Spellbound In Sleepy Hollow

The Von Tassel sisters are in deep. With a new inn opening up to non-magic guests, these three witches have enough to worry about, but after a deal with the Headless Horseman, all three Von Tassel sisters must find their true loves by All Hallow's Eve or forever be trapped as ghosts in Sleepy Hollow like their ill-fated aunties. Will Stephanie be able to forgive her playboy ex? Will Bri be able to win back her childhood crush-turned-ghost hunter? Will Lexi be able to sway her supernatural employee? And will they all be able to fall in love by the week's end?

The cultural landscape of the Hudson River Valley is crowded with ghosts--the ghosts of Native Americans and Dutch colonists, of Revolutionary War soldiers and spies, of presidents, slaves, priests, and laborers. Possessions asks why this region just outside New York City became the locus for so many ghostly tales, and shows how these hauntings came to operate as a peculiar type of social memory whereby things lost, forgotten, or marginalized returned to claim possession of imaginations and territories. Reading Washington Irving's stories along with a diverse array of narratives from local folklore and regional writings, Judith Richardson explores the causes and consequences of Hudson Valley hauntings to reveal how ghosts both evolve from specific historical contexts and are conjured to serve the present needs of those they haunt. These tales of haunting, Richardson argues, are no mere echoes of the past but function in an ongoing, contentious politics of place. Through its tight geographical focus, Possessions illuminates problems of belonging and possessing that haunt the nation as a whole. Table of Contents: Introduction 1. "How Comes theHudson to this Unique Heritage?" 2. Irving's Web 3. The Colorful Career of a Ghost from Leeds 4. Local Characters 5. Possessing High Tor Mountain Epilogue: Hauntings without End Notes Index Reviews of this book: The author traces changing versions of several ghostly tales that mutated over time to reflect local conditions and controversies as well as national political issues like abolitionism. Richardson shows that, thanks to the Hudson Valley's long history of settlement, the 'legendizing impetus' created by Washington Irving, and the area's established position as a tourist destination, it inspired at least three sometimes overlapping traditions of hauntings: the 'aboriginal' Dutch and Indian hauntings, the Revolutionary War hauntings, and industrial hauntings, which are traced in Maxwell Anderson's High Tor (1937) and T. Coraghessan Boyle's World's End (1987). --J. J. Benardete, Choice Possessions is a rare and brilliant book that seamlessly combines history and literature--revealing how richly they can support one another. It is a great pleasure to read: both fluent and profound. --Alan Taylor, author of American Colonies and William Cooper's Town This is a lively, well-written, and engaging interdisciplinary study. Richardson pursues two main goals: probing in considerable detail a body of early national folklore and its modern revivals and testing some more general notions about the uses to which such lore is put in the periods when it is recovered, reshaped, and reinvigorated. It is smart without being condescending, locally inflected without exhibiting the least bit of piety - and, I think, quite suggestive for scholars looking at other domains far beyond the Hudson Valley. She gives us a way of understanding how the "local" has figured in the cultural construction of Americanness. --Wayne Franklin, author of Discoverers, Explorers, Settlers and The New World of James Fenimore Cooper

Juniper Lynch has a flair for all things psychic - a gift she inherited from her dearly departed granny. When her best friend, Gena needs help finding her missing retainer, Juniper is quick to try scrying, aka crystal-gazing. With no crystal ball handy, she goes the easy route and gazes into a glass of water. But the image that appears is not what she expected. The shriveled face of a missing girl floats to the surface. Juniper is seized by a mystical connection and the countdown clock begins. Can she find the lost girl before they both wither away?

When Joya Bennett wakes up after her brother’s wedding half-naked and lying next to her lifelong crush, she’s mortified. OMG, did she try to jump his bones? Worse, did she succeed? Intending to lay low and housesit for her brother until the embarrassment fades, she sneaks away before he wakes up. What she didn’t plan on is having company. Lincoln Fisher doesn’t do relationships, but if he did, his friend’s little sister would be the one to tie him down. Good thing Joya had one too many drinks during the reception or he’d have crossed a line. Her brother would kill him if he found out all the places Linc wanted to kiss the sexy, auburn-haired beauty. And now they’re stuck in the same house. For two weeks. She’s off-limits. And he needs to keep it that way, even if the heat building between them is hot enough to blow off the roof... Each book in the Wedding Favors series is a standalone story that can be enjoyed out of order. Series Order: Book #1 Bridesmaid Blues Book #2 Random Acts of Marriage Book #3 Properly Groomed

With his beloved Gothic tales, Washington Irving is said to have created the genre of the short story in America. Though Irving crafted many of the most memorable characters in fiction, from Rip Van Winkle to Ichabod Crane, his gifts were not confined to the short story alone. He was also a master of satire, essay, travelogue, and folktale, as evidenced in this classic collection. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said, "Every reader has a first book.... which, in early youth, first fascinates his imagination, and at once excites and satisfies the desires of his mind. To me, this first book was The Sketch Book of Washington Irving... The charm of The Sketch Book remains unbroken; the old fascination still lingers about it."

"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is set circa 1790 in the Dutch settlement of Tarry Town, New York, in a secluded glen called Sleepy Hollow. It tells the story of Ichabod Crane, a lean, lanky, and extremely superstitious schoolmaster from Connecticut, who competes with Abraham "Brom Bones" Van Brunt, the town rowdy, for the hand of 18-year-old Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter and sole child of a wealthy farmer. As Crane leaves a party, he is pursued by the Headless Horseman, who is supposedly the ghost of a Hessian trooper who had his head shot off by a stray cannonball during "some nameless battle" of the American Revolutionary War, and who "rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head."

Welcome to Mimi's Charms & Enchantments —a New Age shop filled with magical merchandise and colorful customers. Cam couldn't ask for a better afterschool job. When a shady man in gray slinks in one afternoon, Cam is thisclose to calling 911. To her relief, he hurries away, leaving behind the nauseating odor of his cologne and a curious spell he's dropped on the floor. But this spell is not your average hocus-pocus. It's ancient, odd and promises Power Supreme - something Cam could definitely use to keep up her 3.9 grade point average. But the spell requires more than what's stocked on Mimi's shelves. And acquiring each item will take some heavy teamwork. With the help of her best friend, Reade, and Zach, the high school's resident genius/nerd, Cam can't lose...unless the Gray man returns.