Nine of Stars
A Wildlands Novel
Laura
Bickle
On Sale Date:
December 27, 2016
ISBN: 9780062437662
Genre: Contemporary
Fantasy
Publisher: Harper
Voyager
About the
Book:
Following on the
heels of her critically acclaimed prequel novels Dark Alchemy and Mercury
Retrograde comes the first installment in Laura Bickle’s dark contemporary
fantasy series, Nine of Stars, a Wildlands Novel
Winter has always
been a deadly season in Temperance, but this time, there’s more to fear than
just the cold…
As the daughter of an
alchemist, Petra Dee has faced all manner of occult horrors—especially since her
arrival in the small town of Temperance, Wyoming. But she can’t explain the
creature now stalking the backcountry of Yellowstone, butchering wolves and
leaving only their skins behind in the snow. Rumors surface of the return of
Skinflint Jack, a nineteenth-century wraith that kills in fulfillment of an
ancient bargain.
The new sheriff in
town, Owen Rutherford, isn’t helping matters. He’s a dangerously haunted man on
the trail of both an unsolved case and a fresh kill—a bizarre murder leading him
right to Petra’s partner Gabriel. And while Gabe once had little to fear from
the mortal world, he’s all too human now. This time, when violence hits close to
home, there are no magical solutions.
It’s up to Petra and
her coyote sidekick Sig to get ahead of both Owen and the unnatural being
hunting them all—before the trail turns deathly cold.
Excerpt:
The surface of the water churned. At first Gabe thought it
was the wind, swirling around loose chunks of slush. But bubbles seethed from
the interior, pushing through the gold algae.
He reached for his rifle and pressed it to his shoulder.
He aimed it at the water, sighting down to see a black mass rushing upward,
breaking the surface in a hail of spattered slush. Crowned in antlers, the
creature glittered with ice, launching itself up into the daylight like a whale
breaching the surface of the ocean.
Instinctively, Gabe blew out his breath and pulled the
trigger. He fired once, twice, intending to put the creature back down in the
water. His rifle jolted his shoulder with each shot, and he knew he’d hit the
creature dead in its center of mass.
But the shadow leapt up onto the bank, dripping,
crouching. It was the shape of a man, with antlers crowning its head. It looked
upon Gabe through the skull of a stag, pale and ferocious . . .
and it stood up. In one hand, it gripped the golden coin Gabe had cast into the
water. A fistful of bone-pale knives dripped from the other.
Gabe ratcheted back the slide on his rifle and fired
again. The creature didn’t flinch. It was as if the soaking pelts of its cloak
simply sucked them in.
Petra was shooting at it, too, with no better results. She
was shouting at Sig to get behind her.
Gabe kept firing, backing away to the snowmobiles. He had
known that Skinflint Jack was a fearsome creature, but he suspected that Jack
could be hurt. He’d guessed wrong.
Jack lowered his head and made a run at Gabe. Gabe dove
away, but not before the darkness of Jack’s cloak slapped him in the side of
the face. It was like being slapped by the abyss—cold, stunning hell. An antler
caught Gabe in the shoulder and he tumbled, ass over teakettle, into a
snowdrift.
He rolled over in the snow, the shadow looming over him.
“Hey, you! Cthulhu wannabe! Look what I got.”
Jack turned. Petra was holding two glittering gold coins
in her hand. She made sure that he’d seen her. He took two steps away from
Gabe, toward her . . .
. . . and she pitched the coins as far as she
could, into the snowy waste. The pair of them shone like falling stars on the
way down.
Jack paused, seeming torn.
But he growled and scuttled after the coins.
Gabe climbed onto his snowmobile and cranked the engine.
Petra and Sig had already climbed aboard theirs and gotten the engine going. He
followed Petra to a hasty retreat up the valley. Behind him, he watched the
dark figure in the snowfield sifting through the snow with his hands.
That had been a disaster.
But they sure as hell had managed to get Skinflint Jack’s
attention, for good or ill.
About the
Author:
Laura Bickle grew up
in rural Ohio, reading entirely too many comic books out loud to her favorite
Wonder Woman doll. After graduating with an MA in Sociology-Criminology from
Ohio State University and an MLIS in Library Science from the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee, she patrolled the stacks at the public library and worked
with data systems in criminal justice. She now dreams up stories about the
monsters under the stairs. Her work has been included in the ALA’s Amelia
Bloomer Project 2013 reading list and the State Library of Ohio’s Choose to Read
Ohio reading list for 2015-2016.
More information
about Laura’s work can be found at www.laurabickle.com
2 comments:
Thanks so much for hosting me today! I appreciate it! :-)
This series looks super good, I'll definitely be starting it soon. Thanks so much for the chance to win!
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