Book picks similar to
Third Strike of Midnight: Magic and Mayhem Universe (Midnight Chronicles Book 3) by Jane Hinchey
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magic-and-mayhem-universe
mystery
relationships-family
Garden Spells
Sarah Addison Allen - 2007
In this luminous debut novel, Sarah Addison Allen tells the story of that enchanted tree, and the extraordinary people who tend it.…The Waverleys have always been a curious family, endowed with peculiar gifts that make them outsiders even in their hometown of Bascom, North Carolina. Even their garden has a reputation, famous for its feisty apple tree that bears prophetic fruit, and its edible flowers, imbued with special powers. Generations of Waverleys tended this garden. Their history was in the soil. But so were their futures.A successful caterer, Claire Waverley prepares dishes made with her mystical plants—from the nasturtiums that aid in keeping secrets and the pansies that make children thoughtful, to the snapdragons intended to discourage the attentions of her amorous neighbor. Meanwhile, her elderly cousin, Evanelle, is known for distributing unexpected gifts whose uses become uncannily clear. They are the last of the Waverleys—except for Claire’s rebellious sister, Sydney, who fled Bascom the moment she could, abandoning Claire, as their own mother had years before.When Sydney suddenly returns home with a young daughter of her own, Claire’s quiet life is turned upside down—along with the protective boundary she has so carefully constructed around her heart. Together again in the house they grew up in, Sydney takes stock of all she left behind, as Claire struggles to heal the wounds of the past. And soon the sisters realize they must deal with their common legacy—if they are ever to feel at home in Bascom—or with each other.Enchanting and heartfelt, this captivating novel is sure to cast a spell with a style all its own….
Midnight Crossroad
Charlaine Harris - 2014
But then, that’s how the locals prefer it...Welcome to Midnight, Texas, a town with many boarded-up windows and few full-time inhabitants, located at the crossing of Witch Light Road and Davy Road. It’s a pretty standard dried-up western town.There’s a pawnshop (someone lives in the basement and is seen only at night). There’s a diner (people who are just passing through tend not to linger). And there’s new resident Manfred Bernardo, who thinks he’s found the perfect place to work in private (and who has secrets of his own).Stop at the one traffic light in town, and everything looks normal. Stay awhile, and learn the truth...
50 Ways to Hex Your Lover
Linda Wisdom - 2008
Nikolai Gregorivich, a drop-dead gorgeous vampire cop on the trail of a serial killer.The sizzling love affair between Jazz and Nick has been off-again, on-again-for about 300 years. Mostly off, lately. But now Nick needs Jazz's help, and while Jazz and Nick try to figure out their own hearts and resist their ever-increasing attraction, they must steer clear of a maniacal killer with super-supernatural powers. They are surrounded by a hilarious cast of oddball paranormal characters, including Irma, the chain-smoking ghost who haunts Jazz's sports car, Dweezil, her ghoul of a boss, and Fluff and Puff, a pair of bunny slippers with sharp teeth and short tempers (watch your ankles)!
The Nothing Girl
Jodi Taylor - 2014
Getting a life isn't always easy. And hanging on to it is even harder... Known as “The Nothing Girl” because of her severe stutter and chronically low self-confidence, Jenny Dove is only just prevented from ending it all by the sudden appearance of Thomas, a mystical golden horse only she can see. Under his guidance, Jenny unexpectedly acquires a husband – the charming and chaotic Russell Checkland – and for her, nothing will ever be the same again. With over-protective relatives on one hand and the world's most erratic spouse on the other, Jenny needs to become Someone. And fast! Fans of Jodi Taylor's best-selling Chronicles of St Mary's series will adore the quirky humour in this new, contemporary novel.
