Rituals
Rhapsody of Blood, Volume One
by Roz Kaveney
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Two women - and the workings of Time and Fate.
In a time too long ago for most human memory, a god asked Mara what she most
wanted. She got her wish: to protect the weak against the strong. For millennia,
she has avenged that god, and her dead sisters, against anyone who uses the
Rituals of Blood to become a god through mass murder. And there are few who
can stand against her.
A sudden shocking incident proves to Emma that the modern world is not what
she thought it was, that there are demons and gods and elves and vampires.
Her weapon is knowledge, and she pursues it wherever it leads her. The one
thing she does not know is who she - and her ghostly lover,
Caroline - are working for.
Rhapsody of Blood is a four-part epic fantasy not quite like anything you've
read before: a helter-skelter ride through history and legend, from Tenochitlan
to Los Angeles, from Atlantis to London. It is a story of death, love and
the end of worlds - and of dangerous, witty women.
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Dead Flowers
Book #7 of the JP Kinkaid Chronicles
by Deborah Grabien
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When the Fog City Geezers sign a recording contract with Fluorescent Records, band founder
JP Kinkaid makes an unusual decision: to record a live show as their first CD.
Climbing into a tour bus named Magic with the band and his wife, Bree, he's expecting no
more than the usual glitches and problems that happen when any band hits the road. What he's
not expecting is a sudden series of interpersonal crises. Every one of those crises is
linked to Fluorescent's signing of longtime thorn in JP's side, the disruptive and unpleasant
bassist, Bergen Sandoval.
By the night of the label's CD release party at an exclusive Hollywood nightclub, tensions
within the Fluorescent artist family have reached breaking point. When Bergen dies in the
club's bathroom of an apparent coke overdose, Blacklight security chief and retired
homicide detective Patrick Ormand suspects the white powder contains more than just
cocaine - and things suddenly look bad for one member of the band family.
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and on piano... Nicky Hopkins
The Extraordinary Life of Rock’s Greatest Sideman
by Julian Dawson
The Beatles. The Rolling Stones. The Who. The Kinks. The Jefferson Airplane. Joe Cocker. Quicksilver Messenger Service.
The Yardbirds. Harry Nilsson. At the heart of their music, and of hundreds of others, was one man and a
piano: Nicky Hopkins.
On the heels of Keith Richards’ best selling memoir:
For three generations, rock’n’roll has been the heartbeat of our world, and Nicky Hopkins defines rock’n’roll.
For thirty years, before his tragically early death in 1994, Nicky Hopkins put his mark on some of the most
unforgettable popular music ever made. This is the definitive work on rock music’s greatest session player,
and one of its unsung heroes.
As Nils Lofgren (E Street Band) put it, “Nicky wrote the book on rock ‘n’ roll piano.”
This is the book about how he did it.
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Uncle John's Band
Book #6 of the JP Kinkaid Chronicles
by Deborah Grabien
The conclusion of Blacklight's exhausting Book of Days tour finds guitarist
JP Kinkaid recuperating at home in San Francisco. As JP's local band, the Fog City
Geezers, plans gigs at Marin County's 707 Club, the club is put up for sale.
Blacklight, seeing an opportunity to preserve a classic venue, acquires the
majority stake.
But the minority ownership comes with strings attached. There are troubling questions
about the source of the stake money. There's prickly, unpredictable promoter Norfolk
Lind, whose son Curtis is romantically involved with Blacklight band baby Solange
Hedley, now in cooking school in San Francisco. And Lind's partner, Esther Woodley,
has some dark history of her own with JP's wife, Bree.
The Geezers celebrate the opening of the newly refurbished 707 with a private show.
But when the club is destroyed by arson, Blacklight's new security chief, retired
homicide cop Patrick Ormand, must dig deep into the local music scene's murky
past to find the truth.
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The Sleeping Partner
A Sarah Tolerance Mystery
by Madeleine E. Robins
The Sleeping Partner heralds the return of the serene and self-reliant Miss Sarah Tolerance,
Fallen Woman and Agent of Inquiry. This time, Miss Tolerance is seeking not a missing
trinket or the solution to a crime, but a living person - a young gentlewoman who has vanished
from under her wealthy family’s roof, apparently bent on a scandalous elopement with a
mysterious man whom nobody knows. Her elder sister is desperate to find and forgive
her - and Sarah, haunted by the similarities between this girl’s story and her own,
is determined to assist - but with nothing to go on but a false name and a small
sketched portrait, the case is proving her most difficult yet.
