Laurell K. Hamilton, author of the New York Times bestseller A Kiss of Shadows, returns to the series that started it all. Narcissus in Chains, the tenth installment in the ever-popular Anita Blake series, finds everyone’s favorite vampire hunter back on her home turf and delving into the heart of human—and non-human—darkness.
Men are men. Jean Claude and Richard are each something else entirely. Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, torn between them, has been avoiding both vampire and werewolf for months. But when a kidnapper targets innocents she has sworn to protect, Anita turns to them for help, which will require harnessing both their powers—and their hungers…
Six months of celibacy have made Anita crave the two men in her life like never before. But merging their powers together will give this mortal woman a taste of immortal hunger that she’ll never be able to forget.
Love, Supernatural Style
Love is the universal language. And nowhere is this more apparent than in these extraordinary stories from four of today’s hottest authors. From a futuristic cop caught in a crisis of the heart to a smoldering vision of an unusual love triangle, from the hunger for a human touch on an alien planet to a witch’s desperate search for the love of one man, these tales of paranormal romance will transport you to a time and a place you’ve never been before….
Featuring:
New York Times bestselling author J. D. Robb—with a new Lieutenant Eve Dallas story
New York Times bestselling author Laurell K. Hamilton—with a new Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter tale
USA Today Bestselling Authors, Susan Krinard and Maggie Shayne
“My name is Meredith Gentry, but of course it’s not my real name. I dare not even whisper my true name after dark for fear that one hushed word will travel over the night winds to the soft ear of my aunt, the Queen of the Air and Darkness. She wants me dead. I don’t even know why.”
Meredith Gentry, Princess of the high court of Faerie, is posing as a human in Los Angeles, living as a P.I. specializing in supernatural crime. But now the Queen’s assassin has been dispatched to fetch her back–whether she likes it or not.
Suddenly Meredith finds herself a pawn in her dreaded aunt’s plans. The job that awaits her: enjoy the constant company of the most beautiful immortal men in the world. The reward: the crown–and the opportunity to continue to live. The penalty for failure: death.
There are a lot of monsters in Anita Blake’s life. And some of them are human. One such individual is the man she calls Edward, a bounty hunter who specializes in the preternatural. He calls her to help him hunt down the greatest evil she has ever encountered. Something that kills and maims and vanishes into the night. Something Anita will have to face alone…
“MY NAME IS ANITA BLAKE. I’D LIKE YOU TO MEET EDWARD… ” Edward was a hit man. He specialized in monsters. Vampires, shape-shifters, anything and everything. There were people like me who did it legal, but Edward didn’t sweat the legalities or, hell, the ethics. He was an equal opportunity killer. I may be one of the few friends that Edward has, but it’s like being friends with a tame leopard. It may curl on the foot of your bed and let you pet its head, but it can still eat your throat out…
“Richard was an alpha werewolf. It was his only serious flaw. We’d broken up after I’d seen him eat somebody.”
Still, you never forget your ex-fiancé. And when Richard calls Anita Blake at three in the morning, she knows it won’t be good news. It seems Richard had gotten himself thrown in jail on a rape charge. But Anita knows that though he is a monster, Richard’s no rapist. And it’s up to her to prove his innocence—before the blue moon creates even bigger problems for Richard…”
“Vampire hunter and preternatural expert Anita Blake, must help her ex-fiancé out of a false rape charge. Time is of the essence, however, as Anita’s ex-flame is a werewolf and if he’s not out of jail before the full moon rises he’s in for some big problems.”
“You can’t trust anyone who sleeps with monsters.”
That’s what Anita Blake had always believed. But now she was sharing a bed with the Master Vampire of the city. So when an arsonist began to target vampire victims, the creatures of the night turned to their former enemy. For now only “The Executioner” could save them from the inferno…
It’s often hard to tell the good from the evil. Just ask Anita Blake. She seems to be developing a soft spot in her heart for vampires-one in particular. So, when an arsonist’s fires begin licking at St. Louis’s undead, it’s up to Anita to save the very monsters she’s sworn to destroy.
“The first hit man came after me at home, which should be against the rules. Then there was a second, and a third. Eventually, I found out that the word on the street was that Anita Blake, preternatural expert and vampire killer extraordinaire, was worth half a million dollars. Dead, not alive. So what’s a girl to do but turn to the men in her life for help? Which in my case, means an alpha werewolf and a master vampire. With professional killers on your trail, it’s not a bad idea to have as much protection as possible, human or otherwise.
But I’m beginning to wonder if two monsters are better than one…”
“When Anita Blake’s boss at Animators, Inc., informs her that she’s expected to raise 300-year-old zombies from a field of jumbled bones just to settle a land dispute, she’s understandably annoyed. But as soon as she arrives in Branson, Missouri, to do the deed, the job gets more interesting. A psychotic sword-wielding vampire starts committing multiple murders in the area, and Anita must call on Jean-Claude, her powerful fanged suitor, for help. As always, Anita prevails over the undead, keeping Jean-Claude at arm’s length, clearing the cemetery land of an ancient enchantment, and nailing the vampiric killer in one fell swoop.”
“First, there were the dead in the graveyard – two-hundred years dead. I’d been hired to raise them to settle a dispute over who owned the land they were buried in.
Then there were the three dead teenagers in the woods, slaughtered in a way I had never seen before.
And then they found the dead girl, drained of blood and left in her bed.
I knew what that meant, all right. It didn’t take a degree in preternatural studies to figure out that something was very wrong in and around Branson, Missouri. My name is Anita Blake. Welcome to my life…”
You get two preternatural experts in one with Anita Blake, animator and vampire slayer. She’s one of the good guys in a world full of bad things. A world that Laurell K. Hamilton makes spin in her New York Times bestselling novels.
Now, Anita has fallen for the leader of a local pack of werewolves. She’s survived a lot, but this love thing may kill her yet…
Death of a Darklord focuses on a young woman who finds that she has a talent for magic in a land and a family unforgiving of such abilities, and her tragic attempts to redeem herself in the eyes of her family by aiding them on their quest to end the dark magic that has destroyed a neighboring town.
