Occult Science

What happens when the inevitable zombie apocalypse finally does arrive? Does the world bow down to the masses of shambling dead? Do we run out with flame-throwers and chainsaw-bladed weed-whackers to take care of the undead horde? No, we do to them what we do to every other annoying person in the world: We put them on television for our entertainment. Set in a near future in which society has dealt with the global outbreak of the living dead, a new highly lucrative international sport, zombie pit fighting, emerges.

In the beginning was the Oak, its hungry roots reaching deep into the earth, its gnarled limbs searching the distant heavens. Two hundred years ago, Obediah Magrute worshipped the Oak and died violently beneath it, feeding it with his blood and bone, shouting his chilling curse to the skies. Now, Laura and Mark Avery have come to the bustling little Vermont village.

Katherine Kelly's mentor says she has the makings of a good reporter, but to be great she must learn to find the emotional core of a story and not hold back in its telling. Then he suggests one last graduate-school assignment: Find someone who has influenced her family, and tell that story. Katherine decides to pursue the only family story that has eluded her all her life: the identity of the father she never knew.

Dorian Lake spent years cornering the Baltimore hex-crafting market, using his skills at the hermetic arts to exact karmic justice for those whom the system has failed. He keeps his magic clean and free of soul-corrupting Netherwork, thus avoiding both the karmic blow-back of his practice and the notice of the Presidium, a powerful cabal of practitioners that polices the esoteric arts in America.

Today the names of H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, August Derleth, and Clark Ashton Smith, all regular contributors to the pulp magazine Weird Tales during the first half of the twentieth century, are recognizable even to casual readers and listeners of the bizarre and fantastic. And yet despite being more popular than them all during the golden era of genre pulp fiction, there is another author whose name and work have fallen into obscurity: Seabury Quinn. Quinn's short stories were featured in well more than half of Weird Tales's original publication run.

Dr. John Dee and his polymath protégé Sir Francis Bacon were the most influential men in the court of Queen Elizabeth I, part of an elite group with invisible control throughout Europe. And, as Steven Sora reveals, not only were they key members of the Rosicrucians, they were the driving force behind England’s colonization of the New World and the eventual establishment of the United States. From Avalon in Newfoundland to New England to Pennsylvania and Virginia, Sora shows how Bacon and Dee’s Rosicrucian impact is felt throughout North America.

Entering the world of conspiracy theories and secret societies is like stepping into a distant, parallel universe where the laws of physics have completely changed: black means white, up is down, and if you want to understand what's really going on, you need a good reference book. That's where Conspiracy Theories & Secret Societies for Dummies comes in. Whether you're a skeptic or a true believer, this fascinating guide, packed with the latest information, walks you through some of the most infamous conspiracy theories - such as Area 51 and the assassination of JFK.

Riptide, Oregon, 1983. A sleepy coastal town, where crime usually consists of underage drinking down at a Wolf Point bonfire. But then, strange things start happening. A human skeleton is unearthed in a local park, and mutilated animals begin appearing, seemingly sacrificed, on the town's beaches. The Mercy of the Tide follows four people drawn irrevocably together by a recent tragedy as they do their best to reclaim their lives - leading them all to a discovery that will change them and their town forever.

Tracing the migrations of the Denisovans and their interbreeding with Neanderthals and early human populations in Asia, Europe, Australia, and the Americas, Andrew Collins and Greg Little explore how the new mental capabilities of the Denisovan-Neanderthal and Denisovan-human hybrids greatly accelerated the flowering of human civilization over 40,000 years ago. They show how the Denisovans displayed sophisticated advances, including precision-machined stone tools and jewelry, tailored clothing, celestially-aligned architecture, and horse domestication.

Science starts to get interesting when things don'’t make sense. Even today, there are experimental results that the most brilliant scientists can neither explain nor dismiss. In the past, similar anomalies have revolutionised our world: in the 16th century, a set of celestial irregularities led Copernicus to realise that the Earth goes around the sun and not the reverse. In 13 Things That Don'’t Make Sense, Michael Brooks meets thirteen modern-day anomalies that may become tomorrow'’s breakthroughs.

