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Original price was: $31.95.$19.99Current price is: $19.99.
All the guns and grit of hardboiled crime. All the wonder and magic of fantasy. Two complete series.
Keith Murphy’s on the run after botching his last hit, fleeing Adelaide with a necromancer’s soul in his pocket and an apocalyptic cult on his heels. Seeking a hiding spot where magic can’t trace him, Keith heads for the one place nobody expects: home.
Thirteen years ago, Keith left the employ of the demonic crime boss Sabbath, disappearing into the night without a word. Now he’s back, and Sabbath demands a toll before Keith can take refuge on Sabbath’s turf — assassinate three of the demon’s enemies, or Keith forfeits his life.
Keith doesn’t want to be a killer anymore, but he’s all out of choices and things have changed for the worse back home: his best friend has gone to the dark side, his ex-girlfriend is running a club for supernaturals, and it seems like Sabbath isn’t the only one who wants Keith dead.
A fast-paced Australian urban fantasy thriller full of magic, supernatural creatures, betrayal, and deals with the devil. If you ever wanted a little John Constantine blended in with your John Wick, you’re going to love Keith Murphy.
“All the grit and growl of the golden age detectives let loose upon the monsters and magics that keep us fascinated (and occasionally afraid) as we curl up on the couch at night. Ball is masterful in his use of tension, with a knack for keeping readers glued to the screen or page. His ability to showcase emotional connections and complications without devolving into self-pitying monologues or poetic meanderings give the stories an action movie vibe that adds tension and focus to the stories.” Kylie Thompson, HushHushBiz
★★★★★ “Equal parts violence, noir and magic. Also manages to capture the feel of the Gold Coast.”
★★★★★ “a thoroughly entertaining noir-flavoured urban fantasy, where our hard-bitten but basically honourable protagonist tries to stay one step ahead of a multitude of past mistakes (while making a few more along the way). I’m definitely looking forward to seeing the other Keith Murphy books”
★★★★★ “Myth-heavy hard-boiled Gold Coast pre-(assorted)-apocalyptic fantasy. It resonates with the parts of my mind where American Gods took up residence.”
If you love hard-boiled detectives, dangerous fey, and cold cases that turn hot on a dime, then take this opportunity to introduce yourself to Peter M. Ball’s Miriam Aster stories. This omnibus collects the two books in Miriam Aster’s case files.
HORN
Award-winning author Peter M. Ball takes you into the world of exiled fey and dangerous magic in his cult novella Horn.
Miriam Aster used to be a homicide cop, but a relationship with the queen of the fey and one too many off-the-books favours saw her drummed out of the force and pushed into private inquiry work. Now she’s burned out, barely coping, and all too happy to put her past behind her … until a late-night phone call pulls her in to consult in a recent murder.
The victim is a young girl brutally murdered and infested with fey, and the killer is the one thing Aster knows should never be let loose on the mortal world. There’s a unicorn killing young women, and her former colleagues in the police department are ill-equipped to stop it.
Unless Aster agrees to step back into the fey world, there’s going to be a lot more murders before things really hit the fan.
BLEED
Miriam Aster returns in a sequel to the cult hit Horn.
Ten years ago, Miriam Aster agreed to kill three men in order to protect the secrets of the fey. It’s the greatest mistake of her life, and the reason she’s now a drunk PI instead of a homicide cop. As far as she’s concerned, the mistakes of her past stay in her past and the fey can go screw themselves.
But when an old case comes back to haunt her and the spectres of the past loom in the shadows, Aster must join forces with a desperate stuntwoman and a talking cat to stop the half-breed sorcerer who needs Aster’s blood to exact revenge.
PRAISE FOR THE MIRIAM ASTER SERIES
“I was continually impressed by Ball’s economy of expression, blending of genres, and his ability (in the close quarters of a novella) to not just layer in information about the characters but also about character motivation. The ambition in Horn may exist mostly at the level of scene and character without too much additional complexity of plot or situation, and it may veer toward the sensationalistic once or twice, but overall the book is a promising, strong debut by a new Australian author. I’ll be interested to see what Ball can do with a deeper concept and a wider canvas.”
Jeff Vandermeer, Ecstatic Days
“Horn” is a perfectly delightful book about a private eye named Miriam Aster tracking down a fairly nasty murderer… or it would be, if Aster wasn’t the reanimated lover of an exiled Faerie Queen, and the murderer wasn’t a sex-crazed unicorn starring in a particularly repugnant snuff movie with an underaged runaway.
There. I said it. The book involves unicorns, rape, snuff movies, and more or less undead lesbian detectives.
Peter M. Ball has got it right. This book is smart, funny, nasty, and wicked as hell. He gets the noir-ish tone spot on, delivers with action a-plenty, kick-ass characters, intelligent plotting, and good, clean evocative writing. Best of all, he takes a turgidly overused fantasy trope out behind the backyard toilet and puts a dum-dum bullet through its brain, after which he whips out his tackle and pisses all over the steaming corpse.
Dirk Flinthart, Cool Shite
Certainly the best Australian speculative story of 2009
David Conyers, Albedo One
But be prepared, this ain’t your little sisters ( unless you have a rather odd family) book about faeries and unicorns. This is a hard boiled detective novel, dark and probably a little confronting for some. …
It’s possibly the best paranormal fiction I have read all year, possibly ever. It will be confronting, it will take some of you close to edge. But I think Ball crafts a delightfully dark little tale, revealing a more honest portrayal of the Fae, the sex, lust and double edged devious nature.seandblogonaut, Smashwords
| Format | |
|---|---|
| Series | Keith Murphy Urban Fantasy Thrillers, Miriam Aster Case Files |
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