MM - August 22

This week my two books arrived from Paperback Swap. Finally I received the second in the Urban Fantasy series, Cal Leandros. I was hooked on the first book and fell in love with the story. I've heard reviews the second is even better. The second book was Dead Witch Walking (The Hollows, #1) by Kim Harrison. Both of these are Urban Fantasy, my favorite genre, so I'm excited to dive into them.

The underground population of witches, vampires, werewolves—creatures of dreams and nightmares—has lived beside humans for centuries, hiding their powers. But after a genetically engineered virus wipes out a large part of humanity, many of the "Inderlanders" reveal themselves, changing everything.

Rachel Morgan, witch and bounty hunter with the Inderland Runner Services, is one of the best at apprehending supernatural lawbreakers throughout Cincinnati, but when it comes to following the rules, she falls desperately short. Determined to buck the system, she quits and takes off on the run with an I.S. contract on her head and is reluctantly forced to team up with Ivy, Inderland's best runner . . . and a living vampire. But this witch is way out of her league, and to clear her name, Rachel must evade shape-changing assassins, outwit a powerful businessman/crime lord, and survive a vicious underground fight-to-the-death . . . not to mention her own roommate.

The second novel in Rob Thurman's dark fantasy saga featuring Caliban "Cal" Leandros follows the half-monster protagonist and his older brother, Niko, as they begin a new life in New York City as bodyguards and amateur detectives specializing in cases with a supernatural slant.



After almost destroying the world in 2006's Nightlife, Cal has learned a lot about his mysterious past (he was the product of an experimental breeding program run by the otherworldly and nightmarish Auphe, whose objective was nothing short of annihilating the planet), but many questions still trouble him. However, one thing is certain: With a plethora of bloodthirsty monstrosities secretly preying on and sometimes coexisting with humankind, Cal and Niko will never be short of work in the City That Never Sleeps. But when they take a seemingly open-and-shut case involving the Kin (the "Mafia of the nonhuman world"), Cal and his sword-wielding brother become unwilling pawns in a power struggle between rival werewolf factions. The stakes are dramatically increased when Cal's girlfriend, the young seer Georgina, is kidnapped and held as collateral. The odds of Cal and his small group of misfit allies coming out of this unscathed are not good -- but 20-year-old Caliban Leandros is much more than even he realizes