The Mona Lisa Sacrifice

“Pushes urban fantasy noir to its logical extreme by casting the resurrected body of Christ—now called Cross—as an angel-slaying, wise-cracking antihero.” —Publishers Weekly For thousands of years, Cross has wandered the earth, a mortal soul trapped in the undying body left behind by Christ. He’s been a thief, a con man, a soldier, and a drunkard. He’s fought as a slave in the Colosseum and as a knight at King Arthur’s side. But now he must play the part of reluctant hero, as an angel comes to him for help finding the Mona Lisa—the real Mona Lisa that inspired the painting. Cross’s quest takes him into a secret world within our own, populated by characters just as strange and wondrous as he is. Haunted by memories of Penelope—the only woman he truly loved—he wants to avenge her death at the hands of his ancient enemy, Judas, a forgotten god from an ancient time. The angel promises to deliver Judas to Cross, but nothing is ever what it seems when Judas is involved, and when a group of renegade angels looking for a new holy war show up, things truly go to hell. “A deliriously unhinged roller coaster of a novel, blending fantasy, history, horror and humour with the aplomb of an overfull blender, but all of it smarter than it, truly, has any right—or need—to be.” —National Post “Sweeps you up with its gallows humour, whether you’re revelling in the pleasures of two-fisted, angel-punching action or the cleverly rendered language.” —Quill & Quire “Takes urban fantasy to a different level with this tale of conspiracy and confession.” —Library Journal

Too often, people respond to a serious concern with a ritual that allows them to maintain the comfort of the status quo. Thats what Roger Bourke White Jr. calls a goat sacrifice its a tradeoff that doesnt do what it is intended to do: solve the problem. These sacrifices make people and communities feel less guilty and fearful, but do nothing to end the serious problems. Examples of modern goat sacrificing include searching all air passengers so well feel safe, striving to protect our children so much they cant play outside, and criminalizing large segments of the population for drug-related activities so we feel like were fighting drug abuse. These solutions cost huge amounts of money and attention, but they do nothing to solve problems. Even worse, they include unseen costs beyond the obvious goat that distracts us from finding true, lasting solutions. Its important to study why goat sacrifices occur, how to identify when were wasting money, so we can instead spend those dollars well. We can do all of those things by getting smart about good intentions and recognizing Goat Sacrificing in the 21st Century.

Welcome to the afterlife: “A daring and original feat of the imagination . . . transporting readers to an alternative reality that reflects our own” (Nancy Richler, author of The Imposter Bride). Is it possible to find love after you’ve died and gone to Hell? For oddball misfits Velvet and Brinkley, the answer just might be yes. After Velvet hangs herself and winds up trapped in a bedroom she believes is Hell, she comes in contact with Brinkley, the man trapped next door. Through mirrors that hang in each of their rooms, these disturbed cinephiles watch the past of the other unfold—the dark past that has led to their present circumstances. As their bond grows and they struggle to figure out the tragic puzzles of their lives and deaths, Velvet and Brinkley are in for more surprises. By turns quirky, harrowing, funny, and surreal, The Delphi Room explores the nature of reality and the possibilities of love. “A clever novel with a unique approach, The Delphi Room both challenges and entertains. . . . The characters are full of life, painted with an emotional depth and affirming the wild complexity that is the human condition.” —Quill & Quire “A surreal, visual journey through the unknown.” —The Book Stylist

Twenty-two genre-bending short stories of the strange and surreal from the Bram Stoker, World Fantasy, and International Horror Guild Award–winning author. Steve Rasnic Tem is the celebrated author of award-winning horror novels and short story collections such as Blood Kin and City Fishing. But the stories featured in Celestial Inventories showcase his ability to defy genre with imaginative works of the fantastic. These stories cross conventional boundaries between science fiction, fantasy, horror, literary fiction, bizarro, magic realism, and the new weird. Many of these stories have been lauded, appearing in Best of the Year compilations and receiving major Fantasy or Science Fiction nominations and awards. Others are collected from rare chapbooks, anthologies, and obscure magazines. And these previously published works are joined by a new story written specifically for this volume.

Around the time a woman reaches 45, there is one enemy with the power to threaten her confidence, steal her beauty, make her feel invisible, and turn even the pleasures of life against her. That enemy is Time. Most women feel that an essential part of them dies when their youth is gone, yet the reality is women can grow more beautiful, experience new pleasures, and accomplish their best work later in life. Now, taking inspiration from a masterpiece of female beauty, mystery, and immortality, Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, Harriet Rubin reveals a powerful stratagem for finding happiness and fulfillment in midlife and beyond. Interweaving stories of iconic women throughout history, Rubin codifies ten tactics--including how to be noticed, how to create circles of influence with you at the center, and how to express talents that have been ripening over decades. In the process, she uncovers the key to mature power, the highest art of leadership.

The author of The Mona Lisa Sacrifice and The Dead Hamlets delivers “a vastly entertaining, fantastical, breakneck hodgepodge quest novel” (Publishers Weekly). In the third Cross book, the immortal angel killer Cross faces his most dangerous enemy yet: Noah. For ages Noah has sailed the seas, seeking out all of God’s mistakes and imprisoning them on his ark. Noah is not humanity’s savior but is instead God’s jailer. But he has grown increasingly mad over the centuries, and now he is determined to end the world by raising the mysterious Sunken City. Only one person can stop him: Cross. As Cross races to stop Noah from finding the Sunken City, he’s joined by a few old friends, such as Alice from the Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland tales, and several new characters make memorable appearances as well: Captain Nemo and his crew of Atlanteans aboard the submarine the Nautilus; the sorcerous pirate Blackbeard, who has sworn revenge upon Cross; the devilish angel Sariel, whose sacred duty is to protect God’s Bible; and the eerie and mysterious Ishmael, who may be the key to the world’s salvation—or its damnation. Cross must find a way to bring them all together to stop Noah or the world will drown in madness. “Despite their crazed, iconoclastic appearance, Roman’s novels are skillfully wrought, thematically deep, with a philosophical depth and a keen sense for both story and its implications . . . once you spend a bit of time in Cross’s head, you won’t be able to get him out of yours.” —Vancouver Sun

The immortal hero of The Mona Lisa Sacrifice turns from art history to a literary mystery. “A fun, and whip-smart, read.” —National Post Something is rotten in the court of the faerie queen. A deadly spirit is killing off the faerie, and it has mysterious ties to Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet. The only one who can stop it is the immortal Cross, a charming rogue who also happens to be a drunk, a thief, and an angel killer. He is no friend of the faerie since they stole his daughter and made her one of their own. When it appears she may be the next victim of the haunting, though, he must race against time to save her. He encounters an eccentric and deadly cast of characters along the way: the real Witches of Macbeth, the undead playwright/demon hunter Christopher Marlowe, an eerie Alice from the Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland books, a deranged and magical scholar—and a very supernatural William Shakespeare. When Cross discovers a startling secret about the origins of Hamlet itself, he finds himself trapped in a ghost story even he may not be able to escape alive. “The Dead Hamlets resembles something written by Neil Gaiman with its somewhat mystical imagery, and at other times it reads as a full-blown work of bizarro fiction.” —The Examiner