You may know me best as Meredith Nic Essus, princess of faerie. Or perhaps as Merry Gentry, Los Angeles private eye. To protect my unborn children, I have turned my back on the crown, choosing exile in the human world with my beloved Frost and Darkness. Yet I cannot abandon my people. Someone is killing the fey, which has left the LAPD baffled and my guardsmen and me deeply disturbed. I thought I’d left the blood and politics behind in my own turbulent realm. But now I realize that evil knows no borders, and that nobody lives forever—even if they’re magical.Amazon.com ReviewLaurell K. Hamilton on *Divine Misdemeanors* Meredith Gentry was created as a character so that my muse and I could have a break from writing the Anita Blake series. I’d written five Anita books in a row and was starting to have job anxiety dreams about her life instead of mine. I needed something different for my muse and me to play with. Merry was created to give me a different voice, a different world to visit. I guess she’s like a second child that you have so the first one won’t be an only. Then, like a parent that just didn’t understand that a second child doesn’t double your workload, but quadruples it, I was suddenly trying to do two different series at two different publishers. It went well since they’re both New York Times bestsellers. The audience for both crosses nicely and continues to grow with every book in a time when very few authors can say that. So it’s all good, but just like trying to juggle two kids instead of one, juggling two book series instead of just one presents its challenges.At the beginning keeping Anita’s voice out of the Merry books was the biggest challenge. I was used to her, and her voice and attitude were closer to my own, so Anita wrote faster, clearer in my head. Merry was that second baby that is nothing like your first baby, so most of what you learned about taking care of character A doesn’t help a damn bit with character B. Who knew? But there comes a point when you make peace with the second child being so different from the first and so different from yourself. You find the unique joys in that second person, as I’ve found the joys in the Merry series that are different from Anita. Anita fights me on paper and always has. She’s very much my rebel. Merry never fought on paper until the last book, Swallowing Darkness, and then she found things worth fighting for. She finally stood up and told me what she wanted and she was willing to do whatever it took to get there. I understood that. I let Merry’s desires, loves, and choices change where I had planned to end the first cycle of the series. Anita has thrown out entire last thirds of books by her choices, and even scrapped entire novel ideas because she’d simply grown in a different direction. If I did that for my oldest creation, how could I not do the same for my youngest creation?In fact, Merry found her voice so pure and clear that on the last two Anita Blake novels I’ve had to chase her out of my head so Anita could be loud. Now the biggest challenge is balancing the writing schedule between two bestselling series, two different publishers, and that thing called a real life. Doing justice to my two imaginary worlds, and still managing to have a life in the real world... that’s the true challenge.--Laurell K. HamiltonFrom Publishers WeeklyHamilton hits the ground running in her latest Meredith Gentry novel, this one set in Los Angeles, where a pregnant Meredith has been safely united with her fellow exiles from the faerie courts. The faerie princess/private eye's happiness is short-lived, however, when she catches wind of a serial killer who gets his kicks crafting hideous tableaux of butchered demi-fey. While Meredith hunts for the killer, her stable of guards struggle to protect her from herself. Just as full of steamy sex and wild magic as the previous seven volumes, this episode finds Meredith's powers, as well as her collection of gorgeous guards, expanding, with crowd-pleasing results. The friction among Meredith's men makes for good drama, and Hamilton doesn't shy away from difficult real-world issues like post-traumatic stress disorder and sexual abuse. Though newcomers will be lost, and mystery fans may feel the sex scenes crowd out the plot, veterans of the series will no doubt enjoy their return to Hamilton's meticulously constructed world. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Views: 8
