Magick Matters

“The Borgias: Power and Fortune” by Paul Strathern

"The glorious and infamous history of the Borgia family—a world of saints, corrupt popes, and depraved princes and poisoners—set against the golden age of the Italian Renaissance. The Borgia family have become a byword for evil. Corruption, incest, ruthless megalomania, avarice and vicious cruelty—all have been associated with their name. And yet, paradoxically, this family lived when the Renaissance was coming into its full flowering in Italy. Examples of infamy flourished alongside some of the finest art produced in western history. This is but one of several paradoxes associated with the Borgia family. For the family which produced corrupt popes, depraved princes and poisoners, would also produce a saint. Previously history has tended to condemn, or...>>

“The New Weird” edited by Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer

"Descend into shadowy cities, grotesque rituals, chaotic festivals, and deadly cults. Plunge into terrifying domains, where bodies are remade into surreal monstrosities, where the desperate rage against brutal tyrants. Where everything is lethal and no one is innocent, where Peake began and Lovecraft left off, this is where you will find the New Weird. Edgy, urban fiction with a visceral immediacy, the New Weird has descended from classic fantasy and dime-store pulp novels, from horror and detective comics, from thrillers and noir. All grown-up, it emerges from the chrysalis of nostalgia as newly literate, shocking, and utterly innovative. Here is the very best of the New Weird from some of its greatest practitioners. This canonic anthology...>>

“The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories” edited by Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer

"From Lovecraft to Borges to Gaiman, a century of intrepid literary experimentation has created a corpus of dark and strange stories that transcend all known genre boundaries. Together these stories form The Weird, and its practitioners include some of the greatest names in twentieth and twenty-first century literature. Exotic and esoteric, The Weird plunges you into dark domains and brings you face to face with surreal monstrosities. You won't find any elves or wizards here...but you will find the biggest, boldest, and downright most peculiar stories from the last hundred years bound together in the biggest Weird collection ever assembled. The Weird features 110 stories by an all-star cast, from literary legends to international bestsellers to...>>

“Queens of the Abyss: Lost Stories from the Women of the Weird” edited by Mike Ashley (British Library Tales of the Weird)

"It is too often accepted that during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it was the male writers who developed and pushed the boundaries of the weird tale, with women writers following in their wake – but this is far from the truth. This new anthology presents the thrilling work of just a handful of writers crucial to the evolution of the genre, and revives lost authors of the early pulp magazines with material from the abyssal depths of the British Library vaults returning to the light for the first time since its original publication. Delve in to see the darker side of The Secret Garden author Frances Hodgson Burnett and the sensitively-drawn nightmares of Marie...>>