One magical Season. One fake courtship. One deeply vexing peacock.Lady Juno Starbrooke is no stranger to the unusual. After all, when one’s familiar is a grumpy peacock and your family’s power comes from an ancient Roman Bath, life is hardly ever dull.But carrying a secret deadly curse into the London Season is another matter entirely.After her presentation to the Queen ends in magical catastrophe and ruin, Juno attracts the attention of Major Augustus Hawkins—a deco...

Spreading plague isn't all it's cracked up to be.Piper Bane wants nothing to do with her pesky Pestilence bloodline and would give anything to be a Normal. In fact, she put Beckwell, Alberta–land of the paranormal and home of the weird–in her rear-view ten years ago and hasn't been back since. But when an invitation to her best friend’s wedding coaxes her back home, she's reminded what it means to continue the legacy of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. ...

What is consciousness? How do physical processes in the brain give rise to the self-aware mind and to feelings as profoundly varied as love or hate, aesthetic pleasure or spiritual yearning? These questions today are among the most hotly debated issues among scientists and philosophers, and we have seen in recent years superb volumes by such eminent figures as Francis Crick, Daniel C. Dennett, Gerald Edelman, and Roger Penrose, all firing volleys in what has come to be called the conscious...

Heavens above! Being an opera goddess is frightfully exhausting work—all that floating about in silk and diamonds, pretending one hasn't a care in the world while creditors circle like hungry cats at a fishmongers.The Ton calls me La Luminosa, their divine songbird, but I fear my golden cage grows rather cramped.A wealthy husband would solve everything quite nicely, and this charming country house musicale promises at least one eligible earl's heir.But oh! Nobody wa...

They call me Lady Luck—quite the joke, really, since luck left me the moment I bolted from my own wedding.Five years have passed since that mortifying day, and I have declared myself quite done with matrimony, and spend my days managing my father’s stable of racehorses.But now Papa has sold my beloved thoroughbred to the Prince of Wales himself, and I find myself contemplating the most shocking scheme to win him back.Even more vexing is the constant...

For generations, our forefathers lived with a practical understanding of the world that was learned through experience, observation, necessity, and careful instruction. They knew how to grow and preserve food, repair what they owned, build useful things, manage limited resources, navigate unfamiliar surroundings, and make sensible decisions when modern conveniences were unavailable. Many of these abilities were not considered remarkable at the time. They were simply part of everyday life.

There was a time when grandparenting meant more than simply offering affection, advice, and an occasional family story. Grandparents were often living libraries of practical knowledge. They taught children how to cook, mend clothing, grow food, preserve what had been harvested, manage a household, treat possessions with care, and face ordinary difficulties with patience and resourcefulness. Much of this knowledge was learned naturally, through watching, listening, helping, and spending tim...

Self-reliance begins with a simple idea: the more useful things you know how to do for yourself, the more capable and confident you become when circumstances change. For generations, families depended on practical knowledge to grow food, preserve harvests, repair possessions, manage limited resources, prepare for difficult seasons, and solve everyday problems. Many of these skills were once ordinary parts of life. Today, however, some are becoming increasingly uncommon.Modern conve...

**One of the Washington Post's Best Nonfiction Books of 2022A leading philosopher takes a mind-bending journey through virtual worlds, illuminating the nature of reality and our place within it.**Virtual reality is genuine reality; that’s the central thesis of Reality+. In a highly original work of “technophilosophy,” David J. Chalmers gives a compelling analysis of our technological future. He argues that virtual worlds are not second-class worlds, and th...

Welcome to Beckwell, home of the magical and strange... and the Shades, a group of gender-swapped Golden Girls determined to protect what's theirs.Some days, the world is out to get you. Literally. The same morning his cat tries to murder him, half-troll Frizzly Cooper meets a cute but deadly destruction goddess. Sure, she might have saved his cat, but she wants to destroy his town. A c...

These gender-swapped Golden Girls have the perfect plan to save their town from paranormal threats: matchmaking.An arranged marriage seems like a good idea...until you're walking down the aisle toward the sexy immortal soldier you're in half in love with but have never technically met. But that’s the least of Cara Jenklow’s problems. After all, her best friend is a necklace and her idols are...

I’m about to say yes.To spending an entire week alone, in a private villa, with a man I just met on an airport layover.Is it crazy? Yes.Worth it? Absolutely.There’s just something about Cillian that has me hooked. From the moment he took the bar stool next to mine, I knew. It was kismet. It was karma...It was crazy. And I was all in.That layover was fate. That’s the only explanation for the fact we each have a plus one to two different weddings. Seem...