Enchanted Plants: A Treasury of Botanical Folklore and Magic
From the baneful bog to the garden gate, join me for a romp through the kingdom of plants and explore their stories, legends, and magic.
Ramble through the mystical, magical, and historical gardens where cultivars and wild plants thrive. Enter the Queen’s Garden and pluck a golden apple or snip the perfect rose. Sneak through the gates into of the poison garden where the lascivious and life-saving plants intertwine. Gallop through meadow grass, skirt the boggy glen, amble through woodlands where magical plants beckon from the forest floor.
Don’t forget your knife.
https://redwheelweiser.com/book/enchanted-plants-9781578638604/
Shadow Zine Issue #3: Mark Twain’s Ouija Mystery
Did Mark Twain’s Spirit Write a Novel?
A book channeled via the Ouija board, the woman who wrote it, and the ghost whose restless spirit longed for a scribe on Earth. Was Emily Grant Hutchings that earthly muse, or was this a profound publicity stunt?
In Issue #3 of Shadow Zine I explore this marvelous mystery.
You can purchase directly at shadowzine.com or in person from me at one of my events.
Fairies, Pookas, and Changelings
While it’s true that fairy folk love a good garden and take great pleasure in a tulip, there are dozens of beasties who fall under the fairy domain that are not quite as delightful as the quintessential flower fairy. This book is an exploration of the many things that go bump in the night near the fairy mound. Along with an exploration of folklore and historical literature, readers will delight in fairy tales that demonstrate everything from striking a bargain with a fairy to staving off changelings to laughing with the dwarves.
Included are fairy tales and myths from Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and Scandinavia plus classic stories by Thomas Crofton Croker, Joseph Jacobs, Clara Stroebe, the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Yei Theodora Ozaki, and others on goblins, trolls, gnomes, pookas, changelings, banshees, and more!
If you think fairies are merely delicate beings who follow you about on gossamer wings, you are in for quite a shock: the kingdom of the fairy is one of vengeance, thievery, trickery, and wild creatures. Consider yourself warned!
Paranormal Parlor
From shimmering specters to mysterious tricks, Varla Ventura’s Paranormal Parlor includes original supernatural tales, classic ghost stories, legends, hauntings, séances, superstitions, and death customs.
This book showcases a chilling collection of startling ghost stories as told to the author as well as legendary ghosts and haunted locations and an overview of the paranormal parlor games that rose to popularity in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. It also includes hidden history such as the story of Mark Twain’s ghost and the lost novel he wrote via the ouija board (so it it claimed) and the role of women in the psychic arts as a means of expression in a tightly-corseted Victorian culture.
Banshees Werewolves, and Vampires
The lusty vampire, the sympathetic werewolf, the tragic banshee...from the annals of forgotten folklore to the modern day hunt, this collection of facts and fictions showcases all manner of things that go bump in the night.
The Book of the Bizarre
A treasure trove of startling and stranger-than-fiction trivia that spans history, continents, even worlds. From rock n' roll history to the real reason you don't open an umbrella indoors, this collection of bizarre things looks great on a shelf next to those pickled "specimens" you've been collecting.
Beyond Bizarre
This sequel to The Book of the Bizarre takes the reader through chapters of even more freaky facts, terrifying trivia, and stranger-than-fiction stories including plants that smell like rotting corpses, coincidences you wish you could forget, and other handy tidbits guaranteed to scare off your conservative neighbors at the next block party.
Among the Mermaids
An enchanting collection of classic stories, facts, and tales of mermaids from around the world that will thrill every lover of this romanticized mythological creature. From a mermaid joy ride in Baltimore's Druid Lake Park to the craggy shores of Ireland, your favorite new beach read is here.