Irene Radford

Teenage twins Rod and Sprite Maxwell grew up in the weird world of Science Fiction Conventions, where their oddity fits right in. Their paranormal genes cause interlocking plates of stone armor to form under stress and heat. After years of Covid closures, they eagerly approach BeachCon with their adoptive dad at their side. Invalided out of a UN Black Ops agency, Dad is still capable of keeping his kids out of trouble, if needed. And it's needed. From the moment the twins step inside the con hotel, they face rogue agents, Russian mercenaries, and worse: their own abusive mother. A web of political intrigue entangles the twins in a witch hunt for their bio father and their genetic heritage, in a battle against paranormals. And then there's the problem of their own first loves and raging hormones.

Tess Noncoir , best selling fantasy author, wielder of the Celestial Blade, and companion of a pandimensional imp, Scrap, has pulled up stakes in New England to settle in Portland, Oregon, far from the man who broke her heart. Here, she can stalk the trails of Forest Park in search of the N rglein, a dark elf bent on repopulating his species by raping joggers. Dr. Sean Connolly, a handsome, young, ER doctor, who has treated the assaulted women, eagerly joins Tess in her quest to end the N rglein's evil. She's vulnerable to his attraction, but he can never be the renowned Guilford van der Hoyden Smyth Ph. D., Gollum, her former lover. Before the dark lord can be caught, two of his daughters escape his abuse to seek refuge with Tess. Their stories convince an entire posse of Tess's friends, including Lady Lucia, a vampire crime boss from Las Vegas, that the reign of terror must be stopped by any means. Inevitably, both Tess's former lovers, Gollum and Donovan, join the search. Now, Tess must protect the innocent girls while fighting her own heart, jealous lovers, and an evil elf bent on destruction.

The need to hoard gold can be a curse. But what if the gold itself is the curse? On a quest to find and return the Coronnan dragons and save the Commune of Magicians, journeymen magicians Marcus and Robb take shelter from a storm in a long abandoned monastery-only to become ghosts, trapped and invisible inside ruins no one visits, with only mounds of gold for company. Healer Vareena has inherited the ability to care for the ghosts only she can see and hear in the old monastery. Exhausted, Vareena understands why her mother died tending the ghosts and acting as healer for a community well off the main trade routes. To save herself, she must escape her family, her village, and the ghosts. Not all the gold in the ruins is enough to buy her freedom. Then two more ghosts turn up. None of them can leave. Ever. Unless the two hapless magicians can break the curse.

The covenant with the dragons is broken. No longer can like-minded magicians gather dragon magic and work communally to impose honor and ethics upon any single mage. Nimbulan, Senior Magician, and councilor to the king has had to exile his beloved wife, Myrilandel, because she is a witchwoman and no female can gather dragon magic. Now she is missing from her protected clearing along with their two adopted children. To bring his wife home again, with only his loyal journeyman Rollett at his side, Nimbulan must brave the hostile city of Hanassa. The secret city is wrapped within a volcanic caldera and sealed off from the outside world. No dragon will venture there. It has become a haven for outlaws, smugglers, and rogue magicians. Will Nimbulan's love give him enough courage and strength to endure the trials that await him? Will Myrilandel have enough cleverness to survive the cruelty of a renegade dragon who rules Hanassa with a bloody fist?

Three hundred years before The Glass Dragon, civil war has raged through Coronnan for generations. Fueled by jealous and powerful battlemages, no lord has emerged as a leader who can combine the warring factions in peace. The dragons have had enough when misdirected battle spells endanger them. They seek the one human desperate enough to listen to reason. Nimbulan has been hailed as the greatest battlemage of his age. His grief over having to kill his apprentice, the one he loved as a son, drives him to wander Coronnan in search of a better way, a different form of magic, anything that will end the endless wars. Along the way he finds some answers residing in the forgetfulness of Myrilandel, the love of his life, a witchwoman with a flywacket for a familiar. Can the dragons reach him in time? What will it cost Nimbulan, his love, and the dragons to finally bring peace to a land that has known nothing but war for too many generations?

