I’ve studied various mythologies in-depth since my teens, and I’m in my fifties, so that’s a lot of research. Any author who can successfully merge those mythologies into our present day and make it believable, who can suspend reality for a short time while making me fall in love with their characters, will easily become one of my favorite authors. I had my own world and characters in my head for decades, but didn’t expect to ever write it. Life has a strange way of working out, and now I have a completed seven-book urban fantasy series, and more than thirty PNR books surrounding it, giving secondary characters in the main series their HEAs.
The Kate Daniel’s series has everything—great world building, an interesting backstory that grows with each book, and writers (a husband and wife team) who understand the craft of writing enough to draw you in so you forget you’re reading.
Have you ever wondered why magic happened in the bible, but doesn’t happen now? Burning bushes and all that?
This series has an explanation—the magical pendulum swings back and forth, and we’re heading back into a time when magic rules. Unfortunately, technology and magic don’t work well together.
Kate Daniels is about to enter a world of gritty magic and dangerous mystery! Vampires, necromancers and mages abound on the city streets, with one kickass heroine in the middle
Future Atlanta is an interesting place to live: one moment magic dominates, and cars stall and guns fail. The next, technology takes over and the defensive spells no longer protect your house from monsters.
Here skyscrapers topple under the onslaught of magic; the Pack, a paramilitary clan of shapechangers, prowl through the ruined streets; and the Masters of the Dead, necromancers driven by their thirst for knowledge and wealth, pilot…
A coyote shifter living next door to the alpha werewolf?
But what I like best about the Mercy Thompson series is the focus on how all the supernatural beings work (and don’t work) together. Vampires, werewolves, and fae.
Also, Mercy has a complicated backstory (don’t they all?) and the more we learn about it, the more problems arise because of it. Mercy is practical and smart and scrappy, and I adore her.
The first novel in the New York Times bestselling Mercy Thompson series - the major urban fantasy hit of the decade
'I love these books!' Charlaine Harris
The best new fantasy series I've read in years' Kelley Armstrong
MERCY THOMPSON: MECHANIC, SHAPESHIFTER, FIGHTER
I didn't realize he was a werewolf at first. My nose isn't at its best when surrounded by axle grease and burnt oil . . .'
Mercedes Thompson runs a garage in the Tri-Cities. She's a mechanic, and a damn good one, who spends her spare time karate training and tinkering with a VW bus that happens…
I’ve been telling you about the main female character, so far, but for this one, I have to talk about Bones.
Oh, how I love Bones. My favorite line of his, when someone has to be told about vampires, and told that Bones is one, is, “Ask me if I sparkle and I’ll kill you where you stand.”
I also love that Jeaniene Frost gave us Cat and Bones’ full story in the Night Huntress series, and then gives us a bunch of PNR books in the same universe, so the other characters in their series also find their HEA.
Kicking off the sexiest, smartest, most badass paranormal romance series out there. You won't be able to stop turning the pages.
Half-vampire Catherine Crawfield is going after the undead with a vengeance, hoping that one of those deadbeats is her father - the guy responsible for ruining her mother's life.
But when she's captured by Bones, a bounty hunter and a vampire, she finds herself forced into an unholy partnership.
In exchange for his help in finding her father, and still astonished she hasn't ended up as his dinner, Cat agrees to train with the sexy night stalker until her…
People have a love/hate relationship with the Anita Blake series, and if you don’t like a lot of sex in your books, then you should probably only read the first nine books (when Anita returns home after Obsidian Butterfly, you’re done).
The first books are so well written — plot, character, world building. However, a few books in the teens, I skip when re-reading because they are mostly sex without a plot. Later books, however, get back to plot and world building, and I enjoy them once again.
I don’t mind sex in my books, though, so your mileage may vary. There are often two main plots in these books: Anita’s work with the police, plus whatever is going on in the supernatural world.
Sometimes these plots turn out to be the same plot in the end, other times, they remain two plots, woven together to create a cohesive story.
Meet Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, in the first novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling series that "blends the genres of romance, horror and adventure with stunning panache"(Diana Gabaldon).
Laurell K. Hamilton's bestselling series has captured readers' wildest imaginations and addicted them to a seductive world where supernatural hungers collide with the desires of the human heart, starring a heroine like no other...
Anita Blake is small, dark, and dangerous. Her turf is the city of St. Louis. Her job: re-animating the dead and killing the undead who take things too far. But when the city's most powerful vampire…
The Psy-Changeling series is technically more paranormal romance than urban fantasy, because each book is a different couple.
However, the books traverse the world with an overarching plot that ties them all together beautifully, and most of the women are as kickass as their men. It’s my favorite series of all on my list, with a glorious twenty-one books thus far.
The world building is fantastic, the character depth makes you feel as if you are hanging out with old friends, and the plots are pure magic.
THE FIRST PSY/CHANGELING NOVEL from the New York Times bestselling author of Shards of Hope, Shield of Winter, and Heart of Obsidian... The book that Christine Feehan called "a must-read for all of my fans." In a world that denies emotions, where the ruling Psy punish any sign of desire, Sascha Duncan must conceal the feelings that brand her as flawed. To reveal them would be to sentence herself to the horror of "rehabilitation"-the complete psychic erasure of everything she ever was...Both human and animal, Lucas Hunter is a Changeling hungry for the very sensations the Psy disdain. After centuries…
Someone is abducting women and killing men in a way to get Kirsten O’Shea’s attention. Luckily, she’s made some formidable friends and allies in the supernatural world, and she isn’t without her own defenses, either. A powerful master vampire romances her while the alpha werewolf flirts with her, and an ancient being who used to be worshipped as a god wants her dead, but Kirsten survives, even if she is Only Human.
Edge of the Known World is a near-future love and adventure story about a brilliant young refugee caught in era when genetic screening tests like 23AndMe make it impossible to hide a secret identity. The novel is distributed by Simon & Schuster. It is a USA Today Bestseller and 2024 American Fiction Awards Winner in multiple categories, including Best New Fiction, Political Thriller, and Science Fiction: General.
Alexandra is a gifted student, adoring daughter, and exuberant prankster. She is also hiding in the open. After a blissful childhood, Alex learned she’s an illegal refugee from a brutal regime, smuggled into…
Fans of Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake will be swept away by this riveting speculative fiction adventure and love story about family, genetic privacy, and the onrushing future of surveillance technology.
2024 American Fiction Awards Winner in multiple categories, including Best New Fiction, Political Thriller, and Science Fiction
Alexandra Tashen is a brilliant student, adoring daughter, merry wit, and exuberant prankster. After a blissful childhood on a Texas ranch, she learns the truth: She is a refusé, an illegal refugee smuggled into the Allied Nations as an infant. Everyone from her birth region carries a harmless but detectable bit of…
