Arcadia Bell series

## Genre Information

Urban Fantasy
Paranormal Romance

Witches and Wizards

 (Series Content Ratings Click on Explicit Ratings for details.)

## About the Series

* **Genres:** Urban Fantasy, Paranormal Romance, Witches and Wizards
* **Theme:**
* **Narrative style**: First person narrative told by Arcadia "Cady" Bell.

## Series Description

From the Author's Website: It's about an occult mage who owns a tiki bar in central California that serves Earthbound demons. It’s also about a girl who falls in love with a divorced dad twice her age, and the ensuing trials of establishing a new family with him and his teenage kid. It’s also a love letter to Thelema and medieval demonology, and an exploration of race and culture and good and evil. Whichever level you want to read it on it is fine by me.

When we first meet Cady in Kindling the Moon, she is forced to re-visit the fact that her parents, both powerful magicians in their own right, were framed for murders they did not commit. For the past seven years, Cady has been able to slip under the radar, conducting an incognito livelihood as a bartender—but now, she unexpectedly is forced to prove her parent's innocence.

## Books in Series

**Arcadia Bell series**:

1. Kindling the Moon (The Arcadia Bell Series Book 1) (2011)
2. Summoning the Night (The Arcadia Bell Series Book 2) (2012)
3. Binding the Shadows (The Arcadia Bell Series Book 3) (2013)
4. Banishing the Dark (The Arcadia Bell Series Book 4) (2014) ~ **final**

## World Building

### Setting

* Set in the **Big Sur** area on California's Central Coast—in the fictional town of Morella, in which Arcadia lives.
* Primarily set in two fictional cities on the central coast of California: Morella, and the nearby beach community of La Sirena.

### Fantasy Elements

Mages, magicians, witches, demons, telekinesis, empathy, persuasion.

There are two main types of supernaturals: **magicians** (similar to mages or witches) and **demons**. Each supernatural person/creature has his or her own particular knack—a magical ability (e.g., empathy, telekinesis, persuasion ). They gain the ability to change back and forth from human form and demonic form using a powerful spell.

### World

**Humans** who don't believe in the existence of **Earthbounds**, magic, or anything else supernatural are called **savages**. If a child has one Earthbound parent and one human parent, he or she is always human and is called an "**Ugly Duckling**." Each **demon** has a colorful halo (similar to an aura), but most magicians don't, so Arcadia's silver halo sets her apart.

### Protagonists

Arcadia Bell
This series follows the adventures of Arcadia ("Cady") Bell (aka Seléne Duval), a 25-year-old magician with developing powers and a tragic family history. Arcadia has a magical helper in Priya, her personal guardian, an Æthyric messenger spirit that can be called on for information or help. As the series opens, Priya appears to Cady in the form of a noncorporeal hologram that has a birdlike head and a unisex body. Priya is important to Cady because of its ability to relay messages across and within the Æthyr.
Arcadia has been on her own and on the run for seven years, ever since her parents were accused of the brutal, magical murders of four leaders of several magical orders. Her parents faked their own deaths and escaped together. They faked Arcadia's death, too, but left her behind to be looked after by the Ekklesia Eleusia (E.E.), the occult order to which they belonged. Arcadia has gone through a series of faked identities, and now she finally has settled down into a life in which she feels relatively safe—as the half-owner of a tiki bar where she works as a bartender and bouncer. Arcadia can cast powerful spells, but she is a self-taught magician, without much training.
## Book Descriptions

1. Kindling the Moon
Meet Arcadia Bell: bartender, renegade magician, fugitive from the law. . . . Being the spawn of two infamous occultists (and alleged murderers) isn't easy, but freewheeling magician Arcadia 'Cady' Bell knows how to make the best of a crummy situation. After hiding out for seven years, she's carved an incognito niche for herself slinging drinks at the demon-friendly Tambuku Tiki Lounge. But she receives an ultimatum when unexpected surveillance footage of her notorious parents surfaces: either prove their innocence or surrender herself. Unfortunately, the only witness to the crimes was an elusive Æthyric demon, and Cady has no idea how to find it. She teams up with Lon Butler, an enigmatic demonologist with a special talent for sexual spells and an arcane library of priceless stolen grimoires. Their research soon escalates into a storm of conflict involving missing police evidence, the decadent Hellfire Club, a ruthless bounty hunter, and a powerful occult society that operates way outside the law. If Cady can't clear her family name soon, she'll be forced to sacrifice her own life . . . and no amount of running will save her this time.
2. Summoning the Night (2012)
MAGICAL TRICKS. DEMONIC TREATS. After narrowly escaping her fate as a sacrificial scapegoat, Arcadia Bell is back to normal. Or at least as ordinary as life can be for a renegade magician and owner of a tiki bar that caters to Earthbound demons. She's gearing up for the busiest day of the year—Halloween—when a vengeful kidnapper paralyzes the community. The influential head of the local Hellfire Club taps Cady to track down the fiendish bogeyman, and now that she's dating red-hot Lon Butler, the Club's wayward son, she can hardly say no. Cady and Lon untangle a gruesome thirty-year trail of clues that points to danger for the club members' children. But locating the person behind the terror will require some metaphysical help from Cady's loyal bar patrons as well as her potent new Moonchild powers—and she'd better figure it out before the final victim disappears and her own darkest secret becomes her biggest enemy.
3. Binding the Shadows (2013)
In the third book in this beloved and “riveting” (Romantic Times) urban fantasy series, demon-friendly tiki bar owner Arcadia Bell discovers more about her own evolving, and possibly destructive, magical abilities when her bar is the target of a demonic crime wave. Renegade mage and bartender Arcadia Bell has had a rough year, but now the door to her already unstable world is unhinging. When a citywide crime wave erupts, Cady's demon-friendly tiki bar is robbed by Earthbounds wielding surreal demonic abilities that just flat-out shouldn't exist. With the help of her devilishly delicious boyfriend, Lon Butler, Cady sets out to find the people who wronged her—but her targets aren't the only ones experiencing unnatural metamorphoses. Can Cady track down the monsters responsible before the monster inside her destroys everything—and everyone—she loves? If she survives this adventure, one thing is certain: it's last call for life as she knows it.
4. Banishing the Dark (2014)
The fourth and final installment of a "riveting" (RT Book reviews) urban fantasy series about a renegade mage and the demons who love her. Complicated does not begin to describe Arcadia Bell's life right now: unnatural magical power, another brush with death, and a murderous mother who's not only overbearing but determined to take permanent possession of Cady's body. Forced to delve deep into the mystery surrounding her own birth, Cady must uncover which evil spell her parents cast during her conception…and how to reverse it. Fast. As she and her lover Lon embark on a dangerous journey through her magical past, Lon's teenage son Jupe sneaks off for his own investigation. Each family secret they uncover is darker than the last, and Cady, who has worn many identities—Moonchild, mage, fugitive—is about to add one more to the list.