The dragons have left Coronnan and taken their magic with them. Magicians who can gather dragon magic can combine their talents to increase their power exponentially to impose ethics and honor upon any solitary practitioner. King Darville is tied to the dragons. He endures a painful wound to his dominant left arm that will not heal. He and his senior magician fear that he shares the festering burn because Shayla, the last breeding female dragon suffers an identical wound. The task to return the dragons to Coronnan falls to the apprentice magician who was previously thought too stupid to have a name. So, when he exhibits a strong magical talent using nearly forgotten solitary techniques, he is brought into the Commune and given the right to choose his own name. He chooses a grand name of a legendary warrior from ancient times: Yaake. Now he has to live up to it. His convoluted path to find the dragons leads him to isolated kingdom of Se Lennica, ruled by a man known as The Simeon, Coronnan's greatest enemy. The Simeon has stripped the land of its resources and now faces floods, landslides, and relentless climate change. He has usurped power from his young and na ve wife, the true queen of the land who controls the lacemaking industry, Se Lennica's only export. Shayla, cannot fly to freedom until Yaake can find a cure for her wound. He has to do it before his king dies and before catches up to him and the young woman whom Yaake loves but has been designated a sacrifice in the Simeon's last, desperate attempt to magically restore the land. Can Yaake and his new allies find a way out without magic? More importantly, can he aid his friends and the love of his life before they fall victim to The Simeon's cruel magic that draws power from blood and pain?

Crown Prince of Coronnan, Darville de Draconis, fell ill after being kidnapped by a rogue magician and ensorcelled into the form of a golden wolf. Though he feels fully recovered, the Council of Provinces and his regent-the same rogue magician who kidnapped him-will not allow him to be crowned king until he marries the princess of their choice. Princess Rossemikka of Rossemeyer comes with an impressive dowry and a vital military alliance. The problem is that she too has been the victim of a magical transformation and exchanged bodies and spirits with her pet cat. The placid and boring princess presented to Darville is less than suitable. However, on a magical night, with the aid of the deposed senior magician of the commune of magicians, the real Rossemikka is revealed to him. He will settle for no one less than his perfect princess, but time is running out. If Mikka is not returned to her own body soon, she will forever be only a beloved pet and not his queen. But how will his few friends and allies reverse the spell that traps her in an alien body, thus saving the love of his life and his kingdom from a power mad magician.

Being a Pixie King isn't all that it's cracked up to be. Chicory has always been a carefree ditch-weed of a Pixie. But now there's a war brewing between Pixie tribes, and Chicory has to take responsibility for himself and for a growing group of displaced Pixies. Finding shelter for them means he has to play nice with humans and not play tricks on them. Well, some tricks are necessary so big people don't take themselves too seriously. The offer of shelter in human Juliet's attic comes at a price. She keeps interfering with Chicory's plans to fix the romances of her children. And then there is a lost teen looking for her father. And his sweetheart Daisy may not have the patience to wait for him. All of them have to learn that running away isn't the answer. He needs to take his own advice and stop the war among the Pixies. But that's going to take more magic than Chicory possesses. Can all of his friends work together to help him save Pixie?

Mischievous Pixie, Thistle Down lands buck-naked in Memorial Fountain in full human size. She's been stripped of her lavender skin, purple hair, lovely wings, and her magic. Bewildered and lost, she searches for a human to befriend in hopes of being returned to Pixie and the Ten Acre Wood. To her dismay, the humans and her home are threatened by developers, arsonists, and predatory Faeries. Thistle is in for the first fight of her foolish life, hoping to save her home so that the Heart of all Pixies can continue to delight and educate more generations of youngsters about the value of nature, friendship, and truth. And then there's all that pesky romance stuff.

Anyone who puts love into their cooking, and makes the kitchen the heart of the family and the home can be a Kitchen Witch. This is the premise of Irene Radford's Spoonful of Magic, DAW Books, 11/7/2017. She extends the idea to a FaceBook page, and now a cookbook, chock full of family recipes from twenty-three contributors, many of them writers. From basic to fanciful, ethnic to homegrown, the reader can explore not only new foods, but some of the stories behind the families who generated them.