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.

    Medusa's Web
    Medusa's Web
    Medusa's Web
    Audiobook12 hours

    Medusa's Web

    Written by Tim Powers

    Narrated by Chris Sorensen

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    From the award-winning author of Hide Me Among the Graves, Last Call, Declare, and Three Days to Never, a phantasmagoric, thrilling, mind-bending tale of speculative fiction in which one man must uncover occult secrets of 1920s Hollywood to save his family. In the wake of their Aunt Amity's suicide, Scott and Madeline Madden are summoned to Caveat, the eerie, decaying mansion in the Hollywood hills in which they were raised. But their decadent and reclusive cousins, the malicious wheelchair-bound Claimayne and his sister, Ariel, do not welcome Scott and Madeline's return to the childhood home they once shared. While Scott desperately wants to go back to their shabby South-of-Sunset lives, he cannot pry his sister away from this haunted "House of Usher in the Hollywood Hills" that is a conduit for the supernatural. Decorated by bits salvaged from old hotels and movie sets, Caveat hides a dark family secret that stretches back to the golden days of Rudolph Valentino and the silent film stars. A collection of hypnotic eight-limbed abstract images inked on paper allows the Maddens to briefly fragment and flatten time-to transport themselves into the past and future in visions that are both puzzling and terrifying. Though their cousins know little about these ancient "spiders" which provoke unpredictable temporal dislocations, Ariel and Claimayne have been using for years-an addiction that has brought Claimayne to the brink of selfish destruction. As Madeline falls more completely under Caveat's spell, Scott discovers that to protect her, he must use the perilous spiders himself. But will he unravel the mystery of the Madden family's past and finally free them. . . or be pulled deeper into their deadly web?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMay 6, 2016
    ISBN9781501926297
    Medusa's Web
    Author

    Tim Powers

    Tim Powers is the author of numerous novels including Hide Me Among the Graves, Three Days to Never, Declare, Last Call, and On Stranger Tides, which inspired the feature film Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. He has won the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award twice, and the World Fantasy Award three times. He lives in San Bernardino, California.

    Related to Medusa's Web

    Related audiobooks

    Fantasy For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Jay Kristoff

      Sep 8, 2021

      MOST NOVELISTS HAVE AT LEAST ONE book in a drawer that represents an early effort, a text that will never be offered up to a wider readership. In the case of Jay Kristoff, this book was a tale of bloodsuckers he wrote in 2008. “It was right at the ta

      3 min read

    • Article

      Find A New Home For Your Hauntings

      Oct 1, 2020

      Dark Moon Books editorial team promotes dark fiction by publishing multi-author anthologies and single author collections plus the occasional novel. They want ‘unusual and invigorating dark fiction’ which is ‘experimental, innovative, or progressive…

      1 min read

    • Article

      The Locksmith

      Jun 1, 2022

      THE LOCKSMITH cannot speak well. He never liked school. When he was a child, the others called him Tombstone. They threw things at him. Bottles and food waste and dirt clumps studded with gravel. Though he was much larger than they were, he remained

      9 min read

    • Article

      The Culling

      May 1, 2023

      The Culling
      8 min read

    • Article

      Running Away

      Feb 22, 2021

      Leaving London behind her, Millie drove faster, picturing thousands of crazed fans in pursuit, desperate for what – a lock of her hair? Or Julian; except after the last gig, somehow she knew he wouldn’t follow. She knew from bitter experience that di

      5 min read

    • Article

      All My Tomorrows

      May 10, 2022

      It was Misha’s first day minding the shop, and already she’d broken the fifth rule. Always lock the door immediately. When you had the most valuable merchandise in the universe, you had to take the utmost precautions. She hadn’t meant to disobey. It

      13 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Nov 1, 2023

      There’s the ones you get from cashiers,acquaintance coworkers, the husbandsof your wife’s childhood friends—they say it like tearing the last yellow pagefrom a pack of construction paper,not your first choice, the ink runs,you know whatever you do wi

      1 min read

    • Article

      A Double Life

      Dec 7, 2020

      Sadie is in the kitchen, already dressed in school uniform, fastening the clips on the violin she chose for her most recent birthday, when Gabriela heads downstairs the following morning. Seven years old: how the hell did that happen? Briefly, she wo

