Bitten by Books

This new collection of short fiction has been put together by Justin Gustainis and published by Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing. I was anxious to read it because I love mysteries with paranormal elements. I was not disappointed by this collection in any way.

First of all, it has two great stories by two of my favorite authors. There is a wonderful John Taylor story by Simon R. Green. If you have not been introduced to John Taylor, a PI in the Nightside, you are missing something great. In this particular story, John Taylor has been hired to find out who is haunting the “Jolly Cripple.” It is a bar most people would not be caught dead in, so why would a ghost choose to haunt it? John Taylor finds out not only the why, but the how, and the ending will leave you with a delicious sense of justice done.
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This series of books takes the end of the Mayan Calendar as a prophecy for the end of the world. The Nightkeepers were magicians, the mystical connection between the gods of the Mayans and the world. It is their duty to save the world, but only a small group of them remain alive having been hidden away after a disaster that wiped out all the adults, leaving only a handful of children behind to carry on the tasks of the prophecy.
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Anne Marshall is a law student and court recorder. One night, she wakes up hearing the voice of her dead father speaking to her about the case she’s the recorder on concerning the divorce of Tim and Isabella Sherman. Her dad is telling her that Tim is a snake and can’t be trusted.

When Anne wakes up, she can’t imagine why she would dream such a thing, but soon she realizes she’s not dreaming at all.
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I have been a fan of Grey’s Dick Hardesty series for some time, so I was very interested in seeing what Elliott Smith was like. I’m pleased to say that I like him and enjoyed this book very much.

Elliott is from one of those disgustingly rich families in Chicago who belong to all the right clubs and go to all the right places. Elliott and his sister, Cressy, however, have chosen to be different.
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In the follow-up novel to Nightkeepers, Anderson takes us into the relationship of Alexis and Nate. They are deeply attracted to one another, but while Alexis was raised to honor the prophecies, Nate was raised in the foster care system.

After serving time in prison, Nate had become a successful game designer. His favorite game was Valkyrie, in which Hera, a beautiful, blonde woman warrior was the central figure. When he meets Alexis, she is the image of Hera, and that throws him more than he can explain to her. Now they find themselves tied together as she becomes a godkeeper and he her chosen protector.

Once again, Andersen writes beautiful, erotic relationships, and tells a great story with Dawnkeepers. This is definitely a series to find and read.

Book Stats:

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Signet (January 6, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451225759
• ISBN-13: 978-0451225757

To purchase a print copy of Dawnkeepers click here.
To purchase a Kindle copy of Dawnkeepers click here.

Books in the Final Prophecy series in the order they should be read:
Nightkeepers
here
Skykeepers

To visit the author’s website go here.

If you haven’t heard about the predictions based on the Mayan calendar about December 21, 2012, you will. The calendar predicts either the destruction of the world as we know it, or the beginning of a new world consciousness - it all depends on how you want to interpret the prophecy.

In Nightkeepers, Jessica Anderson has taken the “world destruction” view, but not without giving a way for the world to be saved.

The Nightkeepers are magic. They are men and women who connected to the gods and possess the ability to perform special feats - teleportation, shielding, telekinetics - as well as being superb warriors. They left Egypt when it went monotheistic, driven out by a king who would kill them rather than allow them to continue practicing their ways in his land.

They made their way around the world and eventually came to what is now Mexico and Central America. There they found a home with the Mayan people and began to protect the Earth from the demons who live on the other side of a supernatural barrier - the same as the gods.

The Nightkeepers went into hiding when the Spanish came to the Americas and in 1984, in an attempt to prevent the coming potential holocaust in 2012, the King of the Nightkeepers attempted to seal the barrier between this world and the next. Unfortunately, his actions brought down destruction on his people, and only a few children and their winiken (human servants) were able to escape.

Now that 2012 is only four years away, Strike, the son of the King, finds himself drawn back into trying to save the world when someone begins blood sacrifices to unleash the demons through the barrier.

Leah is a cop, and her brother was one of the victims. She’s investigating what happened to him, but she’s also having dreams - dreams about a large, handsome man with cobalt blue eyes.

When Strike realizes he’s sharing dreams with this human and that her brother’s death connects her to the man trying to unleash the demons, he can’t help but become involved with her, so he works to bring together the remaining Nightkeepers to prevent the Banol Kox from being let free through the barrier.

The story is complex, and the romance and sex are lovely. The eroticism of the Nightkeepers, and especially of the attraction of Leah and Strike, is fantastic. This is the way to write an erotic, romantic, and magical paranormal!

Book Stats:

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Signet (June 3, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 045122437X
• ISBN-13: 978-0451224378

To purchase a print copy of Nightkeepers click here.
To purchase a print copy of Nightkeepers click here.

Books in the Final Prophecy series in the order they should be read:
Nightkeepers
Dawnkeepers
Skykeepers

To visit the author’s website go here.

In the second Sidra Smart mystery she’s been hired to prove that a dead man wasn’t a murderer. Ned Durwood went to talk with a couple about some work they had for him. Unfortunately upon arriving, he finds them dead. Terrified that he’ll be accused of murdering them, he takes off. As he runs away he takes a chance on getting past a train between cars. He is killed.

