Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Never Burn A Witch: A Rowan Gant Investigation
    Never Burn A Witch: A Rowan Gant Investigation
    Never Burn A Witch: A Rowan Gant Investigation
    Ebook497 pages8 hours

    Never Burn A Witch: A Rowan Gant Investigation

    By M. R. Sellars

    3.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    NEVER BURN A WITCH: A Rowan Gant Investigation (Book 2)

    THEY BURN WITCHES, DON'T THEY?

    Take one part twisted sociopath and add a double shot of psychosis-fueled misinterpretations of Bible scripture and prophecy, then toss in a copy of a fifteenth-century Witch hunting manual known as the Malleus Maleficarum. Mix well. What do you get? An even more twisted sociopath who now believes he is on a divine mission from God to single-handedly resurrect the Inquisition of medieval Europe—and he is armed with the instructions for doing so.

    Set him loose on the world and he becomes a serious problem.

    Set him loose in Saint Louis and he becomes my serious problem.

    My name is Rowan Gant. The police call me their “Occult Practices and Alternative Religions Consultant.” That is just their media-friendly spin on what I really am—that being the unofficial Witch of the Major Case Squad.

    You see, there is a bit more to me than just a cranium filled with arcane knowledge of religious history and the occult. I also have this unwanted affliction—I can hear the voices of the dead. To be specific, I hear murder victims crying out to me from the dark hereafter. The more heinous their deaths, the louder they are. Not all Witches can hear them. I’m just unlucky that way, I guess.

    At any rate, you can rest assured, given the torture and murder spree this latest psycho is on, the din inside my head right now is damn near unbearable...

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWillowTree Press
    Release dateAug 16, 2010
    ISBN9781452446912
    Never Burn A Witch: A Rowan Gant Investigation
    Author

    M. R. Sellars

    A member of the ITW (International Thriller Writers), M. R. Sellars is a relatively unassuming homebody who, in his own words, considers himself just a "guy with a lot of nightmares and a word processing program." Legend has it he started making up stories to entertain a stuffed bear during his single digit years, then began writing them down sometime around his early teens when the growing catalogue of fiction started causing him to experience migraines. Although he had several short stories and newspaper articles published during his early adult life, it wasn't until 2000 that his first full-length novel, Harm None: A Rowan Gant Investigation, hit bookstore shelves, officially launching the acclaimed paranormal thriller series. Sellars says that the biggest adjustment he has had to make with his writing career is coping with the time spent away from his family while traveling on promotional tours. Still, he approaches the necessity of public appearances with the same humorously deadpan and satirical wit that he applies to life in general, stating, "As long as I have an RC Cola and a bag of peanuts, I'm all good, Bubba." All of the current novels in Sellars' continuing Rowan Gant Investigations saga have spent several consecutive weeks on numerous bookstore bestseller lists as well as a consistent showing on the Amazon.com Horror/Occult top 100. In 2010 a short e-novella featuring a supporting character from the RGI cast spawned a new series, The Special Agent Constance Mandalay Novels, the first in the spinoff being IN THE BLEAK MIDWINTER, which hit the streets November 2011. Sellars currently resides in the Midwest with his incomparably amazing wife, equally fantastic daughter, and a pair of felines he describes as, "the competition." At home, when not writing or taking care of the household, he indulges his passions for cooking and hanging out with friends. In order to satisfy his lifelong dream of being a satirical humor columnist for a major metropolitan newspaper, twice each week he removes his glasses, dons blue tights and a red cape, then blogs about the incredibly bizarre world that is his life as a writer, husband, and father. It has been said that his blog articles sometimes blur the line between fiction and reality. To that Sellars responds, "What line?" M. R. Sellars can be located on the web wherever there is a virtual bar serving virtual single malt Scotch, single barrel bourbon, good Irish whis...

    Read more from M. R. Sellars

    Related to Never Burn A Witch

    Titles in the series (12)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Thrillers For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Ready, Set, Let go!

