A Criminal Magic

A Criminal Magic

<span><i>THE NIGHT CIRCUS meets THE PEAKY BLINDERS in Lee Kelly's new crossover fantasy novel.</i><br /><br />Magic is powerful, dangerous and addictive - and after passage of the 18th Amendment, it is finally illegal.<br /><br />It's<br /> 1926 in Washington, DC, and while Anti-Sorcery activists have achieved<br />the Prohibition of sorcery, the city's magic underworld is booming.<br />Sorcerers cast illusions to aid mobsters' crime sprees. Smugglers<br />funnel magic contraband in from overseas. Gangs have established secret<br /> performance venues where patrons can lose themselves in magic, and take<br /> a mind-bending, intoxicating elixir known as the sorcerer's shine.<br /><br />Joan<br /> Kendrick, a young sorcerer from Norfolk County, Virginia accepts an<br />offer to work for DC's most notorious crime syndicate, the Shaw Gang,<br />when her family's home is repossessed. Alex Danfrey, a first-year<br />Federal Prohibition Unit trainee with a complicated past and talents of<br />his own, becomes tapped to go undercover and infiltrate the Shaws. <br /><br />Through<br /> different paths, Joan and Alex tread deep into the violent, dangerous<br />world of criminal magic - and when their paths cross at the Shaws'<br />performance venue, despite their orders, and despite themselves, Joan<br />and Alex become enchanted with one another. But when gang alliances<br />begin to shift, the two sorcerers are forced to question their ultimate<br />allegiances and motivations. And soon, Joan and Alex find themselves<br />pitted against each other in a treacherous, heady game of cat-and-mouse.<br /><br />A CRIMINAL MAGIC casts a spell of magic, high stakes and intrigue against the backdrop of a very different Roaring Twenties.</span>