She was a galactic runaway, with a price on her body.

Inspired equally by the classic TV noir Western, Have Gun, Will Travel, and Vladimir Nabokov's most daring novel, Pale Fire, multiple award-winning writer Rachel Pollack brings us the adventures of Jack Shade, occult "Traveler" and modern shaman for hire. Jack has a secret, and this hidden part of his past sends him on a journey through spells and gateways to other worlds, each one stranger than the last, filled with such figures as professional Dream Hunters, gangster magicians, an invisible spirit fox named Ray, an elegant Jinni named Archie, and the Queen of Eyes—holder of all oracular power in the world. From the high stakes poker table in the Hôtel de Rêve Noire, to the deadly Forest Of Souls, to a cave where he must trap a sixty-five thousand year old demon, Jack flows in and out of this world. Even when his own dream duplicate hires him to kill himself, Jack is mercury in motion—Jack the Nimble, Jack the Quick—until he runs out of tricks and must face his...

Two boys, separated by hundreds of years will never know each other—yet together they will battle a great evil at the very heart of the world—The Child Eater. One, Matyas, resides in a medieval world whose power rests with the Academy of Wizards. The other, Simon Wisdom, in present-day America. In a town described as "the fourteenth most livable city" in a national magazine. Their lives are vastly different: as a boy, Matyas is viciously beaten by his innkeeper father, yet he will grow up to become the greatest magician. Simon is deeply loved by his widowed father, Jack, yet even a father's dedication is helpless against the psychic terrors that overwhelm Simon from his earliest years. Matyas takes refuge from his father's violence in fantasies of magical citiesâ??then true magic enters his life when he sees a man fly. Obsessed with becoming a magician and fixated on learning to fly himself, Matyas runs away to the capital, where he learns of a mysterious,...