      6 min read

    • Article

      ‘Starling Days’: Featured Fiction from Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

      Apr 7, 2020

      In today's edition of featured fiction, we present an excerpt from Rowan Hisayo Buchanan's latest novel, Starling Days. The post ‘Starling Days’: Featured Fiction from Rowan Hisayo Buchanan appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Stump Of The World

      Dec 5, 2023

      At the stop sign before the library, Emma saw Gallo painting his yellow line as he had painted it for thirty years. The line highlighted a ten-foot-long crack in the road, a rogue speed bump that, unpainted, might do some damage to your car or your n

      18 min read

    • Article

      Thornhope, Indiana

      Jan 1, 2020

      Thornhope, Indiana
      17 min read

    • Article

      Bucksaw

      Jun 3, 2019

      From the back seat of the car, Benjamin read the gold-lettered sign at the edge of the rolling green lawn and said, “Why do they call it a correctional facility?” He’d meant only to think the question, rather than speak it, but lately, more and more,

      23 min read

    • Article

      Part 2 SOCKS

      Apr 1, 2022

      Part 2 SOCKS
      7 min read

    • Article

      Getting Up

      Oct 15, 2022

      Getting Up
      20 min read

    • Article

      DIVINE Intervention

      Jul 13, 2022

      DIVINE Intervention
      3 min read

    • Article

      My Mother’s Stalker

      Jan 16, 2024

      My Mother’s Stalker
      24 min read

    • Article

      Anna

      Feb 5, 2018

      Anna
      7 min read

    • Article

      MUM IS MISSING Liane Moriarty

      Sep 8, 2021

      MUM IS MISSING Liane Moriarty
      7 min read

    • Article

      Hunting T-rex

      Feb 12, 2023

      While ‘the little old lady from Taft’ doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as ‘the little old lady from Pasadena’ (who owned — according to songwriters Jan and Dean — a ‘brand new shiny red super stock Dodge’), Mark II and I were nevertheless on ou

      10 min read

    • Article

      Hunting T-rex

      Feb 12, 2023

      While ‘the little old lady from Taft’ doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as ‘the little old lady from Pasadena’ (who owned — according to songwriters Jan and Dean — a ‘brand new shiny red super stock Dodge’), Mark II and I were nevertheless on ou

      10 min read

    • Article

      Night Flying

      Aug 2, 2018

      Night Flying
      10 min read

    • Article

      High Ground

      Apr 23, 2020

      High Ground
      4 min read

    • Article

      THE HOUSE with the BLUE DOOR

      May 7, 2020

      THE HOUSE with the BLUE DOOR
      6 min read

    • Article

      How to Buy a Used Car During a Wildfire

      Jan 14, 2019

      I do not laugh but the children do. “I hate these fucking places,” I think again, turning the radio back on. The post How to Buy a Used Car During a Wildfire appeared first on The Millions.

      12 min read

    • Article

      MUM IS MISSING Liane Moriarty

      Sep 8, 2021

      MUM IS MISSING Liane Moriarty
      7 min read

    • Article

      Cynthia Zarin

      Dec 1, 2020

      We look at the map. When we arrive in France from King’s Cross the fields are striated with barbed wire and it is raining. At the station in Lille we contented ourselves with two mediocre sandwiches from a stand and a visit through the back to Notre-

      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Medusa's Web

    4/5

    58 ratings6 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Another “modern fantasy” novel by Tim Powers, who’s written some of my favorites. He follows his usual method of taking some historic and mythological subjects, then filling in the blanks with magic.In “Medusa’s Web” it opens with a couple early middle-age cousins living in a sprawling, run down house on the outskirts of Los Angeles, as two more of their cousins arrive to deal with the aftermath of their aunt, the now-former owner of the house dying. It’s clear that one of the cousins did something related to magic at the beginning, but it takes a long time to start to understand the magic in this book, how the “spiders” work to let the viewer manipulate time.With “Medusa’s Web” Powers takes us back to look at Hollywood in the silent film era, with the habits of stars All Nazimova and Rudolph Valentine as part of the plot leading to our four main characters dealing with issues in 2015.Powers writes in such detail about Los Angeles itself that I felt like I was there, riding along with the characters on the streets. Having visited L.A. a few times in the past, it was easy to visualize the city in this book.Overall, it was a good book. There’s some Tim Powers’ books I like better than this, and it took me about halfway through the book before I started to understand the magic involved and why the characters were doing the things they were doing. So, for me, the beginning was a bit tougher to get going than the average Powers book, but the conclusion was worth the extra effort.
    • 4/5
      Another one-sitting read from the great Tim Powers.

