Moon Called by Patricia Briggs

Werewolves can be dangerous if you get in their way, but they'll leave you alone if you are careful. They are very good at hiding their natures from the human population, but I'm not human. I know them when I meet them, and they know me, too.

Mercy Thompson's sexy next-door neighbor is a werewolf.

She's tinkering with a VW bus at her mechanic shop that happens to belong to a vampire.

But then, Mercy Thompson is not exactly normal herself...and her connection to the world of things that go bump in the night is about to get her into a whole lot of trouble.

Moon Called (2006)
Book one in the Mercy Thompson series
Ace paperback
cover art by Daniel Dos Santos
288 pages
my rating : 7/10

Matter by Iain M. Banks

In a world renowned even within a galaxy full of wonders, a crime within a war. For one man it means a desperate flight and a search for the one -- maybe two -- people who could clear his name. For his brother it means a life lived under constant threat of treachery and murder. And for their sister, even without knowing the full truth, it means returning to a place she'd thought abandoned forever.

But the sister is not what she once was; Djan Seriy Anaplian has changed almost beyond recognition to become an agent of the Culture's Special Circumstances section, charged with high-level interference in civilizations throughout the greater galaxy.

Concealing her new identity -- and her particular set of abilities -- might be a dangerous strategy, however. In the world to which Anaplian returns, nothing is quite as it seems; and determining the appropriate level of interference in someone else's war is never a simple matter.

Matter (2008)
A Culture Novel
Orbit USA hardcover
cover art by Debra Lill
593 pages
my rating : 7.5/10

To Reign in Hell by Steven Brust

The time is The Beginning. The place is Heaven. The story is the Revolt of the Angels -- a war of magic, corruption and intrigue that could destroy the fragile fabric of the universe, plunge it back into chaos, from which all thing come.

To Reign in Hell (1984)
Ace fantasy paperback
cover art by Steve Hickman
268 pages
my rating : 6/10