James Reese

Alone among the young girls taught by nuns at a convent school in nineteenth-century France, orphaned Herculine has neither wealth nor social connections. When she's accused of being a witch, the shy student is locked up with no hope of escape ... until her rescue by a real witch, the beautiful, mysterious Sebastiana. Swept away to the witch's manor, Herculine will enter a fantastic, erotic world to discover her true nature -- and her destiny -- in this breathtaking, darkly sensual first novel.

Hemingway House in Cuba - Finca Vigia - Photo eBook is the first eBook to deliver 45 high-resolution color photographs of Ernest Hemingway’s Cuban residence, Finca Vigia. The photographs, taken by James Reese in December 2002, reveal rarely seen details of Hemingway’s Cuban home lifestyle and idiosyncrasies. Each photograph can be printed and is suitable for 8 x 10 or 8.5 x 11 framing. Photographs have been optimized for the new free Adobe Reader 6.0, which allows full screen viewing with complete zoom and pan control. Popup notes in the margins provide comments without cluttering the printed photograph.Zoom and see that Hemingway kept copies of Today’s Japan, Gadfly, and Fishing Gazette in his living room magazine rack; zoom to see his US military insignia and lieutenant's bar, duck call, spent cartridges/shotgun shells, all on his study desk; zoom to count the number of books in his bathroom “library” and to see that “Houdini” is four books away from “The Accounting”; zoom on his bathroom wall to see that on April 1, 1960 he recorded 200 as his weight; zoom to see that it is a Royal Portable typewriter on his bookshelf where he typed standing up; zoom on the scenic view from the Tower to see the Capitolio Nacional in Old Havana.Since 1960 few Americans have seen Cuba, and even fewer have seen Finca Vigia. Finca Vigia or "Lookout Farm," is a 19th century villa set on the top of a hill overlooking the village of San Francisco de Paula. These days Finca Vigia functions as a showpiece museum, Museo Hemingway de Cuba. It is left exactly as it was when Hemingway lived there, filled with his books, music and his collection of hunting memorabilia, looking as if the writer had gone on an errand.James Reese is an economics professor at the University of South Carolina Spartanburg. During 2002, Dr. Reese attended seminars at the University of Havana and served as consultant to and member of the official South Carolina trade delegation to Havana.

New York Times bestselling author James Reese has been praised for his lush and evocative prose, his bold exploration of illicit sexuality, his deft handling of historical settings, and his extraordinary rendering of the supernatural. His novels are sumptuous trips back in time to an era filled with unforgettable characters, human strife, and emotions that transcend time. Now, in his most imaginative book to date, Reese takes the witch Herculine on a voyage that will test her in every way, elevating her from the depths of despair to triumph.In the middle decades of the nineteenth century, Herculine is summoned from self-imposed exile by her teacher, the witch Sebastiana d'Azur, and told to sail from the Florida territory to Havana. There she is to search out one Queverdo Bru—a cruel and demonic man whose house holds terrible secrets—to learn of a certain "surprise." But lies and truths conspire to separate Herculine from those she loves, and she finds herself alone with Bru, who sees in her something he has long sought, and now seeks to use, harshly, as he practices that most ancient of arts: alchemy.Escaping Bru, Herculine sails from Havana, knowing Sebastiana is near. In the Florida Keys, she reunites with her and meets her "surprise"—the shocking product of a forbidden encounter ten years prior. Surviving an Indian attack on a sparsely settled key, Herculine and family decamp to Key West. There they set out to make their fortune—by means magical or otherwise—as Herculine is tested at every turn by the harsh landscape and haunted by thoughts of her own demise.With The Witchery, James Reese brings to a close a remarkable trilogy—a story told by a character who "invades our consciousness" (Tampa Tribune) and set in "the heady atmosphere of a bygone era brought deftly to life" (Eric Van Lustbader). Spanning decades ravaged by war, disease, and ideals that tore a nation apart, Herculine's ultimately triumphant struggle is both a universal one—marked by love, loss, fear, and regret—and yet quite particular, as told by one of the most inventive novelists working today.

In his first novel, the national bestselling The Book of Shadows, James Reese beguiled readers with a boldly imaginative, darkly erotic tale of awakening that introduced the captivating and deeply unusual Herculine. Now this extraordinary writer continues Herculine's incredible journey of self-discovery -- a search that will lead her into a world of shadows and perils, where she will taste the forbidden and find redemption.September 1826. Taught to trust ... and to learn by a quartet of remarkable saviors, Herculine is bound for America, leaving behind a strange and violent past in France for an uncertain future in an exotic new land. Arriving in Virginia, Herculine is led by fate to Mother-of-Venus, a mysterious old slave woman who is blessed with gifts both terrifying and strange, and to a young poet named Edgar Poe who is haunted by evils of the past. Under the mystical guidance of Mammy Venus, Herculine soon calls upon her powerful legacy to rescue Celia, a beautiful, damaged slave. Landing in the coastal wilds of Florida, Celia stirs passions -- and dark, otherworldly powers -- within Herculine, propelling them into an erotic obsession that only the missing witch Sebastiana d'Azur can break.Hope comes in a missive that will lure the desperate Herculine north, to the chaotic streets of New York and a strange, magical house in which the confused and eager witch is accepted by a band of like-minded sisters and introduced to exquisite carnal pleasures. Finally loosed from the shackles of shame and desire, Herculine heads south once again to find salvation and fulfill her destiny.Set in a time of promise and peril, bondage and bloodshed, James Reese's lush, richly atmospheric, and beautifully told tale shatters the boundaries between the living and the dead, the magical and the ordinary, the imagined and the historical. A novel of the mind and the senses, The Book of Spirits is a mesmerizing and unforgettable work from an exceptional talent.

In this prequel to "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" set in 1870s Paris during the Prussian siege, an orphaned sixteen-year-old girl whose knowledge of witchcraft includes transformation spells meets a young medical doctor from London.

Stalled in his writing career and feeling overwhelmed by his charismatic, successful boss Sir Henry Irving, Bram Stoker returns to London in the summer of 1888 determined to turn his life around.Late one night Stoker decides to take a stroll through the streets of Whitechapel, an impoverished district of London known for its many prostitutes as well as the citizenry crowding its shadowy alleys. Amid the shadows, he spies a seemingly familiar figure, a man resembling a quack American "doctor" of his acquaintance. But before Stoker can be certain, the man disappears.Little does he know that just a few steps away, the crime spree of the century has begun: a vicious killer has claimed his first victim, a local prostitute. And Stoker somehow becomes the prime suspect. To clear his name, he enlists some of his illustrious friends, including Walt Whitman, Lady Jane Wilde (mother of Oscar), and the million-copy-selling Victorian novelist Sir Thomas Henry Hall Caine. When they discover that the murder weapon is a Gurkha knife owned by Stoker and recently stolen from his home, there can be no doubt that the elusive American doctor—Francis Tumblety—is the very same man terrorizing and taunting London as Jack the Ripper.Moving from Manhattan to London's West End and Whitechapel, from Dublin to a ritualistic denouement in Edinburgh, this sweeping, magnificent novel is a suspenseful trip into the heart of literature and history, as Stoker sets out on the "true" adventure that will later inspire him to write Dracula. James Reese has been praised for his "sweeping narrative" (Clarion-Ledger, Jackson, MS), "vivid characters" (Washington Post Book World), and "imaginative wizardry" (Orlando Sentinel), and The Dracula Dossier is perhaps his most stunning achievement to date.