Christmas Reads for Urban Fantasy Fans
Does Urban Fantasy seem like a total mystery to you? Not sure what to get for your friends and family who love a good Urban Fantasy reads? Don’t worry, we’ve got 10 books that will ensure you gift them the best in the genre!
Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch
In the fifth of his bestselling series Ben Aaronovitch takes Peter Grant out of whatever comfort zone he might have found and takes him out of London – to a small village in Herefordshire where the local police are reluctant to admit that there might be a supernatural element to the disappearance of some local children. But while you can take the London copper out of London you can’t take the London out of the copper.
Traveling west with Beverley Brook, Peter soon finds himself caught up in a deep mystery and having to tackle local cops and local gods. And what’s more all the shops are closed by 4pm …
Foxglove Summer is available in paperback, eBook and audio download.
Midnight Crossroad by Charlaine Harris
From Charlaine Harris, the bestselling author who created Sookie Stackhouse, the world of Bon Temps, Louisiana, comes a new, darker world – populated by more strangers than friends. But then, that’s how the locals prefer it?
Welcome to Midnight, Texas, a town with many boarded-up windows and few full-time inhabitants, located at the crossing of Witch Light Road and Davy Road. It’s a pretty standard dried-up western town.
There’s a pawnshop (someone lives in the basement and is seen only at night). There’s a diner (people who are just passing through tend not to linger). And there’s new resident Manfred Bernardo, who thinks he’s found the perfect place to work in private (and who has secrets of his own).
Stop at the one traffic light in town, and everything looks normal. Stay awhile, and learn the truth…
Midnight Crossroad is available in paperback, eBook and audio download.
The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard
Paris in the aftermath of the Great Magicians War. Its streets are lined with haunted ruins, Notre-Dame is a burnt-out shell, and the Seine runs black, thick with ashes and rubble. Yet life continues among the wreckage.
The citizens retain their irrepressible appetite for novelty and distraction, and The Great Houses still vie for dominion over France’s once grand capital.
House Silverspires, previously the leader of those power games, now lies in disarray. Its magic is ailing; its founder, Morningstar, has been missing for decades; and now something from the shadows stalks its people inside their very own walls.
Within the House, three very different people must come together: a naive but powerful Fallen, an alchemist with a self-destructive addiction, and a resentful young man wielding spells from the Far East. They may be Silverspires’ salvation; or the architects of its last, irreversible fall . . .
The House of Shattered Wings is available in trade paperback, eBook and audio download.
The Death House by Sarah Pinborough
“Moving and totally involving. I couldn’t put it down”- Stephen King
Toby’s life was perfectly normal . . . until it was unravelled by something as simple as a blood test.
Taken from his family, Toby now lives in the Death House; an out-of-time existence far from the modern world, where he, and the others who live there, are studied by Matron and her team of nurses. They’re looking for any sign of sickness. Any sign of their wards changing. Any sign that it’s time to take them to the sanatorium.
No one returns from the sanatorium.
Withdrawn from his house-mates and living in his memories of the past, Toby spends his days fighting his fear. But then a new arrival in the house shatters the fragile peace, and everything changes.
Because everybody dies. It’s how you choose to live that counts.
The Death House is available in paperback, eBook and audio download.
Slave to Sensation by Nalini Singh
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 her personality …
Both human and animal, Lucas Hunter is a Changeling hungry for the very sensations the Psy disdain. After centuries of uneasy co-existence, these two races are now on the verge of war over the brutal murder of several Changeling women. Lucas is determined to find the Psy killer who butchered his packmate, and Sascha is his ticket into their closely guarded society. But he soon discovers that this ice-cold Psy is very capable of passion – and that the animal in him is fascinated by her.
Caught between their conflicting worlds, Lucas and Sascha must remain bound to their identities – or sacrifice everything for a taste of darkest temptation …
Slave to Sensation is available in paperback and eBook.
