A shattered ward. Bloodthirsty undead. Can she conjure an impossible magic before they’re all sent to their doom? Kit Melbourne never imagined raising her baby in a city under siege. After vicious vampires obliterate the protective hex keeping the bloodsuckers at bay, she’s charged with casting an impenetrable barrier. But such a spell has never been cast, and failing could see the fiends send every citizen to their slaughter. Needing time to learn the magic and with her husband away, Kit must rely on a faerie nanny to watch her child. But with the babysitter harboring secrets of her own, trusting her could cost Kit the most precious life of all… Can she save the city and her firstborn before everyone she loves is sucked dry? Hawthorn’s Hex is the sixth book in the spellbinding Kit Melbourne urban fantasy series. If you like kickass heroines, tricky antagonists, and daring powerplays, then you’ll love Kater Cheek’s dark tale. Buy Hawthorn’s Hex to join a high-stakes bid for survival today!

One of humankind’s oldest companions, the hawthorn tree, is bound up in the memories of every recorded age and the plot lines of cultures all across the Northern Hemisphere. Hawthorn examines the little-recognized political, cultural, and natural history of this ancient spiky plant. Used for thousands of years in the impenetrable living fences that defined the landscapes of Europe, the hawthorn eventually helped feed the class antagonism that led to widespread social upheaval. In the American Midwest, hawthorn-inspired hedges on the prairies made nineteenth-century farming economically rewarding for the first time. Later, in Normandy, mazelike hedgerows bristling with these thorns nearly cost the Allies World War II. Bill Vaughn shines light on the full scope of the tree’s influence over human events. He also explores medicinal uses of the hawthorn, the use of its fruit in the world’s first wine, and the symbolic role its spikes and flowers played in pagan beliefs and Christian iconography. As entertaining as it is illuminating, this book is the first full appreciation of the hawthorn’s abundant connections with humanity.

They abducted her family. Now she’s going to make them pay. Kit Melbourne is looking forward to motherhood. So when her cousin-in-law’s bear-shifter children are kidnapped by werewolves, her awakening maternal instincts insist she bring them home. But with a price on their young heads, Kit finds herself in a race against time to recover them before they’re lost forever. Extracting vital information from a pack of vicious selkies, Kit pieces together a trail she hopes leads to the abductees. But with a brutal bounty hunter dogging her every step, it’s not just the lives of the kids in mortal danger… Can Kit save her innocent in-laws before she’s torn to shreds? Shapeshifter’s Turf is the fifth book in the electrifying Kit Melbourne urban fantasy series. If you like disturbing mysteries, graphic battles, and savage lycanthropes, then you’ll love Kater Cheek’s dark tale. Buy Shapeshifter’s Turf to protect the pure today!

From Sabbat events to magick ceremonies to handfastings, ritual is at the heart of Pagan worship and celebration. Whether you''re planning a simple coven initiation or an elaborate outdoor event for hundreds, "RitualCraft" can help you create and conduct meaningful rituals. Far from a recipe book of rote readings, this modern text explores rituals from many cultures and offers a step-by-step Neopagan framework for creating your own. The authors share their own ritual experiences-the best and the worst-illustrating the elements that contribute to successful ritual. "RitualCraft" covers all kinds of occasions: celebrations for families, a few people or large groups; rites of passage; Esbats and Sabbats; and personal transformation. Costumes, ethics, music, physical environment, ritual tools, safety, speech, and timing are all discussed in this all-inclusive guidebook to ritual.

