In the year 1284, the legendary Pied Piper punished the villagers of Hamelin, Germany, by leading their children off into a hole that opened in a mountainside. The parents never saw their offspring again. This much is common knowledge thanks to the tale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, which came to be in the year 1482.

What is less well known is that the same entity, the mysterious and magical Piper, went plenty of places besides Hamelin. Often, the outcome was the same. And over the course of his travels, he accumulated many, many children. What became of them has been one of the world’s greatest mysteries.

Until now.

In this rollicking first installment in the Piper Gods series, Aramander and the Mist, the chase in on as nonagenarian Delta blues whiz Aramander Jones, semi-possessed “ghost hunters” Dayla McCale and Tilly Vanderheim, and a guy named Mac Drayden who’s gotten in way over his head with things that aren’t supposed to exist find themselves fleeing from everything from black-eyed people to shadow beings to a strange patch of sentient fog. Racing from the bayous of Louisiana to New Mexico’s Sacramento Mountains, they find themselves guided by the strangest compass imaginable: an “undead” crab leg that directs them on toward...well, truth is they haven’t a clue where it’s leading them. All they know is they have to get there before something gets them.

From the mad wizard behind Little Women with Big Guns, Sinbad and the Argonauts, Krakenstein vs. Koalatron, Ghost Hunter, and A Year in the Borderlands (and of course the Dragon’s Game Trilogy).