Rachel Morgan thinks of herself as a good person, but ever since she quit her job and started a business with two friends, circumstances have nudged her to blur the distinctions between good and evil. When it becomes necessary, she twists a curse, using black magic to help others or save herself. Her friends and enemies include vampires, werewolves, gargoyles, pixies, fairies and elves. Sometimes Rachel has trouble deciding whom she can trust. Sometimes that includes herself.

In Black Magic Sanction, Kim Harrison’s eighth novel featuring Rachel, the sexy witch must confront a charming ex-boyfriend who once again betrays her. This time Nick hands her over to a coven of so-called white witches determined to imprison Rachel forever. The coven considers a lobotomy justifiable punishment for Rachel’s use of black magic, no matter how well-intended her motives. They also have no objection to using white magic in deadly combinations in order to bring Rachel into custody. Trapped between them and her long-time enemy, the rich, powerful elf Trent Kalamack, Rachel needs all her skill and her friends’ support if she hopes to survive. The presence of her long-time crush, Pierce, a black magic witch, complicates things even more.

Written with Harrison’s trademark blend of humor juxtaposed with peril, sensuality and magic, Black Magic Sanction is sure to please both long-term fans and newcomers to the series. Harrison provides enough background to keep new readers from getting lost, without spoiling twists from her earlier books.

The character of Rachel remains one of the series’ many strengths. As she learns to deal with increasing amounts of power, she also develops trust in herself. Rachel remains vulnerable, however, especially in her personal life. She is still tempted by danger, often in the form of treacherous men like Nick, Pierce and Trent. Though sometimes considered an airhead, Rachel uses her wits and fighting skills as well as spells to defend herself and those she loves. No wonder her friends, and Harrison’s growing number of fans, stand by Rachel so faithfully.

Leslie Moïse, biblio-omnivore and novelist, lives and writes in Louisville, Kentucky.

Sassy New York actress Esther Diamond finds herself unemployed when the mediocre musical she is in closes without warning. Esther hears about a juicy guest role on a popular television series, but needs income to pay her bills in the meantime, so she reluctantly falls back on her job as a singing waitress at popular mob hangout, Bella Stella. etective Connor Lopez adds to Esther’s frustration. Despite some hot, sexy moments, they cannot seem to move their relationship past the lunch date phase. To increase the tension, Lopez thinks Esther’s friend Max Zadok is a dangerous lunatic. Esther knows Max is actually an ancient sorcerer keeping New York safe from evil, but cannot explain that to Lopez since the hunky detective is a non-believer when it comes to magic.

Lopez is equally upset about Esther’s job at Bella Stella, a sentiment Esther can’t argue with when capo Chubby Charlie is murdered right in front of her. With the help of a semi-retired mob hitman named Lucky, Esther realizes that someone is creating perfect doubles of gangsters from different mob families; soon after each wiseguy meets his “doppelgangster,” he dies. While Lopez tries to solve the mystery using police logic, Esther and Lucky enlist Max’s mystical assistance and it soon becomes clear that someone is using magic in order to start a mob war. As the list of victims grows, so does the danger to Esther and her friends.

The newest in Laura Resnick’s series featuring Esther Diamond, Doppelgangster is unexpectedly light-hearted and funny. Max’s formal diction, magical outlook and old-fashioned sensibilities provide hilarious contrast with Lucky’s blunt approach and Esther’s exotic lifestyle. Conflict and humor arise naturally thanks to the differences between the older men, as well as Lopez and Esther herself, while the sexual chemistry between the couple sizzles more strongly every time they meet. The suspense increases steadily as Esther’s search for clues takes her from various crime scenes to Max’s musty antiquarian bookstore with its cellar laboratory and to a neighborhood church badly in need of renovation. This novel is certain to please anyone who enjoys fantasy blended with suspense, and savors romance with a good dash of wit. 

Leslie Moise lives and writes in Louisville, Kentucky.

The City & The City is a murder mystery, old-fashioned in its way, narrated by a tough-talking police investigator and layered with all the shadow and menace of a film noir. China Miéville, known for such sprawling and often innovative fantasies as Perdido Street Station and Iron Council, turns to a leaner approach in this novel, hanging his story on prose that is at once precise, mordant and vivid. The result is a tightly plotted, thoroughly engaging read, at turns beguiling and revelatory.

The most original aspect of the book is its setting. The two cities of the title, Bes?el and Ul Qoma, are vastly dissimilar places, each with its own language, culture and forms of political unrest. Ul Qoma is undergoing an economic boom while Bes?el decays in a slump. Though the two cities are located in different countries, they share a common past and—this is the extraordinary conceit that drives the narrative—they occupy the same geographical space. Residents of one city are strictly prohibited from interacting with residents of the other, even though they walk the same streets. Failing to “unsee” the other city and its citizens is a crime; to actually have dealings with them is “Breach,” something rather worse than illegal border-crossing.

Complications arise when Inspector Tyador Borlú is called upon to investigate the murder of a young woman whose body is discovered in his home city of Bes?el. The problem is that the murder seems to have taken place in Ul Qoma. If the murder is an instance of Breach, then the crime is outside of Borlú’s jurisdiction, and responsibility lies with a power more dangerous and enigmatic than his police squad.

Borlú is unable to leave the case alone, however, and to continue his investigation he must travel to Ul Qoma, where he is ensnared in a conspiracy involving the government, a forbidden book, an archaeological site and the cities’ ancient past. The paradox of his situation—to seek truth in a place which demands that one willfully ignore a part of what is real—allows Miéville to construct a fascinating and original hybrid of fantasy and crime fiction.

Jedediah Berry is the author of a novel, The Manual of Detection.

Henry Lamb, formerly the child star of a BBC sitcom, is working a dead-end job in London’s Storage and Record Retrieval unit. He’s helplessly single, hopelessly in love with his landlady, and he can’t escape his oppressive mother. When his alcoholic grandfather falls suddenly into a coma, he learns that his family is tied to a secret government agency known as the Directorate, which for over a hundred years has been fighting a clandestine war to protect the people of the United Kingdom from an ancient and malevolent force.
Their enemy? Nothing less than the British royal family.

The Domino Men is a funny and often gripping entertainment, a wry mash-up of espionage thriller and Lovecraftian horror reminiscent of the Hellboy graphic novels. It is also a satire that cleverly draws parallels between the tropes of cosmic horror and the mundane tyrannies of the modern bureaucratic state.

Though The Domino Men takes place in the same world as Barnes’ first book, The Somnambulist, it is not properly speaking a sequel, and readers may enjoy this novel’s mysteries and intrigues without knowledge of what has come before. Queen Victoria, fearing the downfall of the Empire, made a deal with—well, not the devil exactly, but something quite bad. Now, conscripted into the Directorate by its gilled and aquarium-bound chief, Henry must thwart the House of Windsor by turning to something arguably worse: the Domino Men of the title, a pair of immortal goons who delight in human suffering but who possess the secret that could tip the war in the Directorate’s favor.

In what may be the novel’s most effective gambit, interpolations from the opposition are scattered throughout Henry’s account of his final stand, representing the voice of doubt and fear that threatens to undo the protagonist and maybe the world itself. Though the novel veers at times into overtly grotesque terrain, its horrors are usually of the subtle and psychological kind, a dark lens through which to observe a beguiling story of power and corruption.

Jedediah Berry is the author of The Manual of Detection, published by Penguin Press.