In 1968 the world experienced a brand new kind of terror with the debut of George A. Romero's landmark movie Night of the Living Dead. The newly dead rose to attack the living. Not as vampires or werewolves. This was something new...and terrifying. Since then, zombies have invaded every aspect of popular culture. But it all started on that dreadful night in a remote farmhouse...Nights of the Living Dead returns to that night, to the outbreak, to where it all began. New York Times bestselling author Jonathan Maberry teams with the godfather of the living dead himself, George A. Romero to present a collection of all new tales set during the 48 hours of that legendary outbreak.Nights of the Living Dead includes stories by some of today's most important writers: Brian Keene, Carrie Ryan, Chuck Wendig, Craig Engler, David J. Schow, David Wellington, Issac Marion, Jay Bonansinga, Joe R. Lansdale, Joe McKinney, John Russo, John Skipp,... Views: 8
THE GREATEST WESTERN WRITERS OF THE 21ST CENTURY Civil War soldier. Trail driver. Cattleman. Texas Ranger. The story of John Horton Slaughter is the story of the America West itself. Now bestselling authors William and J.A. Johnstone bring this legendary figure to life—in the blazing saga of the first sheriff in U.S. history who could tame a town like Tombstone, Arizona. A WESTERN LEGEND. AN AMERICAN HERO. It's been barely a decade since the notorious gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Rustlers and outlaws still terrorize the land, and the good citizens of Tombstone are at the end of their ropes. Enter Texas John Slaughter—the new sheriff of Cochise County and the toughest lawman west of the Rio Grande. With a backbone of steel to match the iron law of his badge, Texas John is determined to bring peace to this parched desert hell even if it kills him. Which it just might. When word gets out about an untapped... Views: 8
What starts as a normal morning turns into a complete nightmare, What would you do if you could not find a breath of fresh air, and all you could smell was The Rot.Review by: Chantale Reve on Mar. 21, 2011 : I have just read "The Rot" and am absolutely chilled to the bone. With an economy of words but an expanse of compassion, Speicher keeps the reader of this cryptic tale in suspense until the end. Palpable, odorous, stifling and frightening, Speich's masterful flash fiction left me wobbly in the shoes of his everyman protagonist. Also includes BONUS short stories "Closing My Eyes Helps Me To See Clearly, and a new edit of DIE ALREADY, and now my new short "i" and, "It Was The Dead Who Groaned Within" all five books in one collection. Views: 8
Death and destruction follow the demon wherever he treads, and Gabriel is rarely far behind, waiting for his chance to extinguish the creature known as Temple once and for all.But in Singapore during the Second World War, a lone soldier in possession of a shattering secret gets caught up in their battle. The knowledge he holds could change the course of their ancient conflict... and the fate of the world.A Whisper of Southern Lights is a standalone tale in the Assassins series by Tim Lebbon.PRAISE FOR A WHISPER OF SOUTHERN LIGHTS"A Whisper of Southern Lights is full of a beautiful melancholy that nobody does better than Lebbon. A tale of immortals engaged in a blood-spattered, centuries-old cat-and-mouse game... Read it!" —Christopher Golden, New York Times #1 bestselling author of Dead Ringers and Snowblind Views: 8
Fiery naturist Paige, wins a holiday karaoke contest and together with her singing partner and upper-class Jack they form a naturist band. However, Paige's insistence that the Bare Necessities remain true to her naturist ideals causes friction with her bandmates, their struggling agent, a Christian pressure group, the Police and their families, until Jack has choose between his old life or Paige. Views: 8
En route to a diplomatic mission, the U.S.S. Enterprise receives a distress call from the U.S.S. McRaven. As the Enterprise approaches the area where the McRaven appears to be, Captain James T. Kirk and his crew encounter an anomaly unlike anything they've ever experienced. Space itself seems inconsistent here . . . warping, changing appearance. But during the brief periods of calm, the McRaven is located along with other ships of various origins--all dead in space and devoid of any life forms, all tightly surrounding and being held in place by an enormous unidentified vessel that appears to have been drifting for a millennium. As incredible and impossible as it seems, this anomaly is something that can only be described as a dimensional fold, a place where the various dimensions that science has identified--and the ones it cannot yet name--have folded in on one another, and the normal rules of time and space no longer apply. . . . Views: 8
