Coronets And Steel
Sherwood Smith
Daw, Sep 7 2010, $24.95
ISBN: 9780756406424

Bored Los Angeles graduate student Kim Murray’s French only speaking grandmere is ill. As grandmere recovers from the debilitating fever, she remains mute; but encourages strongly for Kim to travel to Europe to learn her family’s genealogy. Before leaving the States, her grandma gave her minuscule bits of information about their heritage, but refuses to go into any depth.

After Paris proved fruitless, she reaches Vienna lacking information as to where to start so she visits a genealogist. Kim goes on a tour when she notices what looks like a ghost. Soon after that, a suave male treats her like an old friend he has not seen in a while although she swears she never met this sophisticate before. She and this Alec go for drinks, but when she awakens she is on a train though she is unsure how she got on it. However, the biggest shock of all is to learn she looks so much like missing cousin Ruli, they could have been twins. Alec wants her to pretend to be Ruli so he can find her.

Told by the third generation American, this is an exciting at times jocular but always action-packed thriller as Kim digs up her roots in Europe. Fast-paced, fans will enjoy the heroine’s European adventure as she is 200 proof American believing she can do anything while also being facetious and irreverent when she is drugged, abducted, and confronting family ghosts. This is her tale as the rest of the cast supports her escapades as a young brash American trashes her kidnapper and taunts the spirits that haunt her and her family.

Harriet Klausner

The Chamber of Ten
Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon
Ballantine, Jul 27 2010, $7.99
ISBN: 9780553386561

As Venice is sinking under the sea, residents have already shut down the bottom floors of their homes. American archaeologist Geena Hodge and her assistant lover Nico Lombardi have gotten Italian government permission to save as much of the heritage from the encroaching Adriatic in what is the Bibliotheca project that has BBC filming praying not another Capone vault.

Digging in Piazza San Marco, Geena, assisted by Nico and some students, finds Petrarch’s library. Beyond the famous lost library, they uncover the fabled Chamber of Ten. However, nothing goes smoothly as the walls collapse allowing flood waters to inundate the chamber. Soon afterward Nico acts insane as he has become possessed by a Renaissance Era mage battling three evil immortals with the city at stake.

This is more an exciting thriller than a horror tale. The story line starts off as fast-paced as any tale this year and as vivid (with its dank damp picture of the city), but never quite keeps the accelerator at that incredible opening rate of speed. Still Readers will enjoy the Chamber of Ten as the archeologist and her team is caught up in the middle of a centuries old Magical war in which Venice is at stake.

Harriet Klausner

Cast In Chaos
Michelle Sagara
Luna, Aug 1 2010, $14.95
ISBN: 9780373803194

The City of Elantra’s influential are stunned when the powerless charlatans on Elani Street suddenly possess magical skills. Alarm spreads even by some of the new practitioners. This trepidation turns to abject fear when rains of blood come down from the sky and abnormal births become the norm.

The Oracles are confused as the leaders at the Dragon Court declare a homeland security emergency. The leadership concludes that something from outside is trying to penetrate the barriers between worlds. They also believe their response to prevent this from happening rests with Hawk elite force Private Kaylin Neya whose mysterious skin markings is postured to have the answers. Unintentionally somehow Kaylin enters a void that has been opened between worlds; here she meets the dark trying to crash through to the light of Elantra.

The sixth Cast “police procedural” fantasy continues the growth as a person of Kaylin who has a come a long way since her early days as a prejudicial cop on the Shadow beat. Although the story line is character driven by the courageous heroine, her efforts (and the prime plot) is to simply save the world. Fans of Elantra will want to soar with the heroine as her latest case takes several twists and spins.

Harriet Klausner

Cold Sight
Leslie Parrish
Signet, Jul 6 2010, $7.99
ISBN: 9780451230744

Investigating a string of suspicious runaways, Granville Daily Sun reporter Lexie Nolan considers someone malevolent and sinister is behind the disappearances. As she digs deeper, her boss tells her to drop the story; stunning her as this has never happened before to the investigative journalist.

When another young girl Vonnie vanishes, Lexie knows she cannot live with herself if she quits. Instead she asks former Extrasensory Agent Aidan McConnell to help her find the latest missing person. Aidan informs Lexie he no longer searches for people after his last mission ended disastrously. However reluctantly he agrees to help as he finds himself unable to deny her anything. He has feelings he never allowed himself to have before he met sexy Lexie. They connect as they follow clues to Savannah.