An ancient house’s curse. Occult spellbooks. Vampiric vengeance. Kit and her husband fled to their new rural property, hoping to live safely as a normal human family away from dangerous vampires. But when constant supernatural setbacks plague their new home, Kit suspects she may be literally haunted by the ghosts of her past. Felix has a centuries-old vendetta against the elusive House Sanguinatus. A book casket bearing the warlocks’ wyvern sigil sparks hope that Felix will finally taste revenge. When the unholy box curses his young friend, Felix must forgo vengeance or watch yet another innocent mage die. As his friend edges closer to death, Felix learns of a mysterious mage who may be able to banish the jinx. But is this reclusive witch his last hope or a secret agent of House Sanguinatus? As the paranormal happenings force her family to live outside, Kit learns she has more to fear than just being homeless when the snows start falling. Vampire warlocks are hunting her, and they will eventually track her down. Kit tries to stay aloof to protect her innocent neighbors, but as her wards crumble, she realizes she can’t keep her family safe without the help of her new human friends. Will she be able to defend her family from the evil House Sanguinatus? Wyvern’s Sigil is the tenth book in the Kit Melbourne series. If you like tension, drama, and spooky magic, you’ll love Kater Cheek’s nuanced contemporary fantasy. Buy Wyvern’s Sigil to fight evil warlocks today!

The Hawthorn Archive, named after the richly fabled tree, has long welcomed the participants in the various Euro-American social struggles against slavery, racial capitalism, imperialism, and authoritarian forms of order. The Archive is not a library or a research collection in the conventional sense but rather a disorganized and fugitive space for the development of a political consciousness of being indifferent to the deadly forms of power that characterize our society. Housed by the Archive are autonomous radicals, runaways, abolitionists, commoners, and dreamers who no longer live as obedient or merely resistant subjects. In this innovative, genre- and format-bending publication, Avery F. Gordon, the “keeper” of the Archive, presents a selection of its documents—original and compelling essays, letters, cultural analyses, images, photographs, conversations, friendship exchanges, and collaborations with various artists. Gordon creatively uses the imaginary of the Archive to explore the utopian elements found in a variety of resistive and defiant activity in the past and in the present, zeroing in on Marxist critical theory and the black radical tradition. Fusing critical theory with creative writing in a historical context, The Hawthorn Archive represents voices from the utopian margins, where fact, fiction, theory, and image converge. Reminiscent of the later fictions of Italo Calvino or Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project, The Hawthorn Archive is a groundbreaking work that defies strict disciplinary, methodological, and aesthetic boundaries. And like Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination, which established Gordon as one of the most influential interdisciplinary scholars of the humanities and social sciences in recent years, it provides a kaleidoscopic analysis of power and effect. The Hawthorn Archive’s experimental format and inventive synthesis of critical theory and creative writing make way for a powerful reconception of what counts as social change and political action, offering creative inspiration and critical tools to artists, activists, scholars across various disciplines, and general readers alike.

Epigenetic Principles of Evolution, Second Edition, fully examines the causal basis of evolution from an epigenetic point-of-view. By revealing the epigenetic uses of the genetic toolkit, this work demonstrates the primacy of epigenetic mechanisms and epigenetic information in generating evolutionary novelties. The author convincingly supports his theoretical perspective with examples from varied fields of biology, emphasizing changes in developmental pathways as the basic source of evolutionary change in metazoans. Users will find a broader view of the epigenetic mechanisms of evolution, moving beyond conventional changes in epigenetic structures, such as DNA methylation, histone modifications, and patterns of miRNA, sRNA, and mRNA expression. This second edition is thoroughly updated to reflect new evidence and developing theories in the field of evolutionary epigenetics. New and revised chapters speak to the epigenetic basis of heredity, epigenetic regulation of animal structure and homeostasis, neural manipulation of gene expression, central control of gametogenesis, epigenetic control of early development, the origin of epigenetic information, evolutionary changes in response to environmental stressors, epigenetics of sympatric evolution, and the epigenetics of the Cambrian explosion, among other topics. - Adopts an integrative approach to examine the causal basis of evolution from an epigenetic point-of-view - Features new and revised chapters which reflect novel experimental and observational evidence in the field of evolutionary epigenetics, as well as alternative theoretical approaches - Offers a broad view of epigenetic mechanisms of evolution, moving beyond conventional changes in epigenetic mechanisms, such as DNA methylation, histone modifications, and patterns of miRNA, sRNA and mRNA expression