Trio of Sorcery

by Mercedes Lackey Narrated by Caroline Keeler

Overview

In Trio of Sorcery, Mercedes Lackey presents three exciting short urban fantasy novels, including the return of Diana Tregarde and the debut of a brand-new heroine for the twenty-first century.



Arcanum 101: Diana Tregarde, hero of Burning Water. Studying at Harvard, Diana is asked to investigate a fake psychic-and discovers that the psychic is not a fake . . . and has kidnapped a young child!



Drums: Jennifer Talldeer, hero of Sacred Ground. Nathan Begay and his girlfriend are from different tribes, but their real problem is that Caroline has attracted the attention of an angry Osage ghost. Nathan asks Jenny, an Osage shaman, for help banishing the dead warrior.



Ghost in the Machine: Ellen McBride, techno-shaman. The "boss" of an new MMORPG is out of control. A brilliant programmer as well as a magic-worker, Ellen discovers that the wendigo in the game is real-and it's about to break out of the servers and into our world!

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Powerful women solve magical mysteries in this trio of short urban fantasy novels from the enormously prolific Lackey (The Phoenix Transformed). Fans of the Diana Tregarde series will welcome prequel story "Arcanum 101," in which Diana, a Harvard freshman in the early 1970s, must secretly work as a sorceress Guardian and investigate a psychic involved in a kidnapping case. "Drums" returns to the setting of 1994's "Sacred Ground," where Native American sleuth and medicine woman Jennie Talldeer must find a way to deter an angry Osage ghost determined to claim a living bride. In the standout "Ghost in the Machine," techno-shaman Ellen McBridge moves between the real world and that of an online role-playing game to debug a magical monster that's not behaving quite as programmed. This volume is a worthy addition to the urban fantasy bookshelf. (Oct.)

From the Publisher

“Sure to please Lackey fans… All three tales once again demonstrate that Lackey is a master storyteller, no matter the story's length.” —RT Book Reviews, 4 ½ stars

“Lackey's well-seasoned talents for good storytelling and character development are on full display here.” —Booklist

“The three novellas are well written and entertaining while starring strong females with similar traits but different scenarios confronting the supernatural.” —The Midwest Book Review

“A great mix of urban and paranormal fantasy.” —Book Chick City

Library Journal

The first new Diana Tregarde story in almost 20 years and the first Jenny Talldeer tale in over 15 years set the stage for an introduction to a remarkable new urban fantasy heroine in this collection of three urban fantasy novels by the best-selling author of the Valdemar series. In Arcanum 101, which takes place in the 1970s, a young Diana Tregarde finds time between her studies at Harvard and her budding writing career to stop a supposed psychic from interfering in the police investigation of a kidnapping case. Drums, set in the 1990s, sends PI and Native American shaman Jennie Talldeer on a quest to prevent an angry Osage ghost from coming between Navajo Nathan Begay and his Chickasaw fiancée. In Ghost in the Machine, set in the high-tech world of modern times, computer programmer and techno-shaman Ellen McBridge investigates a series of mysterious deaths linked to a multiplayer online role-playing game. VERDICT Lackey's urban fantasies always reflect her keen sense of time and place, and her vivid characters and respect for other cultures make her a standout storyteller with a broad-based audience. Lackey's fans and urban fantasy readers will want this.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940159932235
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	08/29/2023
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

TRIO OF SORCERY (Chapter One)

This is the first Diana Tregarde story in decades. And in a sense this is the first Diana Tregarde story, period.

It takes place in the early 1970s and it will be hard for anyone younger than thirty to realize what a very different world that was. Computers were the size of buildings. We were still putting men on the moon, but there is more computing power in a common iPhone than there was at all of Cape Kennedy. Watergate was about to happen. Nixon hadn’t yet resigned. U.S. soldiers were still fighting and dying in Vietnam. There was no such thing as being “openly gay.” There also was no such thing as HIV.

Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Brian Jones were all recently dead of various self-indulgences, but John Lennon was still alive.

The only time you saw windmills was on a farm or in Holland.

Gas was twenty-five cents a gallon, threatening to go up to thirty.

No one had ever heard of, much less seen, a Japanese manga.

Britney Spears wasn’t even born. Neither was Leonardo DiCaprio.

Stand-up comedians only performed in nightclubs with bad reputations, or in Las Vegas. No one would consider going out for a night of comedy.

There was no MTV. Anytime there was a rock-themed television program, it was an event. There was barely cable TV. Most people made do with three channels and what was not yet called PBS. When you had cable TV, you had a whole twelve channels!

“Portable” music was via a transistor radio.

No one had ever heard of rap. And if anyone had heard a rap song, they would have considered it a quaint offshoot of beat poetry, which was so, so 1950s.

You bought most of your reading material at the drugstore from revolving racks, or digest-size monthly fiction magazines in a small magazine rack, unless you were really lucky and were in a town big enough to actually have a bookstore.

Research meant going to the library and looking things up in books.

So as you read this, if you find yourself thinking, “Well, why didn’t they just—” the answer is probably, “Because they didn’t have it then.”

Enjoy.

TRIO OF SORCERY Copyright © 2010 by Mercedes Lackey

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