      I've been a fan since reading THE DRAWING OF THE DARK in 1980, and over the years since he's never failed to astonish and entertain me with his skill and imagination. This is no exception.

      Medusa's Web initially sets itself up as a Gothic horror, with its rambling old house and disfunctional- and weird - family members, but Powers quickly spins things off into fractured time streams, plots within plots and a mystery dating back to 1920's Hollywood. A word of warning though - if you're an arachnophobe, it's probably best to avoid this one, as there are spiders here that'll haunt your dreams.

      As ever, it's all heady stuff from Powers. There were a couple of places where I felt the complications of the mythos he built, and the amount of exposition needed to keep the plot going, was in danger of bringing the whole thing crashing down - but Powers is a master juggler, and keeps all the balls in the air just long enough to speed us along to the finale.

      A very enjoyable way to spend the day.
    • 4/5
      This is really a 3 star book, but it kept my attention, so I bumped it up a star. Tim Powers is one of those writers that is hit or miss, but whatever the quality, it is done spectacularly. The book is all over the place - jumping from time to time, with really no rhyme or reason, and a family that doesn't like each other, has to come together for a will when the matriarch, a great aunt, unexpectedly commits suicide.The "Spiders" really don't make a lot of sense - the author makes them whatever they need to be for the story, so getting a handle on the rules, isn't possible. The side story of what happened to Scott and Madeline parents didn't add anything to the main story, but it did muddle the main plot line. And when little Madeline falls in love with an adult at the tender age of eight, was inappropriate.However, I finished the book, and while not great, it was fun.
    • 3/5
      Ok so I love Tim Powers. "Last Call" is one of my favorite books ever. Full-stop.

      But I was not...as impressed with this outing.

      First off there was a lot here I liked. Powers is amazing at weaving (heh heh pun intended) these "secret histories," he's so good at making them feel real. It never seems reductive or ridiculous to run into famous figures in Powers' books. Of course Rudy Valentino was involved in mystical occult practices!! And that gift alone makes Powers' books worth reading.

      But the problem with this book is the modern-day characters are just really...lacking. The dialogue is flat and seems more of a way to get the readers up to speed with the plot than actual people talking to one another. It ends up reading like:

      "Hey remember when we were kids and we saw this weird thing happen?"
      "Yes I do, I wonder how it relates to current weirdness."
      "Huh I don't know. Also there's this REALLY BIG PLOT POINT that I'm going to tell you about right now"
      "Wow that's an interesting fact, I wonder what is going to happen next?"

      It just feels really forced in some ways, and I feel like Powers didn't spend enough time on character motivations; in this book, characters make huge decisions based on certain things but those certain things are just barely mentioned, or mentioned in passing without any real depth given to them. It made the reading really...hard to get through at times because the overarching idea of the novel is really interesting but the way it's played out is just...lacking.

      So overall not one of my favorites of Powers' books but definitely worth a read if you enjoy the author.
    • 4/5
      Another weird but satisfying urban ghost story populated with fictional and real characters from the past. Melding mythology, the occult, inter-temporal doorways, and one of the stranger time-travel mechanisms ever, this is an eclectic mix of genres that succeeds on many levels. No one I know of does weird contemporary fiction quite like Powers and this latest effort from him is no exception. If you are already a fan of Tim Powers, you will want to read this. If not, it might not be a bad introduction to his dark worlds that live just behind - or maybe somewhat adjacent to happy, sunny places like southern California.
    • 5/5
      I loved this book. It was a time travel, mystery, and fantasy all wrapped up into a nice story that keeps you guessing til the end. I would have like to know more about the origins of the spiders, but maybe that would have made it a very different story.