The Magic School Bus

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Jonathan Kellerman and Jesse Kellerman

"From two [authors] of crime fiction comes a...thriller about family, murder, and the secrets that refuse to stay buried. It's been more than a year since LAPD detective Jacob Lev learned the remarkable truth about his family, and he's not coping well...Then he comes across the file for a gruesome unsolved murder that brings the two halves of his life into startling collision. Finding the killer will take him halfway around the world, to Paris-- the city of romance, but also of gritty streets, behind the lights. It's a dangerous search for truth that plunges him into the past."--

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Raquel Romberg

[Publisher-supplied data] "This book makes an important addition to the literature on magic and spirits in the modern world. . . . In comparison with other well-known anthropological works on magic and modernity, this stands out on account of its skill at evocation, at getting inside people and events and not merely using them as examples or 'case studies.'" --Michael Taussig, Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University Persecuted as evil during colonial times, considered charlatans during the nation-building era, Puerto Rican brujos (witch-healers) today have become spiritual entrepreneurs who advise their clients not only in consultation with the spirits but also in compliance with state laws and new economic opportunities. Combining trance, dance, magic, and healing practices with expertise in the workings of the modern welfare state, they help lawyers win custody suits, sick employees resolve labor disability claims, single mothers apply for government housing, or corporation managers maximize their commercial skills. Drawing on extensive fieldwork among practicing brujos, this book presents a masterful history and ethnography of Puerto Rican brujería (witch-healing). Raquel Romberg explores how brujería emerged from a blending of popular Catholicism, Afro-Latin religions, French Spiritism, and folk Protestantism and also looks at how it has adapted to changes in state policies and responded to global flows of ideas and commodities. She demonstrates that, far from being an exotic or marginal practice in the modern world, brujería has become an invisible yet active partner of consumerism and welfare capitalism.

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Kate Mosse

July 1909: in Carcassonne a sixteen-year-old girl is given a book by her father which he claims contains the secret of the true Grail. Although Alais cannot understand the strange words and symbols, she knows that her destiny lies in keeping the secret of the labyrinth safe. July 2005: Alice Tanner stumbles upon two skeletons during an archaeological dig in the mountains outside Carcassonne. Inside the hidden tomb, she experiences an overwhelming sense of malevolence, as well as a creeping realisation that she can somehow understand the mysterious ancient words carved into the rock. Too late Alice realises she's set in motion a terrifying sequence of events.

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Margaret James

Passport to love London-based PR and promotions consultant Rosie Denham has just spent a year in Paris where she's tried but failed to fall in love. She's also made a big mistake and can't forgive herself. American IT professor Patrick Riley 's wife has left him for a Mr. Wonderful with a cute British accent and a house with a real yard. So Patrick's not exactly thrilled to meet another Brit who's visiting Minnesota, even if she's hot. Pat and Rosie couldn't be more different. She's had a privileged English upbringing. He was raised in poverty in Missouri. Pat has two kids, a job that means the world to him and a wife who might decide she wants her husband back. So when Pat and Rosie fall in love, the prospects don't seem bright for them. But magic sometimes happens right?