      May 15, 2019

      Ready, Set, Let go!
      11 min read

    • Article

      Let’s Play Dead

      Mar 3, 2020

      There was a man, let’s call him Henry VIII. There was his wife, let’s call her Anne B. Let’s give them a castle and make it nice. Let’s give her many boy babies but make them dead. Let’s give him a fussy way of being. Let’s make her smart and sneaky,

      17 min read

    • Article

      We All Live in Uncertain

      Jul 30, 2020

      “Think of Caddo as a maze of lakes within lakes,” says John Winn, proprietor of Caddo Outback Tours, as the two of us settle into a small Go-Devil boat roped to a dock in Uncertain, on the border of northern Louisiana. For two decades, Winn has given

      6 min read

    • Article

      Frank’s Fable

      Mar 18, 2021

      Frank’s Fable
      4 min read

    • Article

      Stockpiling for Winter

      Dec 14, 2018

      Stockpiling for Winter
      3 min read

    • Article

      Lightning Can Strike Twice

      Sep 29, 2021

      YEARS ago, we lived in a hamlet on the South Downs, where, on hot, dry summer evenings, we would sit out to watch the lightning flash and flicker out at sea. Sometimes, the lightning was accompanied by rolls of distant thunder and we felt a little li

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Witch Finders

      Jul 16, 2020

      Beth pulled her cloak tightly around her. It was the very last day of October and the air was damp and chill. Dead autumn leaves lay in deep piles in the woods and smoke curled into the night air from her cottage. Not far to go now. She bent her head

      4 min read

    • Article

      Tessa Castro

      Aug 24, 2022

      IN COMPETITION No 283 you were invited to write a poem called Things Fall Apart. Martin Brown wrote some close parody of Yeats, and when his shopping bag burst, ‘The best splat all the kitchen, while the walls / Are caught with passionfruit at veloci

      2 min read

    • Article

      Memories Of A Miracle

      Dec 1, 2023

      Memories Of A Miracle
      8 min read

    • Article

      Four Of A Kind

      May 3, 2023

      Four Of A Kind
      4 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Jan 1, 2021

      Light delimits the darkness as snowgives shape to the silence of winter trees.Above a rooftop, the shadow of illness hoversindistinguishable from the wraithsof common chimney smoke.Strip skin from flesh, flesh from boneto behold the comical, adumbrat

      4 min read

    • Article

      My Dinner with Denis Johnson

      Jun 25, 2018

      My Dinner with Denis Johnson
      13 min read

    • Article

      Roger's PROFANISAURUS

      Nov 19, 2020

      Roger's PROFANISAURUS
      8 min read

    • Article

      Summer Beach Reads

      Jan 10, 2021

      Summer Beach Reads
      7 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Nov 1, 2018

      He threw the pale pink envelopes into the trashand smashed the Mickey Mouse phone hanging up. And when his wife asked you okay? he said okay,then took a twistoff to the back, screaming FUCK so loud he spooked the treefrogs and cicadas.He’d got canned

      2 min read

    • Article

      Excerpt

      Dec 12, 2019

      He was an angry man, and he was an ugly man, and he was tall, and he was pacing. Not much space for it in the new home, just a few rooms lined up in a row, underneath a series of slow-moving ceiling fans, an array of antique clocks ticking on one wal

      4 min read

    • Article

      Excerpts From The Works Of The 2024 Whiting Award Winners

      Apr 10, 2024

      The 2024 Whiting Award winners were announced Wednesday night. Below are excerpts from their work.

      19 min read

    • Article

      Hardly Never in Vegas: Fat Johnny Little and Salty Salt Sue make a break for the desert.

      Aug 8, 2013

      Salty Salt Sue met Fat Johnny Little at a card game so hot it burned a girl, the sultry Louisiana night dampening her clothes, making her tingle from the waist down. She sat next to Vinnie DeLuca, who bore a passing resemblance to Dillinger—his penci

      11 min read

    • Article

      Hardly Never in Vegas: Fat Johnny Little and Salty Salt Sue make a break for the desert.

