Category Archives: Urban Fantasy

The City We Became

Posted on 10 September 2021 by Barbara Howe

The City We Became, the first book in N. K. Jemisin’s Great Cities series, is a love letter to New York City, in all its exuberant, chaotic, contradictory glory. And to city life in general. The idea here is that … Continue reading →

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Volcano City: Earthcore Book Two

Posted on 5 October 2019 by Barbara Howe

In Volcano City, book two in Grace Bridges’s YA Earthcore series, the crazed and villainous Mr B is back, and out for revenge on Anira and the superpower-endowed Earthcore team. Only now, instead of paving over and hiding natural wonders, … Continue reading →

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RotoVegas: Earthcore Book One

Posted on 9 August 2019 by Barbara Howe

Strange things are going on in the New Zealand resort town of Rotorua. Tourists targeted in a rash of pickpocket incidents seem dazed, unable to give a clear description of the thieves. Ghostly visitors drive a family out of their … Continue reading →

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The Kingfisher’s Debt

Posted on 14 July 2019 by Barbara Howe

“Aunty Tamsin, was Billy my dad?” I stopped applying my lipstick and and angled the rear-view mirror. … With grey eyes and auburn hair framing her face, Gwyn looked like her mother. She hadn’t inherited the blonde hair and blue … Continue reading →

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Moonheart

Posted on 21 April 2019 by Barbara Howe

Of all the settings in all the thousands of books I’ve read, Tamson House in Ottawa, Canada is among the ones I’d most like to visit. That world-straddling residence is a significant presence in the urban fantasy Moonheart by Charles … Continue reading →

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Pay Dirt

Posted on 5 October 2018 by Barbara Howe

The ghoul claims he’s cursed. Ozzy Turner tells him he isn’t, and Ozzy ought to know. He makes a living breaking curses and finding lost items, and every test he knows has come up empty. He’s right; when the ghoul … Continue reading →

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Thirteen Orphans

Posted on 15 July 2018 by Barbara Howe

Years ago in the Land Born of Smoke and Sacrifice, a China-like alternate reality, the winners in a war exiled the losers into our reality. The exiles—the young emperor and his twelve advisors, each personifying an animal in the Chinese … Continue reading →

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Cunning Devil

Posted on 12 May 2018 by Barbara Howe

Ozzy Turner is a man you don’t want to cross. He is a cunning man, aka white witch; a magic user specialising in breaking curses and finding lost items or people. A man dedicated to protecting his community, the town … Continue reading →

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Rivers of London

Posted on 3 November 2017 by Barbara Howe

In the first chapter of Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch, probationary constable Peter Grant of the Metropolitan Police Service tries to take a witness statement from a man he doesn’t realise at first is a ghost. Pretty soon Grant finds … Continue reading →

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Mercy Thompson

Posted on 8 July 2017 by Barbara Howe

In the urban fantasy Moon Called by Patricia Briggs, our world is awash in the preternatural: werewolves, vampires, the greater and lesser fae, and other assorted oddities. The fae have recently been forced out of hiding; concerned over the pace of … Continue reading →

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