Jon Hackett, magician, mentalist, and music aficionado, created a gift for the community of a wonderful thread of what he feels are GREAT e-books/downloads. With his blessing, I have decided to start a similar thread here to keep HIS gift pristine.

I think of the Café in terms of "stone soup." For those that are cocking an eyebrow ala Mr. Spock, please allow me to explain. The stone soup idea is that each person is a chef and contributes ingredients for the good of all.

I don't want to monopolize the thread, so I will offer two for now for your consideration.

Mind Blasters I&II. Written by Peter Duffie. These are large e-books, each approximately 200 pages and LOADED with GREAT mentalism from names in magic and mentalism from the UK including (NOT a complete list, just a tease):

Marc Paul, John Archer, Wayne Dobson, Stephen Tucker, Paul Hallas, Chistopher Williams, Harold Cataquet, Lewis Jones, Anthony Brahams, Roger Curzon, Dominic Twose, David Britland, Walt Lees, Andi Gladwin, Paul Gordon, Justin Higham, Steve Cook, Shiv Duggal, David Gemmell, Sean Carpenter, Liam Montier.... and MANY more.

These books are PACKED with POWERFUL material and the names I have listed in the tease list should give you some indication.

So, the pot is on the fire, add in so all can tuck in!!

Thanks Jon for the great idea!!

Ahimsa,
Vlad

Here are a couple that weren't mentioned in the other thread:

• Safwan Papers - Bryn Reynolds; A collection of mentalism effects that are real workers. Highly recommended.
  
• Prevaricator - Patrick Redford; A gimmickless treatment of the "Guess who is hiding the object?/Which Hand?" variety that is based on the tells of the participants. This is one of the few times in mentalism that you're really doing what you say you're doing--AND IT REALLY WORKS! Of course, it is not 100% by itself, so additional failsafe outs are included so you can always bring the effect to a successful conclusion.
  
• Open Prediction Project - Tom Baxter; A collection of methods and presentational ideas from various authors. A lot of inventive and creative minds conspired together on this one to create a very thorough treatment for this plot.
  
• Effortless Card Magic - Peter Duffie; Huge number of varied effects that rely on subtleties more than sleights to create real magic. There is one effect that I use in there that has never failed to generate absolute amazement. Of course, the name of that particular effect I'm keeping to myself
  
• Weapons of Mass Deception/Destruction - Steven Youell; Two series of lecture notes (one of them is free) that contains the perfect ratio between moves and impact. There's also an essay called ProActive Control which discusses how to deal with difficult situations and/or difficult spectators. A must read.
  

Well Steven,

Seems like you and I have tried in two posts - the other being The Tuned Deck post.

C'est la guerre.

;)
Vlad

Steven Keyl... Prevaricator is not a pdf manuscript, it is in booklet and DVD form (though the DVD does include a pdf but that is not for sale on it's own).

Jaybest, that's where I got the PDF, from the DVD. It contains more information than was originally included in the first manuscript and it goes over a number of finer points not explicitly mentioned in the DVD. Even though it's not available as a stand alone PDF, It still made my list.

Vlad, I've started a number of posts that I felt were thought provoking and interesting only to find that I was apparently alone in those thoughts. I feel your pain, brother.

Well, thank you....an honor to be included!

Bryn