This is an entertaining paranormal whodunit starring an intrepid reporter and a man with telemetric extrasensory psychometric abilities. The changing relationship between the pair is fun to follow as they investigate the abductions and murder. Although the villain is inane, fans will appreciate the first Extrasensory Agent urban fantasy romantic suspense due to the lead characters and Vonnie.

Harriet Klausner

Catching Hell
Greg Gifune; Jill Bauman (illustrator)
Cemetery Dance, Jun 1 2010, $30.00
ISBN: 9781587671913

In 1983 the summer stock season on Cape Cod is over. Three actors and a stagehand drive a 1967 Ford from the Cape to Maine; a six to seven hour drive as a respite before New York City theater or college. On a lonely stretch of I-95 in Maine heading to Banger, the quartet (Billy, Stefan, Alex, and Tory) are hammered by an odd violent storm that comes out of nowhere and seems to attack their Fairlane. Then a bird crashes into the windshield leaving behind blood, no corpse and Billy believing it is the harbinger of death.

They exit in Boxer Hills, population 108. None of the fearless foursome expected anything beyond a small rustic village. Instead they find what appears to be a ghost town stuck in the Truman-Eisenhower Era. They soon learn to escape from Boxer Hills means surviving until the sun rises. This village is where seventeenth century rituals wrought a malevolence that in the late twentieth century still welcomes guests permanently.

This is a terrific horror thriller that starts a bit slow ironically while driving on I-95, but once the quartet leave the Interstate for a rural stop, the pace accelerates into hyperspeed as the protagonists are not just Catching Hell, they seem in hell. Readers will feel they are caught in the middle of this tense horror thriller enhanced by the B&W drawings as Boxer Hills is a Maine version of the Hotel California; once you’re inside, you never leave; the four friends learn the only out is death or survive until the sun rises following a night of evil.

Harriet Klausner

The Corpse King
Tim Curran
Cemetery Dance, Jun 2010, $30.00
ISBN: 9781587671968

Long after the mourners leave the graveyard, Samuel Clow and Mickey Kierney arrive to dig up the body. They make a living selling corpses to those in need of cadavers. They never lack for customers or supply as skeletal remains in high demand.

During a bloody downpour, the pair works until Kierney’s shovel hits a wooden object. He scrapes mud off of it and hits it again. He tells his ghoulish partner he is uncomfortable with what might be inside this wood; Clow figures his partner found the devil’s work so he hooks the wood to life it out of the grave. They find a woman with perfect teeth that a dentist would buy covered by a shroud. They stop at the Sign of the Boar where dead drunk for two pennies is a way of life for all patrons. However, this time they will learn of a more experienced competitor who is a grave robber too, but this defiler of the dead does not sell the merchandise; instead harvests the dead for personal use as The Corpse King who has plans to use the pair of miscreants.

The atmosphere is dark, grim, and creepy; and that describes the non cemetery scenes. The nocturnal trips to the cemetery are even darker, grimmer and creepier. Readers who relish a throwback horror thriller with a Poe like gloomy environs and slimy lead characters including the rapaciously hungry title protagonist will enjoy the Corpse King.

Harriet Klausner

Carnal Sin
Allison Brennan
Ballantine, Jun 22 2010, $7.99
ISBN: 9780345511683

For seven years Moira O’Donnell trained for one thing as she moved from place to place to stay safe. Her goal is to prevent her evil mother, the queen of the underworld Fiona and the woman’s vile lover Matthew Walker from bringing demons across through his Good Shepherd Church in which they created a portal enabling the malevolent to walk this world. With allies like Rafe Cooper and demonologist Anthony Zacarddi, she faced down the first deadly sin Envy left trapped in a vault in Santa Louisa, California at a cost to the team (see Original Sin).

As Fiona has doubts that Santa Louisa is the “beacon for evil”, a report of an odd case in Los Angeles reaches them. A nice forty years old Kent Galion attacked a blonde before being subdued by Detective Grant Nelson; Galion died. Moira saw the vision of a demon possessing a man. She and her posse rush to L.A. as Lust is loose at the Velocity nightclub; men marked by the demon are dying for hard sex.

