Book 1993

Dreams Underfoot

by Charles De Lint

Published 1 April 1993
I have spread my dreams under your feet: tread softly, for you tread upon my dreams... So said Irish poet William Butler Yeats, and so Charles de Lint has done. He has spread before us the wondrous fabric of his dreams in this tour de force of modern urban fantasy. De Lint, today's leading writer of urban magical tales, has created the imaginary city of Newford and peopled its streets, its music clubs, and back alleys with characters both dark and bright, both human and inhuman, both frightening and wondrous fair. Jilly paints magic in rough city streets. Geordie plays fiddle and longs for a ghost. Christy collects urban folklore and myths, while the angel of Grasso Street gathers the young and the scared and the poor and the lost. The gemmin live in abandoned cars, the skells traverse the tunnels below, mermaids swim in the grey harbor waters and fill the cold nights with their song. Like John Crowley's Little, Big and Mark Helprin's A Winter's Tale, Dreams Underfoot is a Must Read book not only for fans of urban fantasy but for all who seek magic in everyday life.

The Onion Girl

by Charles De Lint

Published 1 October 2001
Charles de Lint's stories of Newford and the magic that permeates reality blend Native American and European myth and legend. Jilly Coppercorn is one of de Lint's most popular characters; this is her story.

Widdershins

by Charles De Lint

Published 16 May 2006

In Widdershins, fantasy author Charles de Lint has delivered one of his most accessible and moving works of his career.

Jilly Coppercorn and Geordie Riddell. Since they were introduced in the first Newford story, Timeskip, back in 1989, their friends and readers alike have been waiting for them to realize what everybody else already knows: that they belong together. But they've been more clueless about how they feel for each other than the characters in When Harry Met Sally. Now in Widdershins, a stand-alone novel of fairy courts set in shopping malls and the Bohemian street scene of Newford's Crowsea area, Jilly and Geordie's story is finally being told.

Before it's over, we'll find ourselves plunged into the rancorous and sometimes violent conflict between the magical North American animal people and the more newly-arrived fairy folk. We'll watch as Jilly is held captive in a sinister world based on her own worst memories--and Geordie, attempting to help, is sent someplace even worse. And we'll be captivated by the power of love and determination to redeem ancient hatreds and heal old magics gone sour.

To walk widdershins is to walk counterclockwise or backwards around something. It's a classic pathway into the fairy realm. It's also the way people often back slowly into the relationships that matter, the real ones that make for a life.

A June 2006 Book Sense Pick


Forests of the Heart

by Charles De Lint

Published 3 June 2000
In the Old Country, they called them the Gentry: ancient spirits of the land, magical, amoral, and dangerous. When the Irish emigrated to North America, some of the Gentry followed...only to find that the New World already had spirits of its own, called "manitou" and other such names by the Native tribes.
Now generations have passed, and the Irish have made homes in the new land, but the Gentry still wander homeless on the city streets. Gathering in the city shadows, they bide their time and dream of power. As their dreams grow harder, darker, fiercer, so do the Gentry themselves--appearing, to those with the sight to see them, as hard and dangerous men, invariably dressed in black.
Bettina can see the Gentry, and knows them for what they are. Part Indian, part Mexican, she was raised by her grandmother to understand the spirit world. Now she lives in Kellygnow, a massive old house run as an arts colony on the outskirts of Newford, a world away from the Southwestern desert of her youth. Outsider her nighttime window, she often spies the dark men, squatting in the snow, smoking, brooding, waiting. She calls them "los lobos," the wolves, and stays clear of them--until the night one follows her to the woods, and takes her hand....
Ellie, an independent young sculptor, is another with magic in her blood, but she refuses to believe it, even though she, too, sees the dark men. A strange old woman has summoned Ellie to Kellygnow to create a mask for her based on an ancient Celtic artifact. It is the mask of the mythic Summer King--another thing Ellie does not believe in. Yet lack of belief won't dim the power of the mast, or its dreadful intent.
Donal, Ellie's former lover, comes from an Irish family and knows the truth at the heart of the old myths. He thinks he can use the mask and the "hard men" for his own purposes. And Donal's sister, Miki, a punk accordion player, stands on the other side of the Gentry's battle with the Native spirits of the land. She knows that more than her brother's soul is at stake. All of Newford is threatened, human and mythic beings alike.
Once again Charles de Lint weaves the mythic traditions of many cultures into a seamless cloth, bringing folklore, music, and unforgettable characters to life on modern city streets.

