Karma Girl by Jennifer Estep

After Carmen Cole finds her finance in bed with her best friend, she makes the startling discovery — thanks  to the suits they are wearing — that they are in fact a superhero and an ubervillain. She snaps some photos of them with a handy camera and unmasks them both — thus launching her unmasking career. In Bigtime, New York, superhero battles level buildings on a regular basis. When you go shopping at Oodles-o-Stuff, you're likely to encounter superheroes, because they get special discounts in exchange for protection against superfights. It's a blissful three years for Carmen, but all good things come to an end, and her unmasking career ends in tragedy. However, certain ubervillains decide that she needs to take up her unmasking mantle once again. And they know who her next target should be. But, Carmen Cole is the master unmasker, and she has a plan...

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Hot Mama by Jennifer Estep

Settling down to read Hot Mama was like settling down to have a piece of book candy. (I didn't originate this term; I discovered it on Jennifer Estep's Blog.) You know it is going to be a fast read with lively, snappy dialog and laugh-out-loud humor. And Hot Mama did not disappoint!

It begins with Carmen Cole's wedding to Sam Sloane, the uberdude in Karma Girl. Carmen is happy; her dreams have come true. Therefore, this book is not about her. It's about Fiera (AKA Fiona Fine), Carmen's flame-wielding Fearless Five partner in crimefighting. Fiera is not so happy, for she still misses her murdered sweetheart from the last novel. Johnny Bulluci, this novel's uberhunk, is a direct sort of guy. When he see... Read More

Jinx by Jennifer Estep

Jinx focuses on Bella Bulluci, who was Fiona Fine's fashion designer rival in Hot Mama. Bella comes from a family of superheroes — both superpowered and otherwise — and she's quite frankly tired of the whole gig. She's had superheroes out the wazoo, especially since her family became closely affiliated to the Fearless Five in the previous novel. She has a power that is more of a curse, and it causes her endless embarrassment when the strangest things happen around her.

Bella isn't thrilled with a lot of aspects about her life. If she even looks at chocolate she gains about ten pounds, which she is forever trying to work off with brutal exercise routines. She hardly dares to eat in public for fear of her power rearing its weird head. And she's not really s... Read More

Spider’s Bite by Jennifer Estep

The atmosphere of Spider’s Bite might be described as “Southern-fried noir.” The setting is Ashland, an Appalachian city where magic is openly known and a ruthless magical mobster has her fingers in every pie. Most of the cops are corrupt. The hair is big and the food is gloriously unhealthy.

Gin Blanco is an assassin. She takes pride in her skill and doesn’t waste a lot of time brooding about her chosen career. Her profession makes her an unlikely heroine, but her tough, snarky voice and her surprisingly strong sense of ethics are likely to win you over in spite of yourself. She’s a fun character to follow, and to live vicariously through, for a few hundred pages. You might find yourself wondering whether you would have what it takes — not necessarily the willingness to kill people, but the cleverness to get away with it. I knew she’d hooked me whe... Read More

Some of your favorite authors take some time to answer our questions:
Got any personal news to share?
Ian Tregillis: This is shaping up to be a busy summer for me. In June, I submitted my fourth novel (Something More Than Night) to Tor.  In July, my first novel (Bitter Seeds) debuted in the UK, and a week later my second novel (The Coldest War) came out here in the US. And I just finished reviewing the copyedits for my third novel (Necessary Evil). I'm attending two conventions in August. Bubonicon in Albuquerque (yes, New Mexico's local convention is named after the bubonic plague!) and Worldcon in Chicago.



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Five of your favorite authors take some time to answer our questions:
Got any personal news to share?
Sarah Beth Durst: My next YA novel, Vessel, comes out from Simon & Schuster/McElderry today. It's about a girl who lives in a harsh desert land and is destined to sacrifice herself so her clan's goddess can inhabit her body... but her goddess never comes. It recently received a starred review in Kirkus. (Yay!) Also, I sold three new books! They're my first books for adults: The Lost, The Missing, and The Found, and I'm really excited about them. Also recently, a bunch people in California parked a car on Mars, took some photos, and send them back, which I'm claiming as personal news because I stayed up late to watch it. Actually, I think Curiosity on Mars counts a... Read More

Some of your favorite authors take some time to answer our questions:
Got any news to share?
Steven R. Boyett: I'm excited that I will be reading at the opening weekend of San Francisco's massive Litquake festival, Sunday, Oct. 7, 2-3 PM. I usually record these things, so it will be on the media page of my blog soon afterward. In my mortal guise I'm also a semi-famous DJ, and I'm also hugely stoked that I'll be DJing the Litquake/Litcrawl closing party at  Read More