Revelations of the Impossible Piddingtons by Barry H. Wiley

Young adult historical thriller set in 1890-95 that tracks the life of Kyame Piddington, beginning when she is eleven and struggling to take her dead mother’s place in the family second sight act. As Kyame matures in the act and as a young woman, she encounters thieves, bank robbers, killers, spirit mediums — and the rejection of polite society as only a “theatre girl”. At sixteen Kyame has become a tall, black-haired green eyed beauty has become an accomplished artist, an experienced and hardened stage performer, a mesmerist whose subtle powers work some of the time, and, as seen by Dr. Mar-Tan, a Chinese astrologer, an implacable assassin.

Avenging the brutal murder of her father by the Bing On tong in San Francisco, she leaves,Wong Woon, the leader of the Bing On, with a silver dagger in his heart and vanishes from the tong headquarters leaving the windowless office of Wong locked from the inside. The tong members are convinced the girl is a tulku, an occult wraith that can pass through walls, kill and then vanish. They are almost right. Revelations is the first of a planned trilogy.

Revelations of the Impossible Piddingtons is available for the Kindle via Amazon.

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Barry has published two biographies of young women in the nineteenth century who performed apparently impossible feats, both of which books received positive reviews in the UK and the U.S.: The Indescribable Phenomenon: The Life and Mysteries of Anna Eva Fay, Hermetic Press, Seattle, 2005. Harry Houdini called Anna Eva Fay “the greatest female mystifier”; The Georgia Wonder: Lulu Hurst and the Secret that Shook America, Hermetic Press, Seattle, 2004. Fifteen-year-old, Lulu Hurst, discovered in 1884 that she could apparently alter the laws of physics at will, went on the stage to demonstrate her power, and in two years earned the equivalent of a million dollars. In an appendix, the book teaches the Hurst act. Both books are now almost out of print.

He has a new book appearing from McFarland Publishing, The Thought Reader Craze, in the first quarter of 2012 which describes the urgent need of prominent scientists, physicians and philosophers in the period 1870-1910 to confirm that telepathy is “a fact of nature”. Barry will be lecturing on that topic at the Los Angeles Conference on Magic History, November, 2011. In the last few years, he has also lectured on the history of magic and mentalism at several venues from the Magic Castle in Hollywood and the Magic Circle in London, to the annual Meeting of the Minds of the Psychic Entertainers Association.

He has also published numerous non-fiction articles in the U.S. and Europe in History Magazine as well as other journals on subjects as: Thugee; Gambling systems used at Monte Carlo prior to WWI; the source of the werewolf legend, and other topics.

Further, he has also published two mystery stories featuring John Randall Brown, a former Silicon Valley executive turned mentalist — and reluctant detective; and a prize-winning short story, “The Memory Café” set in Boston’s North End in which a bunch of violets destroys two lives.

In a addition to the ITW, Barry Wiley is a member of the Mystery Writers of America; an Associate of the Inner Magic Circle, London; and a member of the Order of Merlin of the International Brotherhood of Magicians.