Must Read Urban Fantasy #7
I know it's been awhile, but I'm picking back up my "Must Read Urban Fantasy" series of blog posts after a bit of a hiatus and I'm starting with this post right here. Sometimes, absolutely excellent urban fantasy series by lesser known writers get lost in the shadows of the big boys (and girls!) and that is certainly the case of the subject of today's post.
Ever hear of Laura Caxton? How about Jameson Arkely?
Yeah, didn't think so. You need to rectify that oversight straightaway.
Caxton and Arkeley are the central characters in the Laura Caxton Vampire series by David Wellington (recently of Red Space fame.) The series is classic urban fantasy, set in a universe where vampires have supposedly gone extinct and the once mighty division of the U.S. Marshall service has been reduced to a single agent, yep, you guessed it, Jameson Arkely. That's where things stand as book one, Thirteen Bullets, opens. When State Trooper Laura Caxton calls for help in the middle of the night, it sounds like a vampire attack and before you know it Caxton is reassigned and deputized to the Marshalls to help Arkely deal with the issue. What follows is high-octane action and creepy thrills as mentor and mentee try to put down a growing vampire threat.
There are five books in the series, all published in paperback, ebook, and audio format by Crown Publishing, a division of Penguin Random. Wellington does a masterful job of plotting the series from book to book and I loved each volume equally. This series is well worth your time in checking out!
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99 Coffins (Book Two)
Laura Caxton vowed never to face them again. The horror of what the vampires did is too close, the wounds too fresh. But when Jameson Arkeley comes to her with an unfathomable discovery, her resolve crumbles. Arkeley leads Caxton to a recently excavated tomb in Gettysburg. While the town, with its legendary role in the Civil War's worst battle, is no stranger to cemeteries, this one is remarkably, eerily different. In it lie one hundred coffins - ninety-nine of them occupied by vampires, who, luckily, are missing their hearts. But one of the coffins is empty and smashed to pieces. Who is the missing vampire? And does he have access to the ninety-nine hearts that, if placed back in the bodies of their owners, could reanimate an entire bloodthirsty army. The answers lie in Civil War documents that contain sinister secrets about the newly found coffins - secrets that Laura Caxton is about to uncover as she is thrown into the deadly, gruesome mission of saving an entire town from a mass invasion of the undead ...
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Vampire Zero (Book Three)
One man stood between them and us.
U.S. Marshal Jameson Arkeley—the country’s foremost authority on vampires—taught police investigator and vampire fighter Laura Caxton everything she knows about monsters. After a bloody war visited upon Gettysburg by an army of vampires, Arkeley gave up his own life to save others. Except he didn’t exactly die . . .
Arkeley accepted the curse and is now a vampire himself. What’s worse, he’s the savviest vampire ever—he knows all the tricks better than anyone. Caxton is now faced with the task of destroying him. But Arkeley knows all her tactics too; after all, he taught them to her. Caxton realizes she must finish Arkeley before he succeeds in his quest to exterminate his own family, one member at a time. But even more important, she has to prevent him from becoming a beast exponentially more dangerous—a Vampire Zero.
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23 Hours (Book Four)
In the next 23 hours, there will be no reprieve,
no mercy, and no time off for good behavior.
When vampire hunter Laura Caxton is locked up in a maximum-security prison, the cop-turned-con finds herself surrounded by countless murderers and death-row inmates with nothing to lose . . . and plenty of time to kill.
Caxton’s always been able to watch her own back–even when it’s against a cell-block wall–but soon she learns that an even greater threat has slithered behind the bars to join her. Justinia Malvern, the world’s oldest living vampire, has taken up residence, and her strength grows by the moment as she raids the inmate population like an open bar with an all-you-can-drink supply of fresh blood. The crafty old vampire knows just how to pull Caxton’s strings, too, and she's issued an ultimatum that Laura can’t refuse.
Now Laura has just 23 hours to fight her way through a gauntlet of vampires, cons, and killers . . . 23 hours to make one last, desperate attempt at protecting the world from Justinia’s evil.
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32 Fangs (Book Five)
The Final Reckoning
Laura Caxton's battles against the ancient vampire Justinia Malvern have cost her nearly everything—her badge, her freedom, her friends and family . . . maybe even her humanity.
And as she hides out in the deepest backwoods of Pennsylvania, pursued by the cops who were once her colleagues, Laura certainly looks beaten. But as Laura sees it, what little is left of her soul is perfectly adapted to the job of ridding the world of its last vampire. And thanks to the terrible clarity she's found, Laura's come up with a plan—one that will finish Malvern once and for all.
But the ever-wily Malvern has a few last aces left to play and is quietly dealing a hand that will involve a terrible fate for the few friends Laura's got left. When the two adversaries meet for the last time in their most epic battle, the vampires will force Laura to pay a price far beyond anything she's sacrificed before.