The local sheriff considers the case closed. He’s called Durwood the murderer. But Ned’s father doesn’t believe it. He knows that a lot of people in town didn’t think much of his son because he was homosexual. He believes that the Sheriff doesn’t care enough to look for the real killer. So he hires Sidra to prove that his son was innocent.

Thus Sidra takes on a case that involves her with a fire and brimstone preacher harboring a terrible secret, his wife who’s found love with another man, and an underground world of gay men who are being charged with crimes and being sent to prison by two men who hate them for what they are.

Sidra is a strong woman, but she is also struggling with many things. What is her relationship to God now that she’s no longer a minister’s wife? Can she truly considering the man she’s come to love when he seems dead set against her doing the work she loves? And what is the ghost of a woman who lived through yellow fever epidemics and the Civil War trying to tell her?

The story points out the tragedies that religion and bigotry can wreak on lives when they are combined, but also allows that there is good in even the people who are perceived as being narrow-minded zealots.

Sidra is no young babe dashing about in a flashy car and solving mysteries between manicures. She’s a woman heading into middle age who is finding her own way and developing a strong identity.

There’s much to admire in this book, and in Sidra. I look forward to reading more.

Book Stats:

• Paperback: 268 pages
• Publisher: L & L Dreamspell (October 18, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1603180184
• ISBN-13: 978-1603180184

To purchase a print copy of Deady Sins Deadly Secrets click here.
To purchase a Kindle copy of Deady Sins Deadly Secrets click here.

Books in the series in the order they should be read:
Dance On His Grave
Deadly Sins Deadly Secrets

To visit the author’s website go here.
To visit the author’s blog go here.

This book introduces us to Sidra Smart. Sidra just divorced her Baptist minister husband and moved from Houston to Orange on the coast of Texas to settle her brother’s estate. Her brother died and left her everything, including his business as a private investigator. Sidra is trying to put her life together, figuring out where she wants to be and who she wants to be. She’s been a minister’s wife since she was a teenager. Now that her children are grown and out of the house, she realizes that she has never been on her own. She has no idea what she wants to be, now that she’s all grown up and has to make her own way in the world.

One morning, she arrives at her brother’s office, intending to clear it out when a young woman shows up. She had hired Sidra’s brother, and now that he is gone, she wants Sidra to continue her case, but this is completely out of her realm, so she tries to refer the case to another private investigator in town. Instead of taking on the case, George Leger offers to mentor her.

Thus Sidra finds herself looking into a mystery that occurred when her client was a child of three. The woman, Jewel, believes that she and her sister Emma witnessed her father and two other men murder a woman. Her father then took the body to a house and dumped it, burning the house to the ground to hide the evidence. Jewel is convinced the memories she has are true, and she wants Sidra to prove that her father did murder a woman. Sidra searches for proof that these crimes were committed, and in doing so, finds out that her courage is great, her instincts amazing, but most of all, that her brother knew her better than she knew herself.

Emma and Jewel are both damaged young women, and the investigation is painful for them and for Sidra. The stories of what this man did to his children are ugly, and what he tries to do to stop the investigation is just as hideous. At the same time, Sidra must find a way to make her home in Orange and come to terms with leaving her past behind.

This is a powerful story and a great book. Sidra is a woman to be admired, and the two young women she helps are stunning in both their pain and the beginning of their path to healing. This is a book to put on your list of must reads.

Book Stats:

• Paperback: 252 pages
• Publisher: L & L Dreamspell (May 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1603180060
• ISBN-13: 978-1603180061

To purchase a print copy of Dance on His Grave click here.
To purchase a Kindle copy of Dance on His Grave click here.

Books in the series in the order they should be read:
Dance On His Grave
Deadly Sins Deadly Secrets

To visit the author’s website go here.
To visit the author’s blog go here.

In the world of Dark Magic, San Francisco is under siege. Darkwolf was a witch, and apparently in the first book of this series, managed to gain the powers of an underworld god and goddess, and thus has become a duo-god of dark magical power. He creates deadly “blades” and “stormcutters” whose only duty is to kill whomever Darkwolf wants dead.

Those he wants dead include the paranormal police force headed by Jake Macgregor, and his allies the gray D’Anu witches, the Drow, the Dark Elves, and others from the Otherworlds.

In this book, a woman who has been a part of the fight with the gray D’Anu witches has been called back to her own world. She is Cassia, and she is not truly a witch. She is the Guardian in waiting, the daughter of the Guardian of the Otherworlds, and a Light Elf. Her grandmother is the Goddess Anu herself.

Cassia’s heart is with her sisters of the gray D’Anu and especially with Jake. So when she finds she must mate with a pure blood elf in order to come into her full power, she is not happy about it. Neither is Jake, when he finds out. Turns out he’s pining for her as much as she is for him.

So this novel is not just about the battle against Darkwolf, but also the struggle of Jake and Cassia to find a way to be together.

There’s also a traitor among the allied groups fighting Darkwolf. This doesn’t help the fight, and creates no end of conflict among the allies.

