Quadruple Trouble release day

What do I see this morning, but releases from three scorching-hot series that are tearing up urban fantasyland, and one humorous and fun read! Thank you, Santa!

Okay, these books are going to look great on my bookshelf...and even better in my hands, as I wantonly consume, ravish, and dog-ear them.

CITY OF GHOSTS by Stacia Kane
(Book #3 of the Downside series)
Can anyone go anywhere in blogland without seeing raves for this series? I'm psyched this is out. Stacia is doing something really cool and exciting with this gritty and achingly human series.

IT’S A THIN LINE BETWEEN ALIVE AND UNDEAD. Chess Putnam has a lot on her plate. Mangled human corpses have started to show up on the streets of Downside, and Chess’s bosses at the Church of Real Truth have ordered her to team up with the ultra-powerful Black Squad agency to crack the grisly case.

Chess is under a binding spell that threatens death if she talks about the investigation, but the city’s most notorious crime boss—and Chess’s drug dealer—gets wind of her new assignment and insists on being kept informed. If that isn’t bad enough, a sinister street vendor appears to have information Chess needs. Only he’s not telling what he knows, or what it all has to do with the vast underground City of Eternity.

Now Chess will have to navigate killer wraiths, First Elders, and a lot of seriously nasty magic—all while coping with some not-so-small issues of her own. And the only man Chess can trust to help her through it all has every reason to want her dead.

AS LIE THE DEAD by Kelly Meding
(Book #2, Dreg City)
The new installment in Meding's inventive, sexy, crazy-cool series is finally hitting the shelves. I've been dying to get in on the continuing adventures of Evangeline. Be careful, Evangeline!

Evangeline Stone, a rogue bounty hunter, never asked for a world divided between darkness and light . . . . . .

or the power to die and live again in someone else’s borrowed body. After a murder plot meant to take her out leaves an entire race of shapeshifters nearly extinct, Evy is gnawed by guilt. So when one of the few survivors of the slaughter enlists her aid, she feels duty-bound to help—even though protecting a frail, pregnant shifter is the last thing Evy needs, especially with the world going to hell around her.

Amid weres, Halfies, gremlins, vamps—and increasingly outgunned humans—a war for supremacy is brewing. With shifters demanding justice, her superiors desperate to control her, and an assassin on her trail, Evy discovers a horrifying conspiracy. And she may be the only person in the world who can stop it—unless, of course, her own side gets her first.


AND ONE LAST THING by Molly Harper
I understand this is quite the funny read. And the set-up is hilarious, in a kind of "uh-oh" way that I like very much.

"If Singletree’s only florist didn’t deliver her posies half-drunk, I might still be married to that floor-licking, scum-sucking, receptionist-nailing hack-accountant, Mike Terwilliger."

Lacey Terwilliger’s shock and humiliation over her husband’s philandering prompt her to add some bonus material to Mike’s company newsletter: stunning Technicolor descriptions of the special brand of "administrative support" his receptionist gives him.

The detailed mass e-mail to Mike’s family, friends, and clients blows up in her face, and before one can say "instant urban legend," Lacey has become the pariah of her small Kentucky town, a media punch line, and the defendant in Mike’s defamation lawsuit. Her seemingly perfect life up in flames, Lacey retreats to her family’s lakeside cabin, only to encounter an aggravating neighbor named Monroe. A hunky crime novelist with a low tolerance for drama, Monroe is not thrilled about a newly divorced woman moving in next door.

But with time, beer, and a screen door to the nose, a cautious friendship develops into something infinitely more satisfying. Lacey has to make a decision about her long-term living arrangements, though. Should she take a job writing caustic divorce newsletters for paying clients, or move on with her own life, pursuing more literary aspirations? Can she find happiness with a man who tells her what he thinks and not what she wants to hear? And will she ever be able to resist saying one . . . last . . . thing?

BRING ON THE NIGHT by Jeri Smith-Ready
Oh, my fondness for this series knows no bounds. It is unbounded fondness. I find these books to be exciting, yet strangely comforting, too - I think because the characters are so good. Loved the last two installments, and I'm psyched for this one!

WHAT’S BLOOD GOT TO DO WITH IT?

Recovering con artist Ciara Griffin seems to finally have it all. A steady job at WVMP, the Lifeblood of Rock ’n’ Roll. A loving relationship with the idiosyncratic but eternally hot DJ Shane McAllister. A vampire dog who never needs shots or a pooper-scooper. And after nine years, it looks as if she might actually finish her bachelor’s degree!

But fate has other plans for Ciara. First she must fulfill her Faustian bargain with the Control, the paranormal paramilitary agency that does its best to keep vampires in line. Turns out the Control wants her for something other than her (nonexistent) ability to kick undead ass. Her anti-holy blood, perhaps? Ciara’s suspicions are confirmed when she’s assigned to a special-ops division known as the Immanence Corps, run by the Control’s oldest vampire and filled with humans who claim to have special powers. To a confirmed skeptic like Ciara, it sounds like a freak fest. But when a mysterious fatal virus spreads through Sherwood—and corpses begin to rise from their graves—Ciara will not only get a crash course in zombie-killing, but will be forced to put her faith, and her life itself, in the hands of magic.

OMG, I keep hearing about more releases! The latest from Jeaniene Frost, Cynthia Eden, Tessa Dare, Marjorie Liu and Jocelyn Drake are out today too. A nine-duple release day. Okay, there must be a word for it, but somebody has to get to work.