Angels’ Blood by Nalini Singh
Vampire hunter Elena Deveraux knows she’s the best – but she doesn’t know if she’s good enough for this job. Hired by the dangerously beautiful Archangel Raphael, a being so lethal that no mortal wants his attention, only one thing is clear – failure is not an option … even if the task she’s been set is impossible.
Because this time, it’s not a wayward vamp she has to track. It’s an archangel gone bad.
The job will put Elena in the midst of a killing spree like no other … and pull her to the razor’s edge of passion. Even if the hunt doesn’t destroy her, succumbing to Raphael’s seductive touch just may. Because when archangels play, mortals break …
Angels’ Blood is available in paperback, eBook and audio download.
The City of Silk and Steel by M.R. Carey, Louise Carey and Linda Carey
This is the tale of a city – like any other city, to begin with – and how it was lost and won, and lost again.
This is the tale of an unusual army and its extraordinary leaders: Rem, the librarian, whose tears are ink; wise Gursoon, who defines their conscience; and the silver-tongued thief, Anwar Das, who knows when to ignore that conscience. And it is the tale of the mysterious Zuleika, with her unexpected gift for violence. Without her, the city could not have been taken; because of her, it could not be held.
Most of all, this is the tale of Bessa, the city of silk and steel, as much legend as truth: its fate will haunt you for as long as stories are told …
The City of Silk and Steel is available in paperback and eBook.
The Whispering Swarm by Michael Moorcock
Michael Moorcock – the most influential figure in modern fantasy and science fiction – returns to the city of his birth. London has always been a central character in Moorcock’s work, from the high-literary fiction of MOTHER LONDON to the roof gardens of Jerry Cornelius.
Now return to London just after the war, a city desperately trying to get back on its feet. And one young boy, Michael Moorcock, who is about to discover a world of magic and wonder. Between his first tentative approaches to adulthood – a job on Fleet Street, the first stirrings of his interest in writing – and a chance encounter with a mysterious Carmelite Friar, we see a version of Moorcock’s life that is simultaneously a biography and a story. Mixing elements of his real life with his adventures in a parallel London peopled with highwaywomen, musketeers and magicians, this is Moorcock at his dazzling, mercurial best.
The Whispering Swarm is out now in trade paperback and eBook.
Some Girls Bite by Chloe Neill
Sure, the life of a graduate student wasn’t exactly glamorous, but it was mine. I was doing fine until Chicago’s vampires announced their existence to the world – and then a rogue vampire attacked me. But he only got a sip before he was scared away by another bloodsucker … one who decided the best way to save my life was to take it.
Turns out my saviour was the master vampire of Cadogan House. Now I’ve traded sweating over my thesis for learning to fit in at a Hyde Park mansion full of vamps loyal to Ethan ‘Lord o’ the Manor’ Sullivan. Of course, as a tall, green-eyed, four hundred year old vampire, he has centuries’ worth of charm, but unfortunately he also seems to expect my eternal gratitude – and servitude. Right …
But my burgeoning powers (all of a sudden, I’m surprisingly handy with some serious weaponry), an inconvenient sunlight allergy, and Ethan’s attitude are the least of my concerns. Someone’s out to get me. Is it the rogue vampire who bit me? A vamp from a rival House? An angry mob bearing torches?
My initiation into Chicago’s nightlife may be the first skirmish in a war – and there’s going to be blood …
Love Bites by Lynsay Sands
Etienne Argeneau can turn one human into a vampire in his lifetime – an honour his kind usually reserved for their life mates, to let their love life forever.
But it’s all a bit more complicated than that. Rachel Garrett, a beautiful coroner, has just saved his life and now she’s about to lose hers. Etienne has a choice: he can save her life in turn, and thus doom himself to an eternity alone, unable to create his own life mate. Or he can watch his saviour die in the name of a love he has yet to meet.
Her life and his love weigh in the balance, and whatever Etienne does he may live to regret for eternity …
The first book in the Argeneau series introduces the Argeneau family, and features a chaotic romance you can really sink your teeth into.