Velda Brotherton digs deep into the darkest side of human depravity in the latest chilling Twist of Poe Mystery… MASQUE OF THE RISING MOON. Small town reporter Jessie West has a lot on her mind. A cult operating in the area is using children to steal supplies from grocery stores, and the closer Jessie’s investigation comes to unmasking them, the more anonymous threats she receives. Her old friend and mentor, Sheriff Mac Richards, is under suspicion for taking bribes, and Jessie is determined not only to prove him innocent, but to find out just who set him up. She’s distracted, though, by the fact that her on-again-off-again boyfriend, Deputy Sheriff Dallas Starr, is showing every sign of leaving her brokenhearted. Between the threat from the cult and the ongoing investigation of the Sheriff, Dallas ends up in a reluctant partnership with Jessie to bring the wrongdoers to justice. But will they be able to handle their turbulent relationship? Or will the people threatening Jessie’s life succeed in silencing her before she has a chance to unmask the cult leaders?

A history of popular superstitions, tales, and magic in British literature. In The Fairy Way of Writing, Kevin Pask seeks to explain the origins and popularity of enchantment in Shakespeare’s plays. Writers John Dryden and Joseph Addison originated the phrase “fairy way of writing” to define the concept of an English creative imagination founded on a synthesis of high literary culture and the popular culture of tales and superstitions. Beginning with Chaucer, Johnson, Dryden, and Milton, Pask argues that the fairy way of writing not only sets the stage for the fairy tale, the Gothic novel, and children’s literature but also informs genres beyond the English canon, including painting, twentieth-century fantasy fiction, and French fairy tales. In addition to English writers and visual artists such as Pope, Blake, and Keats, who were directly engaged with Shakespearean fantasy, Pask also examines fairy tales, letters, and paintings by the French writers Madame d'Aulnoy, Charles Perrault, Madame de Sévigné, and the Swiss-born artist Johann Heinrich Füssli (Fuseli). The Fairy Way of Writing alters the traditional sense of English literary history and of Shakespeare’s singular place in it, insisting on the importance of often-overlooked literary and visual works. It recovers a distinctive aspect of English literary culture from across the entire early modern era and beyond, one that has been studied in the context of individual periods and writers but is only now explored in relation to the history of European nationalism and the creation of the modern literary system.

Velda Brotherton uncovers the cancer of one town’s deepest secrets in the Twist of Poe Mystery that started it all… THE PURLOINED SKULL. Buried skeletons don't often turn up in sleepy little Cedarton, Arkansas—especially not the headless kind. Reporter Jessie West is assigned the story, but she has some skeletons of her own she's hoping not to unearth. Her journalistic instincts, however, are impossible to ignore, and she’s soon hot on the trail of a possible suspect. Her investigation drives her headlong into newly-hired Deputy Sheriff Dallas Starr, a sexy Cherokee lawman with the ability to read the emotional echoes left at the scene of a violent crime. Dal’s seen firsthand how nosy reporters are willing to ruin lives and reputations for a big scoop, and he wants nothing to do with Jessie or her amateur detective act. Passions flare inside the bedroom and out as they collide in the midst of the biggest thing to happen in Grace County in decades. When Jessie receives a series of bizarre threats on her life, she has to decide if she’s close to exposing the killer, or if her past has finally caught up with her. Will she and Dal find the answer in time, or will the secret of the purloined skull destroy them all?

By a well-known psychic and astrologer, a revealing psychological/astrological exploration of the masks we wear and the many ways our rising signs affect our personalities.

Protection is safety. Until it stifles. After months of clandestine battles, the Brothers of the Medici Protectorate finally know who is responsible for the assassination attempts on the Notaro family, the secret descendants of the Medici line. And they’ve never faced such a formidable foe. Roberto Cozza—Coz—faces this new reality with surprising pragmatism. His powers may make the difference in winning their covert war—if only he can master them in time. It would just be so much easier if he could get his emotions under control, but neither his Brothers nor their charges are making things easy on him. Toni Notaro appreciates the security provided by the Brothers, but she knows she has her own role to play—and it terrifies her. She is the missing link in Coz mastering his emerging abilities, yet she struggles to bridge the gap between what he needs and what she can offer. As the Brotherhood hurtles inexorably toward the climactic final showdown, Coz and Toni must find the strength within themselves and each other to master the secrets of his powers, or risk death and defeat for all they hold dear.