Latter-day Olympians

It's an ill wind that carries bad news, and Tori's just had a double load of it blow through her door. Just a few weeks after she prevented rogue gods from blowing L.A. into the ocean, more dead bodies are turning up near the leftover crater...bodies that have been shredded by something too big to be, shall we say, of this world. Worse, her Uncle Christos has disappeared after stumbling onto a deadly cult masquerading as the Back-to-Earth movement. The connection: Dionysus. Yes, that Dionysus. He's resurrected his bloody fertility rite, complete with frenzied female groupies who tear men limb from limb. And he's lured Demeter, goddess of the harvest, over to his side by finding a way to get her daughter Persephone away from Hades for good. Predictably, Hades isn't about to let Persephone go without a fight. Unless Tori finds a way to bring her back to him, Hades will abandon the gates of Tartarus. At which time all hell will, literally, break loose. Between saving the world, the woman, the cultists and her crazy uncle, Tori is giving up on getting to the beach before all the good spots are taken.

A destination wedding in Delphi is interrupted as the immortal Titans rise again in the third novel of this urban fantasy series. Tori Karacis is not pleased to find her face on the front of yet another tabloid "news"paper, linked to Hollywood hottie Apollo Demas. It was only one dinner, and she was already pissed at him at the time. But tabloids are the least of her worries. Just before leaving for her cousin's destination wedding in Delphi, Tori learns that her arch nemeses, Zeus and Poseidon, have escaped police custody. And when angry gods escape . . . Even though she was looking forward to seeing Detective Nick Armani in a tux, Tori's pre-flight jitters are confirmed when Apollo boards the same plane with his sexy new co-star on his arm. They're all nearly torn out of the sky by a freak storm, but atop Mount Parnassus, something even more deadly awaits. A prophecy, a kidnapping, and a bloodletting that stirs up the mother of all trouble-literally. The Titan Rhea is awakened, and she's none too happy with her offspring for losing their usurped dominion over the Earth. The Olympians have fallen. It's time for the Titans to rise again. Which means it'll be a bad day for anyone standing in their way.

This Greek-mythology-inspired urban fantasy romance series continues as a part-gorgon PI rushes to stop an apocalypse in New York City. Tori Karacis knows it's going to be a bad day when she wakes to two surprises. One, she's in bed with a very naked Apollo, having lost her struggle to resist her attraction to him. Two, she still has her wings. Not dinky little fairy wings, but full-scale, cover-'em-with-a-trench-coat bat wings. Apollo suggests consulting the Gray Sisters about the wing problem. Those cannibalistic, psychopathic oracles who-even with only one tooth and one eye among them-manage to see too much. For one thing, they've foreseen a Rapture, zombie-apocalypse, biblical-plague, hellgates-busted-open end of the world. While the Sisters are perfectly cool with death and destruction, the thinning of the human herd doesn't sit well with them at all. They'll help Tori. All she has to do is save the world. Tori and her team trace the origin of the plagues to New York City, which is under quarantine and martial law (as if that would enough to stop the influx of gods and gorgons, dragons and demons). But as death threatens from the outside, betrayal lurks within Tori's circle of friends. And nobody is safe. Nobody.

Tori Karacis is back in L.A., glad that she matches her passport photo again, thanks to a tattoo that controls her gargoyle wings. Her newest case doesn't involve gods or an impending apocalypse...just garden-variety murder. Jessica Roland's suspicions began when her brothers returned from Egypt eerily different. The terror kicked in with the ritualistic murder of her parents. Her real brothers would never have done such a thing, yet their guilt seems indisputable. Is it the Curse of the Pharaohs? Some kind of brain-eating bacteria? At the scene of a second attack, there's evidence it's the work of Set, the god of chaos, who should have been locked away long ago. And hello, there's a new arrival. Neith, a warrior goddess who's got the hots for Tori's ex, Nick Armani. In theory, that shouldn't cause Tori any problems. After all, she's involved with Apollo-yes, that Apollo. Still, it's a bit much for Neith to ask her for seduction advice! Meanwhile, Set is gaining strength, chaos starts leaking all over the place, and L.A. is a powder keg set to blow.

In this "delightful urban fantasy", a PI's new client is a Greek god . . literally (Long and Short Reviews). Tori Karacis's family line may trace back to a drunken liaison between the god Pan and one of the immortal gorgons. Or maybe it's just coincidence that her glance can, literally, stop men in their tracks . . . While her fear of heights kept her out of the family aerobatic troupe, her extreme nosiness fits right in with her uncle's PI business. Except he's disappeared on an Odyssean journey to find himself. Muddling through on her own, she's reduced to hunting (not stalking, because that would just be weird) brass-bra'd Hollywood agent Circe Holland to deliver a message . . . only to witness her murder by what looks like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Suddenly, all of her family's tall tales seem believable, especially when Apollo-the Apollo, who's now hiding out among humans as an adult film star-appears in her office, looking to hire her. She knows the drill-canoodling with gods never works out well for humans-but she's irresistibly drawn to him. Maybe it's her genes. Maybe not. Given her conflicted feelings for one hot and hardened cop, it's a toss-up which will kill her quickest: the danger at her door-or her love life . . . "Tori Karacis . . . is sharp, sexy, and wickedly funny." -Faith Hunter, New York Times–bestselling author of the Jane Yellowrock series