Spirits in the Wires

by Charles De Lint

Published 1 August 2003

Memory and Dream

by Charles De Lint

Published 1 October 1994
Memory and Dream is the story of Isabelle Copley, a young artist who once lived in the bohemian quarter of the northern city of Newford. As a student of Vincent Rushkin, a cruel but gifted painter, she discovered an awesome power - to craft images so real that they came to life. With her paintbrush she called into being the wild spirits of the wood, made her dreams come true with canvas and paint. But when the forces she unleashed brought unexpected tragedy to those she loved, she ran away from Newford, turning her back on her talent - and on her dreams. Now, twenty years later, the power of Newford has reached out to draw her back. To fulfill a promise to a long-dead friend, Isabelle must come to terms with the shattering memories she has long denied, and unlock the slumbering power of her brush. She must accept her true feelings for her newfound lover John Sweetgrass, a handsome young Native American who is the image of her most intense imaginings. And, in a dark reckoning with her old master, she must find the courage to live out her dreams, and bring the magic back to life.

Someplace to be Flying

by Charles De Lint

Published 20 March 1998

Trader

by Charles De Lint

Published 1 January 1920
Max Trader is a luthier, a maker of guitars. Johnny Devlin is chronically unemployed. Trader is solitary, quiet, responsible. Devlin is a lady-killer, a drunk, a charming loser. When they inexplicably awake in each other's bodies, Devlin gleefully moves into Trader's comfortable and stable existence, leaving Trader to pick up the pieces of a life he had no part in breaking. Penniless, friendless, homeless, Trader begins a journey that will take him beyond the streets of Newford to an otherworld of dreams and spirits, where he must confront both the unscrupulous Devlin and his own deepest fears. This is a novel of identity, an adult coming-of-age story in which a man discovers his own hidden strengths with the aid of a strange and wonderful community of unexpected friends...and of a beautiful musician who is willing to follow him beyond the boundaries of the world.

Spiritwalk

by Charles De Lint

Published 1 May 1992
Tamson House, in modern, urban Ottawa, is a rambling, eccentric curiosity of a house - and a place of hidden Power. Built at a point where the leylines meet, upon land that was once a sacred site, it is the gateway to a spirit-world where Celtic and Native American magicks mingle and leak into our own.

Moonlight & Vines

by Charles De Lint

Published 30 October 1999
Familiar to Charles de Lint's ever-growing audience as the setting of the novels Memory & Dream, Trader, and Someplace to Be Flying, Newford is the quintessential North American city, tough and streetwise on the surface and rich with hidden magic for those who can see.

Now de Lint returns to this extraordinary city for a third volume of short stories set there, including several never before published in book form. Here is enchantment under a street-lamp: the landscape of urban North America as only Charles de Lint can show it. "Blending Lovecraft's imagery, Dunsany's poetry, Carroll's surrealism, and Alice Hoffman's small-town strangeness", wrote Interzone on Dreams Underfoot, de Lint's Newford tales are "a haunting mixture of human warmth and cold inevitability, of lessons learned and prices to be paid".


Muse and Reverie

by Charles De Lint

Published 8 December 2009

The Ivory and the Horn

by Charles De Lint

Published 1 April 1995
In the city of Newford, when the stars and the vibes are right, you can touch magic. Mermaids sing in the murky harbor, desert spirits crowd the night, and dreams are more real than waking.
Charles de Lint began his chronicles of the extraordinary city of Newford in "Memory & Dream" and the short-story collection "Dreams Underfoot." In "The Ivory and the Horn, " this uncommonly gifted craftsman weaves a new tapestry of stark realism and fond hope, mean streets and boulevards of dreams, where you will rediscover the power of love and longing, of wishes and desires, and of the magic that hovers at the edge of everyday life.

Tapping the Dream Tree

by Charles De Lint

Published 23 November 2002