The world is a harsh place for the young, the homeless, and the poor. Young Cedric MacKinnon was soon to learn that it was even harsher than his current life. A talented guitarist with dreams of fame and glory, he was forced to prostitute himself on London streets to get the basic necessities of life. But after a diagnosis of AIDS, it looked as though even life was to be denied him. A miracle seemed to occur when he was noticed and taken in by a wealthy patron, Raj. Read More »

The Spirit Lens, the utterly engrossing first installment in the Collegia Magica trilogy, begins working its spell upon the reader on the first page. A distant relative of King Philippe of Sabria (fifteenth cousin, to be exact) Portier de Savin-Duplais receives a summons to appear at court. Puzzled but also intrigued, Portier leaves his post as librarian at the Collegia Magica, the training ground for mages, and sets out for the city. When he meets with the king, Portier learns that almost a year ago, an attempt was made on the king’s life in which his queen was implicated. Read More »

This anthology contains thirty-one stories that will make the little hairs on the back of your neck stand at attention. Come along for a trip to the rural areas of America where folklore becomes reality, to the brightly lit cities where demons await, and then travel to the ghost town that is Chernobyl. Each story takes you on a creepy journey where nothing is as it seems.
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Lili Carter returns to Crying Souls hospital in order to find out what has happened to her friend. While she is glad to return to Inderman because of her friends, her situation at the hospital is not ideal. The head nurse is a dragon-shifter, and the head doctor seems a bit shady. When he requests her presence in the asylum part of the hospital, she feels as if she has been thrust back to Bedlam.
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With No Hero, Jonathan Wood takes a hefty dose of Lovecraft’s fears from beyond motif, throws in a good amount of British humor, and adds a heaping measure of weird to make an enjoyable, fascinating, and energetic romp through Oxford, England, UK. No Hero starts with its lead character, Arthur Wallace, as a homicide detective working to solve a half dozen murders of prominent citizens who were found with the top of their skulls cut off. He and his partner, Alison Swann, arrive at the last scene in time to see the culprit, a strange redhead who has a wicked way with a Japanese katana sword as she kills her next victim. Read More »

James Macleod has been lost to his pack for thirty years. Over the years some have glimpsed his changeling self, but his human side was lost one night in blood and murder. His human wife and unborn child were killed by a man seeking the extinction of his race. After, Macleod became lost in grief and stayed in his wolf form, losing what made him human and prowling as a rare white wolf. Then along comes a young woman named Jillian Descharme, a rare veterinarian who wants to study wild wolves and provide them with a haven. Jillian is oddly familiar to both the wolf and the man, and Macleod cannot decide if his wolf or the man is more intrigued…
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Paramedic Charlotte “Charlie” Marena and leader of the Takyn, Samuel Taske, are kidnapped off the Golden Gate Bridge. When someone with supernatural abilities is kidnapped, the blame automatically falls to Jonah Genaro and his company of crazy geneticists, GenHance, but this time, he isn’t the culprit. This does not make for a happy megalomaniac. Ironically, the direct effects of his actions help the Takyn instead of hinder them, a fact that had me giggling in my own maniacal way.
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One of the most well known and beloved Christmas poems is given a zombie makeover. While purists will most certainly flinch at this zombie mash-up, those of us who embrace all that is bizarre and unnatural now have a new Christmas poem to delight us.

I can remember my grandmother lovingly and faithfully reading “The Night Before Christmas” to us each and every Christmas Eve. I can imagine her response to this book— she would be horrified—but for me, it was wonderfully entertaining. The illustrations created by Dominic Mylroie are stunning and more than a little unsettling. Read More »