As the search intensifies, Miss Tolerance must adversaries who will stop at nothing to keep
her from finding the girl. And, more than she had ever expected, the mystery surrounding
this young woman so like and yet so unlike herself forces Miss Tolerance to confront the
voices of her own past, and to question what her future may hold.
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Book of Days
Book #5 of the JP Kinkaid Chronicles
by Deborah Grabien
The release of Blacklight’s double CD, Book of Days, looks like business as usual. The
relaxed tour showcases a revolutionary new set design, as well as Bombardiers keyboard ace Tony
Mancuso along as a guest. No one can predict what happens next: the CD goes multi-platinum,
generating the need for a very different kind of tour.
At first, everything seems fine. It takes a while before guitarist JP Kinkaid realises something
very dark is going on: a string of deaths, following Blacklight show nights.
Things come to a head when a longtime member of Blacklight’s extended touring family is killed.
At the band’s request, Homicide detective Patrick Ormand investigates, but uncovering the reason
behind the deaths may be a lot easier than healing the wounds those deaths have caused.
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The Amazing Adventures of Sam the Bat
by Allyson Beatrice
What is THE most requested bedtime story by forty three million, eight hundred and ninety
thousand, two hundred and twelve baby bats around the world?
That would be The Amazing Adventures of Sam the Bat!
Young Sam, safe with his mother in the free-tail bat colony in the Southern California
desert, learns all the stories of his tribe. The most famous is the tale of the lost colony,
who flew east to escape a drought and never returned. The story says the lost ones found a
new home, under a bridge over a river, but no one knows for certain.
One fateful day, Sam loses his own colony and home, and thus begins an incredible adventure:
wee Sam, the baby bat, goes from the desert to the rainforests of South America, to a
five-star hotel in London, to the towers of Notre Dame in Paris, to the other side of the
world—only to find that sometimes, home is in the first place you should have looked,
and sometimes, the stories are true.
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Graceland
Book #4 of the JP Kinkaid Chronicles
by Deborah Grabien
When Blacklight guitarist JP Kinkaid is asked to introduce Delta session legend Farris “Bulldog”
Moody as an Early Influences inductee into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, he’s delighted. And when
JP learns from young Cleveland music historian Ches Kobel that Bulldog is still alive and living in
Southern Ohio, he jumps at the opportunity to meet his idol.
Ches, who’s working on a book about American blues players, brings JP and Bulldog together. The
elderly black musician and the rock superstar form a deep, immediate bond, and JP learns more about
the man whose music so influenced him.
But when Ches is found dead outside the Hall of Fame, JP is sent his notes on the unfinished book.
Those notes contain puzzling discrepancies in what Bulldog has told JP about himself and his history.
As doubts rise about how—and why—Ches died, JP knows he needs to know the truth behind Bulldog’s
life, and behind Ches Kobel’s death.
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Tales From the House Band, Vol. 1
A Plus One Music Anthology
edited by Deborah Grabien
A very unusual blues guitarist gets into a barroom brawl on a distant asteroid. An autistic
boy plays air guitar to an audience only his brother can see. A soul singer, paralyzed
in a car accident, deals with the murder of his closest friend. A rock singer in the 1960s
discovers the various meanings of “family values.” An ageing classical pianist remains
young and beautiful beyond the boundaries of the real world. A punk band, locked
together in a club all night after the show, finds themselves one member short
in the morning…
Sixteen writers, from rising stars to award-winning and critically acclaimed
veterans, have come together to provide a cross-genre spectrum of short fiction. The
one thing every story has in common?
Music.
From science fiction to horror, from literary to mystery, there’s something for
everyone in Tales From the House Band, Volume 1.
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London Calling
Book #3 of the JP Kinkaid Chronicles
by Deborah Grabien
For Blacklight guitarist JP Kinkaid and his wife Bree, their London honeymoon should be idyllic:
relaxation, music, taking care of a little personal business. However, their peaceful honeymoon
gets sidetracked when legendary director Sir Cedric Parmeley enters his 25-year-old rockumentary
into competition at the Cannes Film Festival, and asks Blacklight to perform a free concert to
support it.
But the film Parmeley screens the night before the Festival opens is not the film the band approved.
Something in that ninety minutes of altered footage poses a mortal danger to the remaining members
of an old hate group.
The leader of that group is a revenant from Homicide Lieutenant Patrick Ormand’s past. And Ormand
will stop at nothing to take him down—even if it means putting Blacklight in the crosshairs of
a sniper’s scope on the red carpet at Cannes.
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