A young magician travels across the world seeking fame and fortune all the while hiding a secret, in a novel based on the renowned, real-life Indian stage magicians performing in the United States in the 1800s.Samuel Thomas, a man of uncertain parentage, is a young magician convinced that he is destined for greatness in a far-off land. Seeking honor and acclaim, he journeys across the globe—from India to London to the fog-shrouded streets of Boston in 1816, the infamous Year Without a Summer. In this season of unrelenting cold, Samuel arrives in a city alive with ambition, contradiction, and tension. Enter Nathaniel in some ways a world away from Samuel, hailing from the upper echelons of Boston society, but also nursing a problem of his own. Proprietor of the New Boston Museum which is on the brink of bankruptcy, Nathaniel is desperate to find ways to keep it open—and Samuel is the ideal fit for the first live addition to the collection. While the perfect solution to each other’s problems, the relationship between the two men quickly becomes complicated as Nathaniel grows more and more fascinated, and even obsessed, with the young foreigner. As Samuel becomes subsumed within the museum and dependent on Nathaniel, he must reckon with just how much he’s willing to give up to achieve success. Richly detailed and vividly conjured, Hocus Pocus is a story about art, ambition, and desire, and captures the crackling energy and wonder of a bygone era through the eyes of a young performer.

A mother struggling to repress her violent past, A son struggling to grasp his violent future, A father blind to the danger that threatens them all. When the winds of war reach their peninsula, will the Matsuda family have the strength to defend their empire? Or will they tear each other apart before the true enemies even reach their shores? High on a mountainside at the edge of the Kaigenese Empire live the most powerful warriors in the world, superhumans capable of raising the sea and wielding blades of ice. For hundreds of years, the fighters of the Kusanagi Peninsula have held the Empire’s enemies at bay, earning their frozen spit of land the name ‘The Sword of Kaigen.’ Born into Kusanagi’s legendary Matsuda family, fourteen-year-old Mamoru has always known his purpose: to master his family’s fighting techniques and defend his homeland. But when an outsider arrives and pulls back the curtain on Kaigen’s alleged age of peace, Mamoru realizes that he might not have much time to become the fighter he was bred to be. Worse, the empire he was bred to defend may stand on a foundation of lies. Misaki told herself that she left the passions of her youth behind when she married into the Matsuda house. Determined to be a good housewife and mother, she hid away her sword, along with everything from her days as a fighter in a faraway country. But with her growing son asking questions about the outside world, the threat of an impending invasion looming across the sea, and her frigid husband grating on her nerves, Misaki finds the fighter in her clawing its way back to the surface.