      Jun 18, 2015

      Salty Salt Sue met Fat Johnny Little at a card game so hot it burned a girl, the sultry Louisiana night dampening her clothes, making her tingle from the waist down. She sat next to Vinnie DeLuca, who bore a passing resemblance to Dillinger—his penci

      11 min read

    • Article

      All It Takes Is A Spark

      Nov 25, 2019

      All It Takes Is A Spark
      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Never Burn A Witch

    3.5/5

    43 ratings6 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      Liked it. Read it at night and I havke to admit that there were a lot of strange noises around :)
    • 1/5
      This is the second in the Rowan Gant series, set in St. Louis, Mo, and featuring a male witch as the main character. I tried to like this series, but I simply don't. The first book was extremely gory, with far too vivid descriptions of the spectacular murders, and this one follows that pattern. There's just too much "woo-woo" witchy stuff, too, from prophetic dreams and recurring ghostly characters (murder victims from the first book coming back to help solve murders in this one? Come on!) and it simply felt way too contrived to me. This was a DNF and I won't be trying anymore in this series.
    • 4/5
      Another exciting Rowan Grant mystery. This time he is rattled by a religious serial killer who believes he is ridding the world of evil by killing the Witches of St Louis. The book is a little more graphic than the previous book and it still has the obsessive descriptions of his wife's hair colour, but the story is strong and a reader can easily overlook all that. Like the first book I kept reading to the end even at the expense of other more productive things I should have been doing. I liked the fact that the ending was not so neat and tidy and most mystery thrillers. Rowan gets more human in this book, which added to his character. HIs wife was not really in this story at all.Another great pagan fiction book
    • 4/5
      The Rowan Gant books commit a pet peeve I have with some "mysteries" ... it's not actually a mystery book. In the mystery, there is actually a mystery. The investigator and the reader meet the bad guy in the first part of the book and slowly figure out who s/he is by putting together the clues. I'm sorry, this just doesn't follow the mystery archtype and it bugs me. Archtypes are there for a reason -- they work!
    • 4/5
      I was looking forward to this second book in the Rowan Gant Investigations. And it was still good. But I did not find this story as interesting as the first one. Not very in-depth. A lot of fluff and flowery descriptions around a fairly straight forward and brief main story line. Felicity's auburn mane started to go on my nerves, just slightly. And how many times can Ben Storm stroke the back of his neck to indiacte deep thought processes? Why is he a native American Indian? Normally, when introducing something like that, there is a point to it, that contributes to the story. And we still haven't found out, why the killer in the first book did, what he did...
    • 2/5
      A madan is terrorising the pagan community of St Louis, the killer is intent on reviving the Burning Times of the 1700's. When a succession of wiccans are found tortured and killed with biblical quotes left at the scene and the monogram of Christ etched into their skin, the police again call on the aid of Rowan Gant a practising Wiccan. The stakes are raised this time as Rowan could well be the next victim. This is the second installment of MR Sellars Rowan Gant series the first book of this is Harm None. 'Never Burn A Witch' benefits from a very interesting plot and the fact that the author knows his stuff when it comes to Wicca. I have to confess that this book promises more than it delivers. The character of Rowan Gant is a wonderful creation and the forays into his wiccan powers of channeling are very readable but the author's prose style can be annoying at times. Sellars seems to take delight in never using four words when ten will do, and this can be wearing as well as it severely slowing down the plot. Sellars also commits one of my pet peeves with the character of Felicity, Rowan's very Irish-American wife in that she may as well have caricature stamped on her forehead and be wearing a 'Kiss me I'm Oirish' hat throughout the novel. Despite my grumbles about the author's style, this isn't a bad book. The plot is strong enough to keep the reader turning the pages, but these gripes definitely take this from being unmissable to the borrow from the library category. This is one for readers who want a thriller that's a little different to idle away an afternoon on.

    Book preview

    Never Burn A Witch - M. R. Sellars

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1