The book is an interesting mix of magic and love story. The only thing I found jarring was the blunt language about the sexual attractions of the characters. I’m no prude, but I found myself constantly being taken out of the story by references to “cock and pussy.”

Other than that one quibble, I found the story interesting and the characters fun to root for and against.

Book Stats:

• Mass Market Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin’s Paperbacks (November 4, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312949596
• ISBN-13: 978-0312949594

To purchase a print copy of Dark Magic click here.

Books in the Magic series in the order they should be read:
Forbidden Magic
Seduced by Magic
Wicked Magic
Shadow Magic
Dark Magic

To visit the author’s website go here.

This is a delightful little novella, definitely for adults, about a dachshund who alerts the world to an alien invasion. What happens during and as a result of that invasion is completely up to the humans around him.

Tonto is a one testicled, cross-eyed, ADHD, autistic red dachshund. He also doesn’t see very well, and likes to spend his days pushing pine needles into neat piles (using a stick) on the driveway of his home.

To say that Tonto has issues would be an understatement. But, despite those issues, he does have one very special quality. When the aliens invade earth, only Tonto can tell who the aliens are.

Why can only Tonto tell? Because the aliens have sent out “testers” which duplicate other life forms - up to and including humans.

The duplicates are pretty much impossible to tell from the real thing (except that one of their three sexes has jewels on their bellies), and when the testers get loose in Washington, D.C. - we end up with duplicates all the way to the White House. Now there’s a nightmare none of us want to have really happen.

Tonto’s Master and Mistress have a friend who is a super-genius (and a more than a bit of a drunk) whom they call in when they realize that something funny is happening on their farm. Gordo confirms that yes, indeed, they’ve got aliens!

How Tonto, his owners, and Gordo and friends solve the problem of the alien invasion, get rid of one of all the duplicated politicians, and change their world for the better is one deliciously entertaining journey.

At the back of this novel is a brief autobiography of the real Tonto who inspired Darrell Bain to write the book. It’s interesting, but without the character of Gordo and the aliens, it’s not nearly as much fun as the novella.

I can definitely recommend this book. It’s a quick, easy read, and a very enjoyable one.

Book Stats:

• Paperback: 184 pages
• Publisher: LL-Publications (April 2, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 190509115X
• ISBN-13: 978-1905091157

To purchase a print copy of Bark! click here.
To purchase a Kindle copy of Bark! click here.

To visit the author’s website go here.

Kevin Brockmeier’s The Brief History of the Dead is a curious book. From the opening sentence, “When the blind man arrived in the city, he claimed he had traveled across a desert of living sand,” the reader is slowly led into the lives and “after lives” of people from what is apparently present day Earth.

The primary characters of the novel are Luka Sims and Laura Byrd. The fact that their paths never cross in the timeline of the novel itself is a reflection of what the story is about.

Essentially, those living in “the city” are dead. This place is some part of the after-life. What comes after it, they don’t know. People die and they find themselves in the city. They remain there, as they were when they died, as long as there is someone alive who remembers them.

Luka Sims is dead. He was a journalism professor, and in the after-life he begins a newsletter of sorts. He collects the stories of what those who have come to the city remember of coming here, what is going on in the city, and the stories of what is happening in the world at the time the new arrivals died.

Laura Byrd, wildlife specialist, worked for Coca Cola in Atlanta. She is at a station in Antarctica with two other scientists as a part of a supposed study of using the water from the ice there to make a new and better formula of the soda. In actuality, she, and everyone else involved, knows it one giant publicity stunt. One day the radio fails at the station, and the two scientists working with Laura leave to make their way to the South Pole station and get help. At the same time, people begin disappearing in huge numbers from the city.

Luka and Laura find themselves on opposite sides of death, trying to figure out what is going on. What is going on is a pandemic. Everyone in the world is dying. As millions die, thousands disappear from the city, because there is no longer anyone to remember them. Soon, there is only a small group living in the city, and Laura is in a desperate struggle to stay alive in Antarctica.

If she dies, what will happen to the city? Who are the people in the city and how are they all connected? Could it possibly be through this one last woman?

One mystery that is solved is what exactly caused the pandemic that has killed off the population of the world. It’s a very interesting solution, and one that reflects on those who find themselves still in the city, waiting to see what will happen when and if Laura dies.

The book has a strange quality. It is very much a literary novel, and very much a novel that is playing with the ideas of what happens to those who die. Luka has a whole life in the city. He has fallen in love, finds himself fascinated by the people and their stories, and realized that even in death, he can’t stop being a journalist.

Laura’s struggle to survive, while realizing that she is in grave danger over a publicity stunt by her company, gives her an ironic position. What she doesn’t know is that the world around her is already dead. All she can think about is that the choice to come here was one she didn’t have to make.

It is an interesting book. Indirect and oblique at times in its approach to the story, but never for a moment dull.

Book Stats:

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (January 9, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400095956
• ISBN-13: 978-1400095957

To purchase a print copy of The Brief History of the Dead click here.
To purchase a Kindle copy of The Brief History of the Dead click here.

To visit the author’s website go here.