Saturday, January 9, 2016

Virtual Tour & #Giveaway for The Masquerading Magician by Gigi Pandian

Welcome to my stop on the Virtual Tour, presented by Great Escapes Virtual Book Tours, for The Masquerading Magician by Gigi Pandian.  Please leave a comment or question for Gigi to let her know you stopped by.  My review will post separately tomorrow (my fault – misread my schedule) so please come back for that.  You may enter the tour wide giveaway below by filling out the Rafflecopter and you may follow all of the stops on the tour by clicking on the tour banner above. The more stops you visit, the better your chances of winning. 

The Masquerading Magician
By Gigi Pandian
An Accidental Alchemist Mystery, Book 2

Publisher: Midnight Ink
Release Date: January 8, 2016
Format: eBook/Print
Length:  336 pages
ISBN-13: 978-0738742359
ASIN:  B019G00BT4


Buy Links:  Amazon | B&N | Kobo



About the book:

Deciphering an ancient alchemy book is more difficult than Zoe Faust bargained for. She’d much rather be gardening and exploring her new home of Portland, Oregon—but time is running out for living gargoyle Dorian Robert-Houdin. If Zoe isn’t able to unlock the alchemy book’s secrets soon, the French gargoyle will remain awake but trapped in stone forever.


When Zoe gives herself a rare night out to attend a classic magic show that reminds her of her youth, she realizes the stage magicians are much more than they seem. A murder at the theater leads back to a string of unsolved robberies and murders in Portland’s past, and a mystery far more personal than Zoe and Dorian ever imagined.


Excerpt

Persephone & Prometheus’s Phantasmagoria: A Classic Magic Show in the Modern World.

The giant poster was illustrated in the style of Victorian Era stage magic posters. Two figures faced each other from opposite sides of a stage, the larger one in a tuxedo and top hat, the smaller impish figure in a devilish red suit. The taller tuxedoed figure held a wand, pointed upward toward an ethereal floating figure. The devilish man held a ball of fire in his hand.

I smiled to myself as Max and I made our way through the lobby, my fingers looped through his. Some things had changed since the Victorian era. The tuxedo-clad magician in the poster was a woman. Prometheus and Persephone were a husband and wife magic act with equal billing.

Their style reminded me very much of posters of King-of-Cards Thurston and Carter the Great, both of whom used ghost and devil imagery in their posters and shows to illustrate the motif that they were magicians able to control the spirit world. The ambiance felt more like Paris in 1845, on the day Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin took to the stage at the newly-built Palais Royal theater with his ingenious mechanical inventions and masterful sleight-of-hand. But this was a small theater near Portland, Oregon’s Mt. Tabor, over 150 years later. Seeing that poster made me feel like I’d been transported back in time.

I should know. I attended Robert-Houdin’s show over a century ago.

Though I look outwardly like a woman in her late twenties with trendy dyed-white hair who’s named after her grandmother Zoe Faust, the truth is far different. Long before I bought a run-down house in Portland three months ago, I was born in Salem, Massachusetts. In 1676.

A shiver swept over me as a memory of a different time and place overtook me. Casually-dressed Oregonians with cell phones in their pockets became formally-attired members of society who would remember this performance for a lifetime.

Breathe, Zoe.

I willed myself to remember it wasn’t a taut corset constricting my breathing, but my own nerves. I had thought tonight’s opening performance would be the perfect way to spend time with Max after he’d been away, but could I trust myself with him? I couldn’t tell him the truth about my past, no matter how much I wanted to.
Maybe this had been a terrible idea.


About The Author


USA Today bestselling author Gigi Pandian spent her childhood being dragged around the world by her cultural anthropologist parents, and now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She’s the author of the Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt mystery series (ArtifactPirate Vishnu, and Quicksand) and the Accidental Alchemist mysteries (The Accidental Alchemist and The Masquerading Magician).
Gigi’s debut mystery was awarded a Malice Domestic Grant, the follow-up won the Left Coast Crime Rose Award, and her short fiction has been short-listed for Agatha and Macavity awards. A breast cancer diagnosis in her thirties taught her two important life lessons: healing foods can taste amazing, and life’s too short to waste a single moment. Find her online at www.gigipandian.com

Author Links
Website:      http://gigipandian.com/
Twitter:       https://twitter.com/GigiPandian
Blog:            http://gigipandian.com/posts
Gargoyle photography blog:       http://www.gargoylegirl.com/


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7 comments:

  1. Thanks so much for featuring the book! I'll pop back in case there are any questions for me.

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  2. This looks like an interesting read. New author to me.
    diannekc8@gmail.com

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  3. Thanks to the Queen for the intro to GiGi. So many books on Goodreads, I am rounding them all up to read. I'm so glad everything worked out alright with your health. You have such a talent.

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  4. GiGi's novels are enthralling, intriguing and unique. What a talented and creative author whose novels are enjoyable. Thanks for this great feature and giveaway. saubleb(at)gmail(dot)com

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    1. Thanks so much. When I writing the first book in this series, I wasn't sure if a gargoyle chef would be TOO unique -- I'm glad my publisher took a chance on the books.

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