Showing results by narrator "Shea Taylor" in All Categories

Prince Ryu's hatred of magic is matched only by his loyalty to his dying country. So when his mother orders him to track down a mage consorting with Arn's legendary tidefoxes, he won't let anything stand in his way of healing the land… not even the beautiful mage or her animal companions. Mellie reluctantly agrees to help Arn and the mysterious Ryu, but when she learns he's actually the cunning prince known for hunting mages, it's too late to run—she's his captive, and the lives of her wolves and fox are at risk unless she does exactly what Ryu wants.

On Saturday, June 28, 1986, George Michael picked up his tasseled leather jacket, walked out of London’s Wembley Stadium and cheerfully tore up five years of glittering pop history. He’d just disposed of Wham!, the band he’d formed with school friend Andrew Ridgeley when they were teenagers, and now, at 23, he knew he was all grown up. He just needed to convince everyone else.

Masonic author Carl Claudy presents 24 fictional tales or morality lessons in the form of advice being given to a younger mason by the Old Past Master. These are all on masonic topics such as: brotherly love, the ideal mason, geometry, masonic libraries, charity, Order of DeMolay, ancient landmarks, masonic failure, understanding, the masonry you make, symbols, and much more.

Following back-to-back, long-term undercover assignments in Indianapolis and Dallas, the latter resulting in four dead, FBI Special Agent Jake Kruse returns to Los Angeles to take on another undercover operation. Posing as an office supply salesman, Jake befriends a Chinese American business owner believed to be working for an intelligence officer operating out of the Chinese consulate in Los Angeles. Within weeks, the probe reveals a public corruption and human trafficking operation involving politicians and Hollywood executives.

Isarrel Dalmyar is too human for her elven home, and too elven to be accepted anywhere else. Banished after her human magic endangered two elves, she must learn how to control her chaotic power if she ever wants to return home. Liam Galway's loyalty to his king has always guided him, so when he's ordered to find the missing mages of Makaria—including his childhood friend—he does so eagerly. But the sparse clues only hint at dark dealings that stretch far beyond their own borders.

Don Alvaro, a young but wise man, invokes Satan in a goetic-style magical ritual. Upon seeing the young Alvaro, Beelzebub falls in love with him and assumes the appearance of a beautiful young woman. In the journey that unfolds, Satan, disguised as a woman, tries to seduce Alvaro who rejects his advances lest he lose his precious virginity.

Noah Derwin knows what it's like to be different. Being a 17-year-old kid in high school with blue hair, piercings, a mostly all black wardrobe, and an obsession with zombies and video games, he doesn't exactly blend in. But he never wanted to. His two dads raised him to always stay true to himself. Being gay in high school isn't exactly rainbows and butterflies, and Noah has definitely faced his fair share of bullies. Moving to Port Haven, Oregon opens up new possibilities for him, and he starts falling for the quiet, brown-eyed boy from his English class.

These are the remaining fragments from the otherwise lost hymns of Hermes Trismegistus. Included are the gnostic hymns: "A Triple Trisagion", "A Hymn to All-Father God", "The Secret Hymnody", "A Hymn of Grace for Gnosis", and "A Song of Praise to the Aeon". Translated with additional commentary by esoteric scholar, G. R. S. Mead.

Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) was the outstanding philosopher-theologian of the Latin West between Augustine and the thirteenth century. As a public figure, especially as Archbishop of Canterbury, he corresponded with kings and nobles, popes and bishops, in letters that reveal a fascinating personality and flesh out the practical dimensions of his theoretical philosophy. He wrote at a time when a renewed interest in logic encouraged careful and rigorous argumentation, but before the recovery of Aristotle filled the philosophical discourse.

The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories is the third book by Irish fantasy writer Lord Dunsany, who is considered to be a major influence on the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, H. P. Lovecraft, Ursula K. Le Guin, and others.

All that we achieve and all that we fail to achieve is the direct result of our own thoughts. “Self-control is strength. Right thought is mastery. Calmness is power.” (James Allen, As a Man Thinketh) As Allen himself describes, “It shows how, in his own thought-world, each man holds the key to every condition, good or bad, that enters into his life, and that, by working patiently and intelligently upon his thoughts, he may remake his life, and transform his circumstances…and it can be carried in the pocket.”

The Painted Veil is the story of Kitty Garstin, a young socialite who amuses herself with the pursuit of various men until settling into a marriage with a physician, who takes her to Hong Kong to begin his work. Shortly after they move, Kitty meets the charming, yet distasteful, Charlie Townsend, and begins a passionate affair that lasts several years without notice from her husband.

Anthony Trollope’s The Small House at Allington is the fifth book in a series called The Chronicles of Barsetshire but is the most well-known of the series due to its writing quality and timeline placement within the series. The novel follows the Dales, a family who occupies a large estate. Christopher is the owner of the estate, and allows his widowed sister and her children to live on a small house on the property. The novel largely follows the children, Lilian and Isabella, as they are courted and try to find their place among society.

In 1665, London was struck by the bubonic plague, an epidemic that was the last major instance of the bubonic plague in England. This instance of the plague killed 100,000 people over a year and a half, and was transmitted through rats that ran through the city. A Journal of the Plague Year was presented as an eyewitness account of the epidemic through the eyes of Londoners.

Frank L. Baum is the famed author of the Wizard of Oz stories. Here he tells the tale of a mischief Jack Frost who learns that he is able to freeze the shadows of humans and in doing so he wreaks havoc throughout a kingdom!

Aleister Crowley left behind a literary legacy of hundreds of examples of his authorship, in diverse categories of writing. Collected here is a sampling of those writings.

Since the loss of his lively, charming wife to cancer six years ago, minister Paul Tobit has been operating on autopilot, performing his religious duties by rote. Everything changes the day he enters the church lobby and encounters a radiant, luminous being lit from behind, breathtakingly beautiful and glowing with life. An angel. For a moment Paul is so moved by his vision that he is tempted to fall on his knees and pray.

In 1923, Achad published an edition of only 220 copies of a series of hymns or poetic devotions, in a manner slightly reminiscent of Crowley’s own emphatic style, aimed at adoring the Egyptian goddess Nuit (the number 220, being intended to align with the number of verses in Aleister Crowley’s own Book of the Law). Achad titled his own book, Thirty-One Hymns to the Star Goddess.

French literary figure Charles Baudelaire was a member of the infamous Club of the Hashish-Eaters, a Parisian literary group dedicated to the exploration of altered states of consciousness, principally through the use of hashish. The Poem of Hashish was first published in 1850. This is Aleister Crowley’s translation of it, from 1895. Baudelaire was part of the French art movement known as saymbolism, which acted as a reaction to realism and placed a lot of emphasis on the power of dreams and the imagination as tools for communicating ideals through symbols.

Mr. Barnstaple is an average man living in English in the early 1900s. He is a journalist and after facing a stressful time at his newspaper decides to take a vacation. But his vacation goes from ordinary to extraordinary in an instant when his vehicle is transported to an alternate world, one called Utopia.