Murder's a Witch
Danielle Garrett - 2016
Well, technically, she has lots of them. After a scandal uproots her entire life, she is forced to relocate to a halfway house for displaced paranormals. It’s her last shot for a fresh start. But keeping secrets isn’t easy in a town that goes through gossip faster than tissue paper, even for a powerful witch. When a grisly murder rocks the small town of Beechwood Harbor, Holly finds herself unwillingly entangled in the investigation. With everyone watching, Holly must solve the case before she’s forced to abandon her new-found home and live life as a witch on the run. But with a paranormal investigator tailing her every move, a civil war brewing between her vampire and shifter roommates, and her ghostly landlord on the edge of a breakdown, she can barely think in complete sentences. How is she supposed to track down a murderer? Holly has to make it work, or risk losing everything … again. Murder’s a Witch is a cozy witch mystery with a spunky twist. Come see what’s brewing in Beechwood Harbor in this first installment of The Beechwood Harbor Magic Mystery Series.
The Trouble With Magic
Madelyn Alt - 2006
But when Felicity becomes the suspect in a local murder, Maggie must enlist Felicity's wiccan friends for help--and discover her own spellbinding talent.
Betwixt
Darynda Jones - 2020
She is surprised, to say the least, and her curiosity gets the better of her. She leaves her beloved Phoenix and heads to one of the most infamous towns in America: Salem, Massachusetts. She’s only there to find out why a woman she’s never met would leave her a house. A veritable castle that has seen better days. She couldn’t possibly accept it, but the lawyer assigned to the case practically begs her to take it off her hands, mostly because she’s scared of it. The house. The inanimate structure that, as far as Dephne can tell, has never hurt a fly. Though it does come with some baggage. A pesky neighbor who wants her gone. A scruffy cat who’s a bit of a jerk. And a handyman bathed in ink who could moonlight as a supermodel for GQ. She decides to give it three days, and not because of the model. She feels at home in Salem. Safe. But even that comes to a screeching halt when people begin knocking on her door day and night, begging for her help to locate their lost objects. Come to find out, they think she’s a witch. And after a few mysterious mishaps, Dephne is beginning to wonder if they’re right.
Batter Up
Robyn Neeley - 2014
A delicious premonition she shares every Monday evening with the bachelors of Buttermilk Falls as they gather at the Sugar Spoon bakery for Batter Up night. Investigative reporter Jason Levine just found himself as the man candy for a bachelorette party in Las Vegas. Roped into attending the Vegas nuptials, was he hearing things when the groom shares that the only reason he’s getting married is because a small town baker conjured up the name of his soulmate in her cake batter? Sparks fly when Jason tries to expose Emma as a fraud, but reality and logic go out the window as he begins to fall under her spell.
The Accidental Alchemist
Gigi Pandian - 2015
Dorian Robert-Houdin is no simple automaton, nor is he a homunculus; in fact, he needs Zoe's help to decipher a centuries-old text that explains exactly what he is. Zoe, who's trying to put her alchemical life behind her, isn't so sure she can help. But after a murder victim is discovered on her front porch, Zoe realized she's tangled up in ancient intrigue that can't be ignored.Includes recipes!
Magical Midlife Madness
K.F. Breene - 2020
A new house with an unexpected twist. A cape wearing butler acting as the world's worst life coach."Happily Ever After" wasn't supposed to come with a do-over option. But when my husband of twenty years packs up and heads for greener pastures and my son leaves for college, that's exactly what my life becomes.Do-over.This time, though, I plan to do things differently. Age is just a number, after all, and at forty I'm ready to carve my own path.Eager for a fresh start, I make a somewhat unorthodox decision and move to a tiny town in the Sierra foothills. I'll be taking care of a centuries old house that called to me when I was a kid. It's just temporary, I tell myself. It'll just be for a while.That is, until I learn what the house really is, something I never could've imagined.Thankfully forty isn't too old to start an adventure, because that's exactly what I do. A very dangerous adventure that will change my life forever. I have a chance to start again, and this time, I make the rules.
Sweet Masterpiece
Connie Shelton - 2010
But her real dream is to open her own pastry shop, Sweet's Sweets.Life is a little crazy for Sam right now. At one of her break-in properties a dying woman insists that she take a small wooden box. Sam doesn't realize that the old woman was known locally as a bruja, a witch, until she begins to feel some strange effects from the box, herself.Meanwhile, at another property, she finds an unmarked grave and the authorities come to investigate. The property owner disappeared a few months earlier and Sam wonders--who is the body in the grave? A small mural in the house leads to a connection with a famous artist; a bogus will points to possible fraud; and the handsome deputy investigating the case seems completely enchanted with Sam.While Sam scrambles to fill bakery orders and keep her properties in order, she's equally intrigued with the idea of a new romance. It all makes for a delightful romantic mystery with elements of the paranormal.
