Night Shift by Charlaine Harris

Night Shift: A Novel of Midnight, Texas by Charlaine Harris --- 308 pages

This is the third (and allegedly final) book in the Midnight Crossing trilogy. Charlaine Harris's latest small town southern noir fantasy series, Rumor has it that NBC has optioned the books for a television series (shades of True Blood). In Night Shift she finally reveals the secret power that has drawn so much wierdness to this tiny Texas town, basically a crossroads in the middle of nowhere --- a secret that may just end of killing everyone unless Lemuel the vampire can decipher an old book written in ancient Etruscan that he hopes will provide the solution. As the Midnighters pull together to face the danger, a voice whispers from under the crossroads, talking to Midnight's resident witch, Fiji. Turns out Midnight is built over a magical spell that has imprisoned a demon for 250 years. Now the spell is waning and the demon is gathering life force energy to power his rising. And no energy is more potent that the energy of a witch on her own ground.

Click HERE to read a review from the Houston Press.

Click HERE to read an article from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Click HERE to read a review from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read a review from Tor. com.

Day Shift by Charlaine Harris

Day Shift: A Novel of Midnight, Texas by Charlaine Harris --- 307 pages

Charlaine Harris is the best selling author of paranormal mysteries with Southern settings. She's probably best known for her Sookie Stackhouse stories, which were the basis for the popular television series True Blood.

This is the second book in a new series (Harris says it will be a trilogy, but if it turns out to be as popular as Sookie, who knows?) set in the small town of Midnight, Texas. How small? Midnight is so small you would miss it if you blinked. The people who live in Midnight like it that way; they shun attention and don't encourage passers-through to linger

Manfred Bernardo chose to settle in Midnight for just that reason. He's a psychic who does most of his business online or by phone, and prefers to keep a very low public profile otherwise. Manfred and the readers were introduced to the rest of Midnight's eccentric inhabitants in the first book in the series, Midnight Crossroad.

Manfred makes a trip to Dallas to meet with a select group of clients willing to pay handsomely for personal psychic readings. He stays in the exclusive Vespers Hotel in the affluent suburb of Bonnet Park. He's surprised to see his Midnight neighbor, Olivia Charity, having dinner with a couple in the hotel restaurant. When the same couple turn up dead in their hotel room the next morning, an apparent murder-suicide, Manfred wonders uneasily if Olivia had anything to do with it.

But Manfred soon has troubles of his own. That same morning, Manfred meets with one of his favorite clients, a wealthy widow named Rachel Goldthorpe, who wants Manfred to help her communicate with her dead husband, Morton. She's having increasing difficulties coping with their volatile and controlling son, and wants Morton's advice. But in the middle of their seance, Rachel collapses and dies.

The local police find a third sudden death at the same hotel on the same morning more of a coincidence than they are willing to accept. When it turns out that Rachel's very valuable jewelry is missing, her son accuses Mandred of theft and murder. . . and the fun begins.

Harris is an experienced writer, and she knows what small, fallen-by-the-wayside towns in the rural South are like. So even her wildest flights of fancy are solidly rooted in the mundane. It's that contrast that makes her characters and stories so entertaining and compels our interest. There are several other subplots in the book, and we learn a little more about the other inhabitants in the process.

It will be interesting to see what happens next in Midnight, Texas.

Midnight Crossroad by Charlaine Harris

Midnight Crossroad: A Novel of Midnight, Texas by Charlaine Harris --- 305 pages

Now that Charlaine Harris has wound up her Sookie Stackhouse series it looks like she's ready to move on to new series of Southern Noir adventures.

I will admit I was not a big fan of Sookie, although I liked the books much, much more than the television series. But I have always preferred both her Harper Connelly and her Lily Bard series, so I was pleased to see minor but intriguing characters from those books turn up in the kick-off novel of this projected new series about the residents of a tiny little middle-of-nowhere Texas town who prefer to keep their idiosyncrasies to themselves.

Midnight seems like just the place for folks who want to keep a very low profile. But when Bobo Winthrop's girl friend Aubrey walks out of his life without a word of explanation or farewell, breaking his heart, it starts a chain of events that brings the law down on Midnight asking questions that nobody wants to answer.

The story starts slow, as we meet the residents of Midnight, but the pace quickens when Harris begins to peel back the layers of camouflage that protect their secrets. Harris has a way of combining the ordinary and the weird in unexpected ways, and leaving you wanting to know more.  I'm looking forward to another visit to Midnight.

Click HERE to see a trailer for Midnight Crossing.

Deadlocked by Charlaine Harris

Deadlocked: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel by Charlaine Harris --- 327 pages

Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse novels are the basis of the HBO hit series True Blood, a combination of Southern noir mystery and supernatural fantasy that has proved to be immensely popular with readers and viewers alike.

In the twelfth installment in the series, Sookie is trying to support her vampire lover, Eric, through the dangerous politics of the vampire world in the aftermath of the death of his rival Victor. Yet somehow her relationship with Eric is not as solid as Sookie thought it was. There's nothing big she can put her finger on, just a series of small, troubling incidents that don't add up to Sookie's way of reckoning.

But when a dead woman turns up on the lawn in front of Eric's house, in the middle of delicate negotiations with the vampire King of Louisiana, and it looks like someone is trying to frame Eric for murder, Sookie stands by her man and tries to figure out what is going on.  One thing becomes increasingly clear: somebody with a very big grudge is messing up the lives of a lot of people who matter to Sookie. Somebody who seems to know an awful lot about her private business. Somebody who will stop at nothing to get what he or she wants.

Harris has indicated that the next Sookie Stackhouse book will be the last volume in the series. In Deadlocked she has already begun the process of winding up the various plot threads. Sookie daydreams about all the "happily ever afters" she'd like to wish for her friends --- but for herself, she really wonders, whether there will ever be a "happily ever after."