Tarot in Fiction

Cocobird55

Helen Howell, who was a member here, just had a novella published called "I Know You Know" about a tarot reader. Tarot figures prominently in the plot. This is a thriller -- every page draws you further into the story.

It is available on Amazon as an e-book and a paperback. I thought it was wonderful -- quite a page turner. I finished it in one day -- just couldn't put it down.
 

Padma

There was the Nine Princes in Amber, a nine book series from Roger Zelazny, that was quite a good read, actually - they used the Tarot cards rather as we use telephones, and could use the cards as portals to link up with each other. There was also the "God of Tarot" series, by Piers Anthony, which I thought was pretty good...although I think an old poster in this thread said they threw the books away ;p see links below :)

http://www.amazon.ca/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=nine+princes+of+amber

http://www.amazon.ca/s/ref=nb_sb_no...keywords=god+of+tarot&rh=i:aps,k:god+of+tarot
 

bogiesan

"Six-Gun Tarot"

Seems to be a steampunkish, magic-in-the-Old West (USA) novel by R.S. Belcher. Saw it on the shelves at Barnes and Nobel this ev-ening. Thumbed and scanned looking for tarot hooks but all I found was an immortal sherriff and the chapters are named for cards.
 

jackdaw*

The Winter of our Discontent by Steinbeck has little more than a passing reference to Tarot but it's just an excellent story, one of my favourites.
 

FallynRaiyn

I can't remember what it was called but it seems like Black Mamba or something similar. Set in the bayou in the south. Where one of the face cards takes over the body of a criminal. A lot of voodoo and such things. It was actually pretty good. I wanted to read the sequel but couldn't find it. Especially since i'm not 100% sure on the name of the first one.
 

Phineas

Piers Anthony - Cluster

Piers Anthony had 1 series that has been mentioned twice already.

He also had an earlier series collectively called the Cluster Series where tarot is spread out from earth and picked up by all sorts of alien races and used as philosophical foundation.
Its not the main crux of the series, but forms an important thread through it.
 

Richard

The Dark Brotherhood by Paul A. Clark and C.L. Forbes has all sorts of stuff in it about Tarot, Qabalah, Black Magic, and such. Where I'm reading in it now, a tower full of bad guys has been struck by lightning, and a Hebrew scholar has explained about the Tree of Life (complete with an accurate diagram).
 

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WolfyJames

There are mangas that have tarot in it. I love them all, they're really good.

The Tarot Cafe is about an immortal woman who reads special clients at night with tarot. Tarot is all over the place. Each of the chapter has a page done with a tarot card of a well known tarot deck with characters from the manga instead on it. The readings use real tarot and are accurate, the author/artist does not make stuff up. We talked about this manga in other threads. Alas Tokyopop the publisher don't publish mangas anymore, which means their mangas are now very hard to find and expensive.

Count Cain & Godchild: Count Cain is a manga that came up first and the author/artist decided to make a sequel years later, so it's the continuation of the same story with the same characters. In these series a character Mary, the little sister of the main character, reads tarot cards. Also, the people in the evil organization all have tarot card titles and positions.

Fairy Tail: one of the side characters Cana, who is part of the wizard guild Fairy Tail, uses cards to read with them, they're not playing cards or tarot. She does divination with her cards, uses them as mode of communication, as a way to warn her that someone is in danger, and as a form of offensive magic. There is also a minor character at some point who uses playing cards to trap people in them.
 

Metafizzypop

Here's an odd item I found on the Goodreads website. It's a novel that revolves around the dead body of Aleister Crowley, called "ASH: Return of the Beast." It's described as....

"a supernatural crime thriller, a tale of revenge steeped in the occult. The story is a work of fiction based on a little known factoid about the death of Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), the notorious occultist the British press once called 'The Wickedest Man In The World'. Crowley's body was cremated but the unexplained disappearance of the urn containing his ashes has remained a mystery... until now."

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13183685-ash

Sounds interesting. It's only available as an ebook, though.