An excerpt to celebrate National Rhode Island Day

Houdini smiled at his wife with undisguised adoration. He had just finished a three-day run at the Providence Opera House and was still a bit wired. Howard Lovecraft had attended the show as his guest and then joined him for dinner to discuss their book about the roots of superstition.
“Right you are, my love,” Houdini said as the waiter set a plate of shrimp in garlic wine sauce before him. “But I can already tell that it will never measure up to one of your sumptuous feasts.”
“Oh, posh,” Bess said as the waiter presented her with a sizzling sirloin steeped in a Cognac flamed peppercorn cream.
Howard, who loved his Italian food, got the tagliatelle with meat sauce. The waiter bowed to each of them and left.
Houdini narrowed his eyes. It wasn’t the same waiter who had brought their appetizers. Though he was wearing a white shirt, black vest, and apron like the other waiters, his scalp was covered with a skullcap that was knotted in the back.
Something about the man bothered him. Maybe it was simply the incongruence of a Japanese man working in an Italian restaurant. Continue reading

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An excerpt in celebration of Easter

Piper and Bess had grown even closer since Houdini had left to dazzle Chicago with his feats of daring and wonder. On Easter Sunday, Bess had taken her into Manhattan where she and two hundred-thousand other people flaunted their new spring clothing in the parade along Fifth Avenue. Seated in his customary chair as though he’d never been gone, Houdini lowered the paper and smiled.
“Come give your uncle a big birthday hug,” he said, opening his arms wide. When they embraced, she couldn’t tell if she sensed tension between them or if it was just her imagination. After all, how could he have known for sure that it had been her in Margery’s parlor? The only thing he could possibly have seen was a pair of glowing stars, which wouldn’t be out of the ordinary in a weird room like that.
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Jim Zeigler and Aleister Crowley share the same pretext

Using the same logic that Jim Zeigler argued to defend Roy Moore’s alleged acts of pedophilia, Aleister Crowley justifies his intention to seduce the teen-aged Piper by saying. “I ask you, was the mother of the Christ-child any older?” Continue reading

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Piper website wins 2017 Bronze IPPY

About the Award The Independent Publisher Book Awards (the “IPPYs”) are intended to bring increased recognition to the thousands of exemplary independent, university, and self-published titles published each year. The awards are open to all members of the independent publishing industry, and to authors and publishers worldwide who produce books … Continue reading

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An excerpt to celebrate baseball’s Opening Day

It was a simple stone. No dates, no first name, no epitaph. Just the name “Ebbets” carved in capital letters on a rectangular stone slab. Flapper knew very little about the man she had slept with except that he once owned a baseball team that still played three miles to the east in a stadium bearing his name. Continue reading

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Black Friday for Black Henry

Black Henry

Many of today’s young pop-culture enthusiasts are only familiar with zombies of the modern, “toxic” variety—corpses restored to life as the result of a horrifying virus or radioactive contamination from an exploded space probe. The iconic zombie owes its heritage to a much earlier period, when Haitian slaves invented stories of such a purgatory to prevent them from committing suicide. Continue reading

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