The year is 1895, and Danny Flint is a young man living in the shadow of his controlling father, Professor Flint, a famous stage magician whose fortunes are fading. Uncle Brady, Professor Flint’s trusted assistant and business manager and Danny’s best friend, cannot stay in the same hotel as them—Uncle Brady is African-American.
Danny is grieving over his mother’s recent accidental death. After a contentious relationship with her, he feels he’s to blame.
When Zena Troubetskoy, a beautiful mysterious lady, asks them to help her contact her husband, Danny and his father will confront the ethical dilemma between spiritualist séances and faked séances performed by stage magicians like them.
But things are not as they seem.
With Zena’s help, Danny will learn to reconcile himself with his grief and guilt, learn the astonishing secret of Uncle Brady’s identity, and assume his place at center stage as a talented magician in his own right.
Every Mystery Unexplained was published in David Copperfield’s Tales of the Impossible (HarperPrism), a gorgeous hardcover anthology including stories by fantasy masters Ray Bradbury, Joyce Carol Oates, and F. Paul Wilson.
Every Mystery Unexplained is on BarnesandNoble, US Kindle, Canada Kindle, UK Kindle, Apple, Kobo, and Smashwords.
Every Mystery Unexplained is also on Amazon.com in Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Japan, India, Mexico, and Netherlands.
New Review! “Magician ‘Professor’ Flint ends each performance by endeavoring to contact the Spirits of the Dead. An illusion only, of course. Surely, the audience knows that the white handkerchief dancing around the stage is the work of Flint’s assistants, not spirits. His sword fight with an apparition is only a matter of a well-placed pane of glass and proper lighting. No one can really contact the dead. Unfortunately, when lovely Zena Troubetzskoy offers the down-on-their-luck magic act a fat payment for a séance, Flint and his son, Daniel, can’t say no. But there is more to Zena and the man she wishes to contact, the man she left in the mountains, than meets the eye.
“This is the type of story I was hoping for from these anthologies: a blend of fiction and magic history. The setting is 1895 San Francisco. Professor Flint and his act have been trekking westward through cow-towns, railroad towns, and mining towns, complete with horses, wagons, and misfortunes. Quite similar to Howard Thurston’s tour of, as Mason puts it, the far West. The story is a nice juxtaposition between the magic ethos and spiritualism ethos and the Victorian era and the Old West. Mason knows her magic history (the title is from a Harry Kellar quote) and she knows San Francisco. . . .My favorite story of the year.”
--Katherine Nabity, The Writerly Reader
"Every Mystery Unexplained" has been republished in ODDITIES: 22 Stories.
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