Search Worlds Without End

Not far from the city there is an ancient wood, forgotten by the modern world, where Mystery walks in the moonlight. He wears the shape of a stag, or a goat, or a horned man wearing a cloak of leaves. He is summoned by the music of the pipes or a fire of bones on Midsummer's Evening. He is chased by the hunt and shadowed by the wild girl.

This short story originally appeared in Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine Issue 7: Spring 1990. The story can also be found in Spiritwalk (1992), Waifs and Strays (2002) and The Very Best of Charles de Lint (2010).

When Sara and Jamie discovered the seemingly ordinary artifacts, they sensed the pull of a dim and distant place. A world of mists and forests, of ancient magics, mythical beings, ageless bards...and restless evil.

Now, with their friends and enemies alike--Blue, the biker; Keiran, the folk musician; the Inspector from the RCMP; and the mysterious Tom Hengyr--Sara and Jamie are drawn into this enchanted land through the portals of Tamson House, that sprawling downtown edifice that straddles two worlds.

Sweeping from ancient Wales to the streets of Ottawa today, Moonheart will entrance you with its tale of this world and the other one at the very edge of sight...and the unforgettable people caught up in the affairs of both. A tale of music, and motorcycles, and fey folk beyond the shadows of the moon. A tale of true magic; the tale of Moonheart.

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.

In the overgrown garden of Tamson House, a Coyote Man waits, green children walk, and music rises to greet the moon. From the garden, a vast and primal wood is just one spirit-step away... and in that wood is something that threatens the very existence of Tamson House, and all who dwell within.

Charles de Lint returns to the spirit-world of his bestselling Moonheart in a splendid work of urban fantasy, bringing myth, music, and magic into our modern world.

I've flirted with variations on the mystery form in other books. Mulengro, Angel of Darkness and From a Whisper to a Scream (the latter two first published under the pen name of Samuel M. Key) were all, at their heart, police procedurals, sparked mostly, I'd guess, from years of reading Ed McBain. I'd also touched on spy thrillers (the RCMP sections of Moonheart), tropes such as organized crime (the Mafia in Greenmantle), and various hardboiled characters who've shown up in the pages of various novels and stories.

But this was the first time that I sat down to deliberately write a mystery novel, with a PI as a lead character, and no fantasy elements whatsoever, hedging my bets only slightly by giving Jevon "Jake" Swann a love for Celtic music. (It doesn't matter where you put Celtic music; it always holds a touch of magic to it.) And then I set the story in Ottawa, because that's where I was living at the time and I liked having my characters walk around in the same neighbourhoods that I did, or could.

--Charles de Lint

Cat Midhir is a writer of magical fantasy novels. But Cat has a secret - her plots are not culled from the realms of her imagination but from the realms of sleep. But suddenly the dreams stop and Cat is deprived of the land of her muse - and a series of murders is experienced by the town.