Haily Danvers is wrangled into a Yuletide magus cruise for some family “fun”. But for a dysfunctional magus, “fun” is not in her vocabulary. While her sisters are meeting possible mates from other magical families, Haily is blown overboard, and all appears lost until she meets some sharks, masters her magic, and battles some dolphins, all in a day’s “fun”.
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Sunni Marquette never expected, while standing up as a bridesmaid in her college friend’s wedding, to fix her eyes on a man that had eluded her forever—her guardian angel, the man who had touched her life in her dreams for what seemed like her whole life. Attacked by a drunken cousin of the groom, something turned on in her mind like a light bulb and the contact she had made throughout her life with her savior was revealed and remembered. Returning to her life and her gallery, the man still haunts her thoughts; Jacob Eddington was more than what he had said and she would find out just what secrets he was hiding from her.
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Sophie Garou is about to find out how the other half lives. The Houston pack has finally gotten wind of her presence in Austin and they aren’t happy. Their request? She must grovel at their feet or be hunted. As if Sophie would grovel - that would be hell on her designer jeans!
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From cover to cover you will not be able to hold in your laughter and sing along with the revamped…. or rather rezombified versions of all of your favorite Christmas carols. The forward by paranormal icon Christopher Moore brings even more seasonal glee to this little present as he gives his incite and personal anecdotes about the author getting in his grille and giving him the catalyst to pen his own zombie tale, “The Stupidest Angel, A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror.” The art work by Jeff Weigel only help bring you into the mood to sing along.
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The terrific Shadowborn, the final installment in the marvelous and completely captivating Darkborn series, picks up the story with Ishmael arriving at Stranhorne Manor, a Darkborn Borders estate of some old friends. After a discussion with the baron and his two daughters, during which they all speculate upon the significance of recent events and their ties to the past, Ferdenzil Mycene arrives with a warrant for Ishmael’s arrest, with physician Balthasar Hearne in tow. Read More »

Demon picks up several years after the events in Raziel. Azazel is still mourning the death of his mate in the Nephilim attack on Sheol. Although in body he has returned to the Fallen after years of self-exile, his mind and his heart are still lost in soul-deep grief and rage. He channels those emotions into finding the place where Lucifer is entombed because he is the only hope the fallen has to protect humans and themselves from being destroyed by the archangel Uriel and the Nephilim.
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Twenty fallen angels from the book of Enoch have been cursed to eternal life and damnation by God for falling in love with human women. They live in Sheol, hidden from the rest of the world, cursed with the need to drink human blood to survive and required to deliver human souls to the archangel Uriel for judgment. Hunted by the Nephilim, demons who feed on the flesh of the Fallen and humans, they are searching for the first angel to fall, Lucifer, hoping he will be able to end the war with Uriel and separation from God.
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The movie adaptation of the final book in the Twilight series begins with Jacob receiving his invitation to Bella and Edward’s wedding, and then taking off to the woods in wolf form. The next scene takes place the evening before the wedding, with Bella practicing walking in the high heels that Alice insists she must wear, and Edward making sure Bella remains sure she wants to marry him. Though he does not make it in time for the wedding itself, Jacob does show up at the reception. Read More »

The Mythmakers has an appealing “rustic” vibe that I love about the TV show, Firefly. This is science fiction and set in space, but the setting is not the glossy, high-tech view that comes to mind with shows like Star Trek. Instead, most of the action takes place on a ship that has seen some hard times, with a motley crew on the run from the “authorities.” Though initially I was quite worried that this book would be mainly sex in space, I was wrong. Mr. Appleton threw me a curve ball by throwing in some very sexual, almost sleazy elements initially, but following up with a story that has some very philosophical elements.
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This was a hard book to rate. Actually, all of Wynn’s books were hard to rate. Magiere and Leesil were fighters; I was used to them and the way they reacted and interacted. When Wynn and Chane’s first book came out, I was nervous and a little worried. It wasn’t too bad, I enjoyed it, but still felt like it wasn’t up to par. Of Truth and Beasts is the last of Wynn and Chane’s storyline and a transition book into the new storyline. It was the one book that drug on a bit compared to the others, but there was a lot of story to cover.
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Archangel’s Blade, the mesmerizing fourth installment in the excellent Guild Hunter series, changes the focus this time from Elena and Raphael to vampire Dmitri, Raphael’s second in command, and Honor, a hunter recently rescued from being held in captivity for two months by a group of vampires. Honor, traumatized by her experience though physically healed, gets called in on a case that involves a dead newly-made vampire, and also, to her dismay, Dmitri, the fierce vampire enforcer. Despite her misgivings, and even fear, Honor feels drawn to the mysterious Dmitri, and he feels likewise intrigued by her.
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Sins of the past can come back to haunt, but what is far worse is when it wasn’t recognized as a sin at the time. Styx is about to learn that one century-old night of pleasure has created a monster that he is now tasked to hunt down by the Task Force for Rogue Apprehension (an equivalent of the FBI for the Vampyre Nation). A Rogue is abducting and turning women into Vampires and appears to be sending a special “message” to Styx.
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