Publication date: December 31, 2014
ISBN: 978-0692359303
Availability: Kindle - $7.99/Trade - $16.95
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"I PERFORM THE SEEMINGLY IMPOSSIBLE BECAUSE I HAVE PRACTICED LONG AND HARD.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS MAGIC."

So spoke Frank Spiegel, “Master of Illusion,” in a shop that shouldn’t have existed in a deserted, desert town in Middle of Nowhere, New Mexico – a missed turn on his way to the Big Time. Frank knew that his witty stage presence and simple, but elegant, tricks weren’t going to get him to the top. He needed something special – and found it in GAMES AND MAGIC: an Egyptian sarcophagus that the shopkeeper assured him possessed real magic.

His troupe – Sonder, the equipment manager; Dexter, the prop master, driver and mechanic; Bess, Frank’s assistant and the troupe’s “mother” – traveled as a family, all willing to give up their lives for Frank’s dream…and the chance to escape their pasts. Now, they were asked by the shopkeeper to part with “their most precious illusion” to help fulfill that dream.

They would learn that magic was very real – and that the illusion that each of them most prized was that they had nothing to lose. And on New Year’s Eve, the sarcophagus would prove that they were wrong.

Dead wrong.

Once again, Brent Monahan succeeds in creating believable characters and weaving their lives into a tightly woven story that doesn’t give up its final secrets until the ball drops on New Year’s Eve. In Illusions, he will take you from this world to the next – and to what lies in between – in a supernatural tale that blurs the lines between magic and illusion, and reminds us all of the bonds that unite family and friends.

Brent Monahan has spent his life fascinated with and passionate about questioning the world - and arriving at unique, thoughtful, insightful and, quite often, spear-tip pointedly amusing answers that find their expression in his many novels. Whether he is offering a rational explanation to an historical haunting, as in The Bell Witch: An American Haunting, or delving into the psyches and machinations of such icons of financial and political power as J.P. Morgan in The Jekyl Island Club, Mr. Monahan does so with an unparalleled depth of research and smart, witty writing that has engaged decades of readers and garnered him considerable critical recognition from both reviewers and his peers.

Mr. Monahan has authored twelve novels, two of which have been made into movies - including An American Haunting, starring Donald Sutherland and Sissy Spacek. He has taught writing at Rutgers University and Westminster Choir College of Rider University, even though his terminal degree was in musical arts from Indiana University, Bloomington. He lives in Yardley, Pennsylvania.