The powerful sense of evil – darkness, creepy hairy presences, cloaks, hoods, talons and tentacles – pervades these classic ghost stories by M.R. James. A Cambridge scholar himself, James explored what happens when academics dabble in things they don’t understand and unleash forces of which they know nothing.

Over 100 years ago, a group of witches made their way from New England to Whitewater, Wisconsin, known as Second Salem. Others also made their way to the city and, through their ignorance, unleashed an evil entity. Three sisters, the Willoughby Witches, created an incantation strong enough to ensnare the demon. Lord Henry McDermott, college professor, anthropologist, and archaeologist, has yearned to learn more about the legend of the Willoughby Witches. Taking the summer off to research the folklore, Henry discovers that there is more waiting for him in Whitewater than just a story.

In a town nestled in the Appalachian Mountains, Rachel Smith has found a new life tending a lush apple orchard. She’s safe within its grove. If her dreams are haunted by memories of her violent husband, that pain is soothed by fresh mountain air and apples that taste as sweet as honey. But Rachel wasn’t meant to live in the shadows. The orchard drew her to Morgan’s Gap to fulfill a purpose and a tight-knit community of wisewomen who honor the old mountain traditions are ready to teach her. A world of magic awaits Rachel, one filled with new friendships and possibly new love

Over 100 years ago, a group of witches escaping a second wave of Witch Trials made their way from New England to Whitewater, Wisconsin, known as Second Salem. Others, seeking knowledge in spiritualism and the occult, also made their way to the city and, through their ignorance, unleashed an evil entity poised to destroy the city. Three sisters, the Willoughby Witches, created an incantation strong enough to ensnare the demon.

Occult investigator Quincey Morris and his "consultant", white witch Libby Chastain, are hired to free a family from a deadly curse that appears to date back to the Salem witch trials. Fraught with danger, the trail finds them stalking the mysterious occult underworlds of Boston, San Francisco, New Orleans, and New York, searching out the root of the curse. After surviving a series of terrifying attempts on their lives, the two find themselves drawn inexorably towards Salem itself - and the very heart of darkness.

The charmingly eccentric Otto Draxinger appears to be your typical pipe-smoking Oxford professor, doing his best to preserve his sanity while his beloved former students are being slaughtered at the Western Front. But the American expatriate has diagnosed himself with the newly coined term “schizophrenia”. And he believes the nightmarish waking visions he’s been experiencing are caused by the psychological trauma of the catastrophe that is The Great War.

Finally accepting that there would be no leaving Harrow Faire, Cora sets out to try to find her new way of life as part of the family. With that comes her slow acceptance of her attraction toward and, even worse, her feelings for the Puppeteer. But just as things seemed to be falling into a pattern, they turn upside down - seemingly literally - as Harrow Faire enters “the Inversion”.

A man's body is found below a waterfall. It looks like suicide or an accidental drowning – until DI Frannie Bliss enters the dead man's home. What he finds there has him consulting Merrily Watkins, the Diocese of Hereford's official advisor on the paranormal.

When an arcane artifact is stolen from the Order of the Midnight Sun, Shadow and Gabe are hired to track it down, pitting them against a new enemy. The search leads them across the country and tests their resources—and their faith in each other, as fey and Nephilim discover this world is as tricky as the life they left behind. Harlan, desperate to help, finds himself at war with JD, and suddenly alliances are under pressure. No longer able to trust the Orphic Guild, Harlan is faced with a dilemma that forces him to make choices he never envisaged.

In this mind-expanding book, Anthony Peake reveals an extraordinary model of life after death—one that brings together ideas from ancient philosophy, neuroscience, quantum physics, and consciousness studies and manages to explain a number of seemingly mysterious experiences such as precognition, déjà vu, synchronicity, near-death experiences, and out-of-body experiences. It is called Cheating the Ferryman. This book is a much-awaited follow-up to Peake's internationally best-selling Is There Life After Death?, which introduced his revolutionary model.