Death's Excellent Vacation
Charlaine HarrisChris Grabenstein - 2010
P. Kelner return with an all-new story collection of postcards from the edge of the paranormal world...It really can be an endless summer - if you're immortal. Though a vampire would be ill-advised to take a cruise to Bermuda, the possibilities for getting away from it all - and maybe snacking on some unsuspecting tourist - are many...Sookie Stackhouse and her vampire friend Pam take a weekend getaway to Mississippi in #1 New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris's "Two Blondes." And when they end up in a shady gentleman's club, to escape in one piece they need to do something that wasn't on their itinerary - something involving a stage, a pole, and very little clothing.New York Times bestselling author Katie MacAlister's "The Perils of Effrijim" follow a demon whose vacation in Paris is disrupted when he's banished to another plane, thus kicking off a crazy dimension-hopping road trip across Europe.Protecting an heiress from supernatural hit men isn't Cat and Bones's idea of a relaxing vacation in New York Times bestselling author Jeaniene Frost's "One for the Money," but it could get worse. And it does - when Cat's mother shows up.With ten more original tales, editors Harris and Kelner bring together a stellar collection of tour guides who offer vacations frightening, funny, and touching - for the fanged, the furry, the demonic, and the grotesque.
The Last of the Moon Girls
Barbara Davis - 2020
Eight years ago, she left the land that nine generations of gifted healers had tended, determined to distance herself from the whispers about her family’s strange legacy. But when her beloved grandmother Althea dies, Lizzy must return and face the tragedy still hanging over the farm’s withered lavender fields: the unsolved murders of two young girls, and the cruel accusations that followed Althea to her grave.Lizzy wants nothing more than to sell the farm and return to her life in New York, until she discovers a journal Althea left for her—a Book of Remembrances meant to help Lizzy embrace her own special gifts. When she reconnects with Andrew Greyson, one of the few in town who believed in Althea’s innocence, she resolves to clear her grandmother’s name.But to do so, she’ll have to decide if she can accept her legacy and whether to follow in the footsteps of all the Moon women who came before her.
You Slay Me
Katie MacAlister - 2004
In her job as courier, Aisling is to deliver a precious demonic artifact to a Mme. Deauxville in Paris, but she finds Madame freshly dead, surrounded by a circle of ash. The artifact is then stolen by the fast-talking Drake, who claims that Aisling is no mere courier but in fact a demon lord and his destined mate. Determined to play detective, Aisling summons up a demon only to find herself saddled with one, in the form of a slobbering Newfoundland who wants to go walkies. Drake wants to show her the way dragons mate, and then bodies seem to pile up all over Paris, making Aisling a corpse magnet and top suspect. It's going to take every screwy new ally she's got to solve this murder and adjust to her new life in a strange new world.
The Lace Reader
Brunonia Barry - 2006
When the eyes begin to fill with tears and the patience is long exhausted, there will appear a glimpse of something not quite seen... In this moment, an image will begin to form... in the space between what is real and what is only imagined. Can you read your future in a piece of lace? All of the Whitney women can. But the last time Towner read, it killed her sister and nearly robbed Towner of her own sanity. Vowing never to read lace again, her resolve is tested when faced with the mysterious, unsolvable disappearance of her beloved Great Aunt Eva, Salem s original Lace Reader. Told from opposing and often unreliable perspectives, the story engages the reader s own beliefs. Should we listen to Towner, who may be losing her mind for the second time? Or should we believe John Rafferty, a no nonsense New York detective, who ran away from the city to a simpler place only to find himself inextricably involved in a psychic tug of war with all three generations of Whitney women? Does either have the whole story? Or does the truth lie somewhere in the swirling pattern of the lace?(back cover)