One of the great things about midlife is having the experience and knowledge that comes from decades of navigating jerks and mansplainers. Unfortunately, I had nothing in my repertoire to help me deal with a true Trickster. Amid magical mushrooms, ghosts popping up in unexpected places, dangerous predators, strange pregnancies, barking cats, meowing dogs, and an endless array of other weirdness, I’m facing a foe unlike any I’ve encountered before as Lares of Rome. My new enemy is determined to destroy my dominion, and he doesn’t care who he takes out in the effort. He probably doesn’t realize it yet, but he’s in for a shipload of a battle. It’s going to take the combined effort of an entire town and all of my council and allies, but I have no intention of giving my people over to the type of madness the Trickster generates.

Willa Knight: Dweller. Slave. Non-magical being. In Minatsol, being a dweller means that you are literally no better than dirt. In fact, dirt might actually be more useful than Willa. Her life will be one of servitude to the sols, the magic-blessed beings who could one day be chosen to become gods. At least her outer village is far removed from the cities of the sols, and she won't ever be forced to present herself to them... Until one small mistake changes everything, and Willa is awarded a position to serve at Blesswood, the top sol academy in the world-a position that she definitely did not earn. Under the sudden, watchful eye of the gods, she will be tasked to serve the Abcurse brothers, five sols built of arrogance, perfection and power. They are almost gods themselves, and under their service she is either going to end up sentenced to death, or else they are going to ruin her so badly that she will wish for it. Either way, she is in trouble.This is a full novel, 90,000 words. Book 1 of 5 in the Curse of the Gods Series

There's a whole world of Dahl still to discover in a newly collected book of his deliciously dark tales for adults . . . How underhand could you be to get what you want? In these ten tales of dark and twisted trickery Roald Dahl reveals that we are at our smartest and most cunning when we set out to deceive others - and, sometimes, even ourselves. Here, among others, you'll read of the married couple and the parting gift which rocks their marriage, the light fingered hitch-hiker and the grateful motorist, and discover why the serious poacher keeps a few sleeping pills in his arsenal. Featuring extraordinary cover art by Charming Baker, whose paintings echo the dark and twisted world of Dahl's short stories. Roald Dahl reveals even more about the darker side of human nature in seven other centenary editions: Lust, Madness, Cruelty, Deception, War, Innocence and Fear.

Magic or spycraft? In 1953, against the backdrop of the Cold War, the CIA initiated a top-secret program, code-named MKULTRA, to counter Soviet mind-control and interrogation techniques. Realizing that clandestine officers might need to covertly deploy newly developed pills, potions, and powders against the adversary, the CIA hired America's most famous magician, John Mulholland, to write two manuals on sleight of hand and undercover communication techniques. In 1973, virtually all documents related to MKULTRA were destroyed. Mulholland's manuals were thought to be among them—until a single surviving copy of each, complete with illustrations, was recently discovered in the agency's archives. The manuals reprinted in this work represent the only known complete copy of Mulholland's instructions for CIA officers on the magician's art of deception and secret communications.

Preparing the Manor for Halloween festivities, the Charmed Ones cast a spell designed to honor wandering spirits only to have their party interrupted by gate-crashing poltergeists and a not-so-friendly ghost intent on haunting their home and killing a ghost hunter. Original. (A CW series, starring Holly Marie Combs, Alyssa Milano, & Rose McGowan) (Fantasy)

In Trickster Makes This World, Lewis Hyde brings to life the playful and disruptive side of human imagination as it is embodied in trickster mythology. He first visits the old stories—Hermes in Greece, Eshu in West Africa, Krishna in India, Coyote in North America, among others—and then holds them up against the lives and work of more recent creators: Picasso, Duchamp, Ginsberg, John Cage, and Frederick Douglass. Twelve years after its first publication, Trickster Makes This World—authoritative in its scholarship, loose-limbed in its style—has taken its place among the great works of modern cultural criticism. This new edition includes an introduction by Michael Chabon.