathmage Lucien Dredmore, Kit agrees to interview a newly widowed lady as a potential client. Upon meeting, however, she learns that the woman in question is none other than Lady Eugenia Bestly, president of the Rumsen Ladies Decency Society—someone who once led a vicious campaign to ruin Kit’s life. Ironically Lady Bestly now lives in fear herself, for the press is about to unmask her husband as the savage “Wolfman” who died while terrorizing the city. As monstrous rampages continue to occur, Kit soon determines there is more than one Wolfman, and that they may themselves be victims of evil players. While avoiding both mechanized assassins and attempts by Dredmore and Chief Inspector Tom Doyle to take her under their protection, Kit follows a tangled path that leads from a prestigious gentlemen’s club fronting a hellish secret to a vengeful native tribe and dangerous, ancient magics.

This companion to Grounded combines humor, revolution, magic, and romance for the most delightful "Cinderella" retelling since Ella Enchanted. Ella Coach has one wish: revolution. Her mother died working in a sweatshop, and Ella wants every laborer in the Blue Kingdom to receive fairer treatment. But to make that happen, she'll need some high-level support...Prince Dash Charming has one wish: evolution. The Charming Curse forced generations of Charming men to lie, cheat, and break hearts -- but with the witch Envearia's death, the curse has ended. Now Dash wants to be a better person, but he doesn't know where to start...Serge can grant any wish -- and has: As an executive fairy godfather, he's catered to the wildest whims of spoiled teenagers from the richest, most entitled families in Blue. But now a new name has come up on his list, someone nobody's ever heard of... Ella Coach.This is a story about three people who want something better and who together find the faith to change their worlds. It's "Cinderella," brilliantly reimagined, and a delightful expansion of the wonderful world of Tyme.

A great many theorists have argued that the defining feature of modernity is that people no longer believe in spirits, myths, or magic. Jason Ā. Josephson-Storm argues that as broad cultural history goes, this narrative is wrong, as attempts to suppress magic have failed more often than they have succeeded. Even the human sciences have been more enchanted than is commonly supposed. But that raises the question: How did a magical, spiritualist, mesmerized Europe ever convince itself that it was disenchanted? Josephson-Storm traces the history of the myth of disenchantment in the births of philosophy, anthropology, sociology, folklore, psychoanalysis, and religious studies. Ironically, the myth of mythless modernity formed at the very time that Britain, France, and Germany were in the midst of occult and spiritualist revivals. Indeed, Josephson-Storm argues, these disciplines’ founding figures were not only aware of, but profoundly enmeshed in, the occult milieu; and it was specifically in response to this burgeoning culture of spirits and magic that they produced notions of a disenchanted world. By providing a novel history of the human sciences and their connection to esotericism, The Myth of Disenchantment dispatches with most widely held accounts of modernity and its break from the premodern past.

Fake news posts and Twitter trolls were just the beginning. What will happen when misinformation moves from our social media feeds into our everyday lives? Online disinformation stormed our political process in 2016 and has only worsened since. Yet as Samuel Woolley shows in this urgent book, it may pale in comparison to what's to come: humanlike automated voice systems, machine learning, "deepfake" AI-edited videos and images, interactive memes, virtual reality, and more. These technologies have the power not just to manipulate our politics, but to make us doubt our eyes and ears and even feelings. Deeply researched and compellingly written, The Reality Game describes the profound impact these technologies will have on our lives. Each new invention built without regard for its consequences edges us further into this digital dystopia. Yet Woolley does not despair. Instead, he argues pointedly for a new culture of innovation, one built around accountability and especially transparency. With social media dragging us into a never-ending culture war, we must learn to stop fighting and instead prevent future manipulation. This book shows how we can use our new tools not to control people but to empower them.

She hates her family. He's hiding behind his teenage sex life. They form a band as an escape. On tour, can they start over....or will all secrets come out on the open road? Carla Bucchio never cared about things like boyfriends and SATs. If she did, maybe life at 20 would be more exciting than developing photos on Long Island. When she chooses the guitar over a social life, it only makes sense because no one talks to her anyway. Music may be Pete Albrecht's life but what good is his talent if he has no one to share it with? When he's not getting bitched about coffee at work, he's getting nagged about college by his girlfriend. What would they say if they really knew about him? At the outset of the new millennium where boy bands and backup dancers have saturated pop culture, the two college dropouts start a rock band. Despite his girlfriend's manipulations and her mother's drunken disapproval, they form a secret connection through the music. Before heading out on their cross-country tour, tragedy turns the world upside down forcing them to decide if the band is just a teenage dream or their gateway to freedom...and to each other? Slanted and Disenchanted is the provocative first book in Lisa Czarina Michaud's coming-of-age Disenchanted series. Told with wry humor with nostalgic 90's undertones, it's High Fidelity meets Moxie that explores sexual tension in friendships, the confusion of adulting, the love and chaos of family....and the soundtracks that get us through it all. Readers of Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu, Girl by Blake Nelson, and Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan will fall for Slanted and Disenchanted! Jump on tour today!