Strange Brew by P. N. Elrod (Editor)

From the Publisher

Today’s hottest urban fantasy authors come together in this delicious brew that crackles and boils over with tales of powerful witches and dark magic!

In Charlaine Harris’ “Bacon,” a beautiful vampire joins forces with a witch from an ancient line to find out who killed her beloved husband. In “Seeing Eye” by Patricia Briggs, a blind witch helps sexy werewolf Tom Franklin find his missing brother—and helps him in more ways than either of them ever suspected. And in Jim Butcher’s “Last Call,” wizard Harry Dresden takes on the darkest of dark powers—the ones who dare to mess with this favorite beer.

For anyone who’s ever wondered what lies beyond the limits of reality, who’s imagined the secret spaces where witches wield fearsome magic, come and drink deep. Let yourself fall under the spell of this bewitching collection!

Publishers Weekly

Anthologist Elrod (My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding) taps into the urban fantasy craze with a mixed bag of wizardry, mystery and glamour. The best include Patricia Briggs's wistful "Seeing Eye," wherein blind witch Wendy Moira Keller helps werewolf Tom Franklin search for his missing brother, and Jim Butcher's funny "Last Call," which finds wizard Harry Dresden hot on the tail of Meditrina Bassarid, a wicked wine-loving maenad who wreaks havoc in a Chicago bar. In Rachel Caine's romantic "Death Warmed Over," Holly Anne Caldwell, a resurrection witch, falls in love with Andrew Toland, a corpse from 1875, while Elrod's "Hecate's Golden Eye" tells of a 1937 hunt for a curious family gem. Though not particularly groundbreaking, these tales will easily keep paranormal mystery fans entertained. (July)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Nanette Wargo Donohue - Library Journal

Elrod ("The Vampire Files") curates another urban fantasy anthology featuring a mix of marquee names and newcomers. Unlike in his previous collections (My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding; My Big Fat Supernatural Honeymoon), the theme—witches—is looser, allowing the contributors freedom to expand upon their current popular series. Best-selling authors Patricia Briggs (Bone Crossed) and Jim Butcher (Turn Coat) open the anthology with stories set in familiar worlds. While Briggs's "Seeing Eye" is not tied to either of her current series, the themes are similar, and her weres make an appearance. Butcher's "Last Call," the highlight of the collection, finds wizard detective Harry Dresden tracing a batch of tainted beer to a Chicago Bulls game. Faith Hunter's promising new series featuring skinwalker Jane Yellowrock is launched in the surprisingly touching "Signatures of the Dead." The only misstep here is Karen Chance's (Curse the Dawn) contribution, "Vegas Odds," which focuses on a drawn-out fight scene at the expense of character development. VERDICT Readers will pick this one up for the popular authors and be pleasantly surprised by the tyros. Highly recommended.—Nanette Wargo Donohue, Champaign P.L., IL

Product Details

• Table of Contents
• Read an Excerpt

Table of Contents

Read an Excerpt

Charlaine Harris

Dahlia Lynley-Chivers looked good in black; in fact, she looked great – and normally that was extremely important to her. But tonight she wasn’t thinking about herself or about the picture she made sitting alone at the elaborately laid table in the upscale restaurant. Seeleys’ tablecloths might have been designed to set her looks off; the undercloth was black like her hair, the overcloth was snowy white like her skin.

Dahlia had been dead for a very long time.

Though she was sitting motionless, her back perfectly straight, Dahlia was conscious of the passing of time. The witch was late. Under any other circumstances, she would have left Seeleys and found something more amusing to do than wait for a human: but she’d gone to considerable trouble to arrange this meeting, and she wouldn’t give up so easily.

Clifford Seeley, who’d arranged to wait tables at his dad’s restaurant this evening, put a glass of True Blood in front of Dahlia with a theatrical flourish. “Something to sip on while you wait, Madam,” he said very formally. Then he whispered, “I haven’t worked here since I was twenty. Am I doing okay?”

Dahlia didn’t exactly smile. She wasn’t in the mood. But her face looked a bit less stony as she looked up at the tall young werewolf, and she inclined her head an infinitesimal degree. She liked Clifford, had since the moment she’d met him at her friend Taffy’s wedding reception. Taffy, like Dahlia, had married into the Swiftfoot pack.

Taffy’s husband Don was the packleader. Dahlia’s husband was dead.

“Heads up,”said Clifford suddenly, and swooped off to check his other tables. Dahlia saw the headwaiter gliding toward her, a young woman stumbling along behind him. Dahlia’s attention sharpened. Since vampire senses are at least five times more acute than humans on their dullest day, this meant Dahlia might as well have been walking right next to the newcomer. The woman was plump, tousled, and breathing heavily, and she didn’t seem to know how to walk on high heels. Dahlia, who wore stilettos on every possible occasion, let her nostrils flare in contempt, though she made sure to repress any expression well before the young woman reached her chair. That took longer than it should, since Dahlia’s guest was not Ms. Fitness.

When the newcomer was seated, considerable fuss ensued until she found a place for her purse, yanked at the shoulder of her dress, tossed her head so her long red hair would hang behind her shoulders, and asked the headwaiter for some water (he replied, “I’ll send your waiter, Clifford, right over,” in a rather stiff voice).

“I’m so sorry I’m late, Mrs. Swiftfoot. I caught the wrong bus, and after that, everything seemed to go wrong,” the young woman said.

Dahlia studied her silently. Making people squirm was something Dahlia did very well. “You are the Circe, the witch?” Dahlia said finally, in her frostiest voice. But her tone was not as cutting as she could make it. Dahlia had gone to too much trouble setting up the meeting to go overboard with the hostility.

“Yes, oh, yes, I didn’t introduce myself!” The young witch giggled, tossed her head again. “I’m not the original Circe, of course. That was my – well, my many-times great grandmother. But I’m the direct descendant, yes.”

“And you are a trained witch?”

“Oh, yes, I went to school and everything.” The Circe wore glasses, and she blinked anxiously at the tiny vampire across the table. “I graduated with honors.”

“I was under the impression that witches were taught by their predecessors,” Dahlia said. “I understood that the knowledge was passed along by word of mouth, and in the family grimoire. There’s no -- Hogwarts -- in your past, I presume?” The reference to Harry Potter was a real effort for Dahlia, who tracked current culture with some effort. Dahlia had ventured the mild pleasantry to put the panting young woman at ease, but Dahlia was not terribly adept at mild or pleasant.

The Circe recoiled. “No,” she snapped. “And I’ll thank you not to refer to those books again. Everyone thinks we’re cute, now, and we’ve lost a lot of the respect we used to be accorded.”

“Some would say that any publicity is good publicity,” Dahlia said, curious about this unexpected sign of temper. No one had snapped at Dahlia in, oh, five decades. She’d caught an unexpected glimpse of the darker thing that lived inside the untidy young creature sitting across the table.

“If one more person asks me where my owl is, or how to get to Gringotts, I’ll turn them into a . . .”

“Pig?” Dahlia suggested.

The Circe glared at her. “That was my ancestor’s thing, not mine,” she said.

Interesting. “Let’s start again, from the beginning,” Dahlia said.