The second deadly Sin urban fantasy is a strong suspense thriller that grips the audience with the opening assault at Velocity and never slows down as the beleaguered hero team face off against a powerful demon and a coven protecting the evil. The cast, especially the good gals and guys are fully developed so that the reader knows their desires, flaws, and other distractions and detractors as much as their strengths. For instance, Moira fears she will hurt a teammate when she goes into her visionary trance and fears falling in love again; having lost a beloved soul before. Carnal Sin is a superb urban fantasy thriller as Allison Brennan is two for two.

Harriet Klausner

Close Contact
Katherine Allred
Eos, Jun 8 2010, $7.99
ISBN: 9780061672439

Genetically enhanced person Echo Adams is not a typical GEP. She was gifted with a rare Psi ability, which makes her perfect on her current diplomatic assignment as an emissary in the Alien Affairs office.

Echo is disturbed when she is ordered out of the office to perform field work; as she does not do stinky outdoor work; especially when others might shoot you. Still she is considered the only person capable of handling the powerful Daughter Stone of the Limantti species that has been stolen. Accompanied by Peri the dragon bird and using her Psi skills to follow the thieves’ trail leads Echo to Madrea; a planet in which the ruler has severed all relationships with the Federation and outlawed technology. Echo understands the mission is to retrieve the Daughter Stone, get out alive and not cause a King to ignite in fury. Her only hope of success is with Royal Commander Reynard.

The second Alien Affairs science fiction romance (see Close Encounters) is a jocular affair that satires the kick male butt heroine phenomena as this lead female prefers the air conditioned office in which choosing what to eat for lunch is an adventure rather than off planet field encounters of a deadly kind. Fast-paced, fans who enjoy a fun somewhat simplistic lampooning of the super heroine sub-genre will want to read Close Contact as Echo Adams is promised a lot, but nothing until the end is met; as her amusing asides throughout will attest.

Harriet Klausner

Cheat The Grave
Vicki Pettersson
Eos, May 25 2010, $7.99
ISBN: 9780061456770

In Las Vegas Joanna Archer knew what she was giving up when she rescued a child to save the light. Her sacrifice is her superpowers and her allies.

Although she swears she would do it again Joanna has nagging doubts. Her destiny not only radically altered by her good deed, her friends deserted her; in fact they want to kill her. Feeling alone but forced by her revised destiny to act if the prophecy is to occur, Joanna travels through a nightmare in which everyone is her enemy, but one particular psychopathic predator plots to kill her. Joanna knows only her former foes give her a chance to survive and fulfill the prophecy.

The latest Sign of the Zodiac is a terrific entry that centers on Joanna in a twisting of the coming of age theme. Urban fantasy readers will enjoy the fast-paced thriller that wastes no time by moving out from the onset. Joanna is terrific as she struggles with a myriad of emotions with the changes to her. She makes Cheat the Grave a great novel and though the story line can stand by itself, it is enhanced by reading the previous books to see how far the metamorphosis occurred.

Harriet Klausner

A Certain Wolfish Charm
Lydia Dare
Sourcebooks, Apr 6 2010, $6.99
ISBN 9781402236945

In 1816 Lily Rutledge worries about the radical change in behavior of her twelve year old ward Lord Oliver Westfield. She has sent letters to the lad’s guardian Duke Simon Westfield demanding he get involved in his nephew’s life, but she doubts the wastrel reads her missives as he only sends her money and besides he is too busy chasing skirts.

Lily decides the time for confrontation with the womanizing duke has passed. She goes to his home Blackmoor, but is stunned when Simon, realizing what is happening to his nephew, orders her to leave while he takes Oliver into his home. Simon plans to mentor Oliver on what it means to be a Westfield as puberty is bringing out the werewolf gene. Lily refuses to leave because she loves Oliver who calls Her “Aunt Lily” while she thinks of him as her son; nor will she abandon Oliver to a beast who failed to recognize him as blood. However, as Simon and Lily fight their attraction to one another, they fall in love, but he conceals his wolfish tendencies while she becomes more concerned over the physical and emotional changes to Oliver.

This is an entertaining werewolf Regency romantic cozy starring two seemingly cross-starred lead characters who share in common the belief that Oliver comes before their needs. The story line is emotional intense at times but only when Oliver struggles to cope with his hormonal changes especially the monthly need that seems like a werewolf’s PMS. Fans will enjoy this fine historical romance as the author daringly combines the paranormal within an amiable story line.

Harriet Klausner