May 2, 2024 High Priestess and Empress, Book Two, Arcana Oracle Series will be published by SparkPress! Thanks to Brooke Warner and Shannon Green and all my editors and Betareaders.

To pre-order click link below:

 

Magician and Fool, Book One, Arcana Oracle Series is now available as a print book, e-book and audiobook! My publisher Sparkpress has also optioned my second book, High Priestess and Empress, which will be coming out in 2024.

Pamela Colman Smith, newly arrived from New York to her birthplace of London, is received as an oddball in Victorian society. Her second sight helps her in her new job: illustrating tarot cards for the Golden Dawn, a newly formed occult group. But when Pamela refuses to share her creations with Aleister Crowley, a controversial magician, he issues a threat: give up the cards’ power, or he’ll harm her muses.

(CLICK IMAGE ABOVE FOR AUDIO)

SparkPress

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Audible

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Amazon

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“Magician and Fool is a Victorian-era tale of tarot and the potential terrors of meddling with magic. Rich and atmospheric, Wands dazzles with a wealth of research woven into the fabric of the novel, using her own creative magic to bring some of the most bewitching historical figures—including Pamela Colman Smith, Aleister Crowley, Ellen Terry, Henry Irving, Bram Stoker, W.B. Yeats, and even Oscar Wilde—back to life.” – Kira Jane Buxton, Award-winning and Best-selling author of Hollow Kingdom and Feral Creatures

 

Magician and Fool is an enchanting read that whisks you to a time in London when life is steeped in a pioneering, cutting-edge exploration of magic and the otherworldly when a tarot deck is just on the verge of being born. It is a world I loved spending time in from the beginning to the end.” – Naomi McDougall Jones, author of The Wrong Kind of Woman: Inside Our Revolution to Dismantle the Gods of Hollywood

 

Magician and Fool is a heady historical brew brimming with mysterious manuscripts, secret societies, and the story of a young girl whose creation of a powerful deck of Tarot cards might change magic forever. Atmospheric and original.” — Thea Sutton, author of The Women of Blackmouth Street

 

“Richly detailed and fluidly written, Magician and Fool brings to life the little-known story of artist and occultist Pamela Colman Smith, who created the iconic Tarot cards.  With a starry supporting cast from the theater, literature, and the dark arts, Wands has conjured a captivating tale with an intriguing woman at its spell-bending center.” — Patricia Morrisroe, Author of The Woman in the Moonlight

 

 

About the Author

Susan Wands

Susan Wands is a writer, tarot reader, and actor. A co-chair with the NYC Chapter of the Historical Novel Society, she helps produce monthly online book launches and author panels. In London, she has lectured at Watkins Books for their Recorded Authors series, and at Atlantis Books, also traveling to present at the Occulture Berlin Festival. Ms. Wands’ writings have appeared in Art in Fiction, Kindred Spirits magazine, and The Irving Society journal, FIRST KNIGHT. Some of her podcast interviews include: ‘Biddy Tarot’, ‘Imaginary Worlds’, ‘Bad Ass Bitches Tarot’, and the ‘Spirited Tarot’ YouTube channel.  Her first book in a series, Magician and Fool, Book One, Arcana Oracle Series will be out in 2021, is based on Pamela Colman Smith, creator of the best-selling tarot, the Waite Smith deck. High Priestess and Empress, and Emperor and Hierophant, the next two books in the series, are in final edits.

Contact Author

tarotmagicianfool@gmail.com

For All Press and Publicity Inquiries:

Crystal Patriarche
BookSparks
crystal@BookSparksPR.com
(480) 650-1688

My Writing Blog

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First Knight Journal Article 11/20/2020

First Knight Journal Article 11/20/2020

A Henry Irving KeepsakeSusan Wands Sir Henry Irving was given many mementos and souvenirs celebrating his life’s work in the theatre.  Among his collected treasures were swords belonging to Edmund Kean, possibly three of them, along with Kean’s russet boots and...

Watkins Books, London 2017

Watkins Books, London 2017

Bryan Cranston guest appearance at my Watkins talk October 2017 was the month of harvest for a crop planted over eight years ago. My book, Magician and Fool, was printed by i2i Publishing in England on October 4th and there were...

Occulture Berlin 2019 Presentation

Occulture Berlin 2019 Presentation

Berlin, November 3rd, I arrived in Germany to give a presentation at the Occulture Esoteric Conference held in East Berlin. When my cab drive, a charming Greek-born man named Napoleon, drove me by the entrance of the Anomalie Art Club, he expressed doubt that a...