The First Bite Is Always The Sweetest In "Strange Candy"

Title:  Strange Candy

Series:  Anita Blake Vampire Hunter #0.5

Author:  Laurel K. Hamilton

Format:  Library Kindle Edition (Orange County Library Collective)

Pages:  290 pages

Publication Date:  October 3, 2006

Publisher:  Berkley Publishing Group

Rating:  4.5 Stars

The #1 New York Times bestselling author's short story collection-including an all-new Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter story.

From a woman who marries into a family of volatile wizards to a couple fleeing a gang of love-hungry cupids, from a girl who seeks sanctuary in the form of a graceful goose to the disgruntled superhero Captain Housework, readers will revel in the many twists and turns of fortune in these fantastical fairy tales and lush parables. Even hardened vampire hunter and zombie animator Anita Blake gets blindsided by the disturbing motives of her clients in the new "Those Who Seek Forgiveness" and in "The Girl Who Was Infatuated with Death."

Please enjoy this excerpt from

Strange Candy

by

Laurel K. Hamilton

IT was five days before Christmas, a quarter till midnight. I should have been asnooze in my bed, dreaming of sugarplums, whatever the hell they were, but I wasn’t. I was sitting across my desk sipping coffee and offering a box of Kleenexes to my client, Ms. Rhonda Mackenzie. She’d been crying for nearly the entire meeting, so that she’d wiped most of her careful eye makeup away, leaving her eyes pale and unfinished, younger, like what she must have looked like when she was in high school. The dark, perfect lipstick made the eyes look emptier, more vulnerable. “I’m not usually like this, Ms. Blake. I am a very strong woman.” Her voice took on a tone that said she believed this, and it might even be true. She raised those naked brown eyes to me, and there was fierceness in them that might have made a weaker person flinch. Even I, tough-as-nails vampire-hunter that I am, had trouble meeting the rage in those eyes. “It’s all right, Ms. Mackenzie, you’re not the first client that’s cried. It’s hard when you’ve lost someone.” She looked up, startled. “I haven’t lost anyone, not yet.” I sat my coffee cup back down without drinking from it and stared at her. “I’m an animator, Ms. Mackenzie. I raise the dead if the reason is good enough. I assumed this amount of grief was because you’d come to ask me to raise someone close to you.”

My Thoughts

This first collection of short stories is where readers are first introduced to Anita Blake.

First.

As a natural and highly sought Necromancer.  in Those Who Seek Forgiveness.

And again in her dealings with the vampiric underworld. In The Girl Who Was Infatuated With Death.

While short, these stories offer readers looks into the most important aspects of her life.  Aspects that often cross and weave between each other in later stories.

We also meet Jean Claude.  A master vampire who rules St. Louis.  And wants to rule her heart.

This collection serves as the perfect "first bite".

About Laurell

Laurell K. Hamilton is one of the leading writers of paranormal fiction. A #1 New York Times bestselling author, Hamilton writes the popular Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter novels and the Meredith Gentry series. She is also the creator of a bestselling comic book series based on her Anita Blake novels and published by Marvel Comics. Hamilton is a full-time writer and lives in the suburbs of St. Louis with her family.

See Her Socially:  Web/ GR / Twitter/ Facebook