Geoff Ward's glitteringly humorous and frightening novel sends his hero Miles on a wild pursuit, via this global and the following, of 1 of basically 3 identified copies of the rarest ebook in lifestyles. just like the item of his obsessive quest, you are not lifeless is either preferrred fiction and grail, a one-off exemplar of a misplaced unique. – John Ashbery, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the nationwide booklet Award, and the nationwide booklet Critics Circle Award.

You’re no longer lifeless is a darkly comedian fable, with parts of romance. The hero Miles Proctor is a tender collage lecturer, at the path of the final ultimate replica of a infamous Victorian booklet. Transmutations: The booklet of Magic is an occult treatise, which claims to be no longer basically approximately Magic, yet approximately how one can practice spells and develop into adept at enchantment.

A sequence of hilarious injuries takes Miles to manhattan, California and demise Valley earlier than he eventually locates it. through this time he has started a romance with Becky Morrell, bookseller and co-traveller. On examining the publication Miles unearths that it has the valuables of showing to alter its phrases, every time it really is learn. He develops his personal occult talents, together with the power to change occasions, and to commute to the locations pictured in photos via focussing at the photograph.

However a presence from past, a murderous (if comedian) Glaswegian gangster trapped in limbo, starts to invade his awareness looking for the booklet as a method to escaping his personal twilight quarter. Miles’ adventures lead him again into the prior and the mysteries of his father’s double existence. Miles has joined a coven of magicians in London who become aware of that he's operating extra for himself than for the advantage of their capers, which come with the search for an historic amulet with the ability to shop for time, yet whilst they test revenge the gang comes explosively aside. Weighing in on Miles’ facet are a couple of supernatural presences, together with the ghost of mythical bluesman Robert Johnson, however the tale nonetheless has many surprises in shop. issues usually are not continuously what they appear, within the worlds of both white or black magic – particularly while Miles’ magic guide begins to paintings in unforeseen ways.

You’re now not useless is the 1st of the dead night Books, within which magic, goals, romance and crime are the elements within the fictional spell.