Nine of Stars
A Wildlands Novel
by Laura Bickle
On Sale Date:
December 27th 2016
Publisher: Harper
Voyager
Genre: Contemporary Fantasy
Following on the heels of her
critically acclaimed prequel novels Dark Alchemy and Mercury Retrograde comes
the first installment in Laura Bickle’s dark contemporary fantasy series, Nine
of Stars, a Wildlands Novel
BLURB
Winter has always been a deadly season in
Temperance, but this time, there’s more to fear than just the cold…
As the daughter of an alchemist, Petra Dee
has faced all manner of occult horrors—especially since her arrival in the
small town of Temperance, Wyoming. But she can’t explain the creature now
stalking the backcountry of Yellowstone, butchering wolves and leaving only
their skins behind in the snow. Rumors surface of the return of Skinflint Jack,
a nineteenth-century wraith that kills in fulfillment of an ancient bargain.
The new sheriff in town, Owen Rutherford,
isn’t helping matters. He’s a dangerously haunted man on the trail of both an
unsolved case and a fresh kill—a bizarre murder leading him right to Petra’s
partner Gabriel. And while Gabe once had little to fear from the mortal world,
he’s all too human now. This time, when violence hits close to home, there are
no magical solutions.
It’s up to Petra and her coyote sidekick Sig
to get ahead of both Owen and the unnatural being hunting them all—before the
trail turns deathly cold.
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In her dreams, Petra had dropped into
Skinflint Jack’s hand-dug cellar, his underground ossuary. It was cold and
silent there, and her breath made ghosts in the darkness. Light emanated from
the bodies on the bed, from beneath their parchment-thin skin, moving like
drifting fireflies underneath the surface. The bodies sat upright, heads turned
toward her with empty gazes.
Petra would have run away, but she was pinned
to the wall. Bones laced over her body like shackles, splitting through the
skin of the dirt to wrap around her wrists, ribs, and legs. She tried to turn
her head, but it was enclosed in a helmet, the Stag’s skull, and she blinked
through the eye sockets of the Stag.
What had he seen? What had he done? She
struggled against the weight of the bones, torn between wanting to know and
wanting not to know.
Jack’s wife stood, walking across the floor
to Petra in a dress of black lace. Bits of her skin fluttered to the floor,
disturbed by Gabe’s autopsy efforts. In her hands, she held the Star of
Antimony, gleaming in the shifting low light.
“What happened to you?” Petra asked, her
tears blurring her gaze. The tears slid down her cheek, underneath the
skull-mask.
The woman didn’t answer; only gazed at Petra
with those empty, vacant eye sockets.
And Petra realized that her mouth had been
sewn shut.
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Laura Bickle grew up in rural Ohio, reading
entirely too many comic books out loud to her favorite Wonder Woman doll. After
graduating with an MA in Sociology-Criminology from Ohio State University and
an MLIS in Library Science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, she
patrolled the stacks at the public library and worked with data systems in
criminal justice. She now dreams up stories about the monsters under the
stairs. Her work has been included in the ALA’s Amelia Bloomer Project 2013
reading list and the State Library of Ohio’s Choose to Read Ohio reading list
for 2015-2016.
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