by senior reviewer Debbie Wiley Four and twenty blackbirds, baked in a pie. When the pie was opened, the birds began to sing- wasn’t that a dainty dish to set before the king?  I have a love/hate relationship with birds that started with Mother Goose and the Song of Sixpence nursery rhyme. Sure, there are birds I dearly love, like the graceful Sandhill cranes and the majestic owls, but it is the mystery of those blackbirds that has left me with a healthy dose of fear for birds. I know I’m not alone as look at Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, or Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (shudders). Several authors recently have challenged me to rethink how I feel about some of these maligned birds and I’d like to share their wonderful books with you. Heather Webber tackles the Song of Sixpence directly with a bit of magical realism in MIDNIGHT AT THE BLACKBIRD CAFE. Anna Kate Callow has arrived in Wicklow, Alabama, to bury her beloved Granny Zee. Unbeknownst to her, she inherits her grandmother’s entire estate, including the Midnight Cafe under one condition- she has to remain in Wicklow and run the cafe for a specific amount of time. Anna Kate has preconceptions about Wicklow….

by Fresh Fiction Reviewers Debbie Wiley and Annetta Sweetko Hi Keri! Annetta and I (Debbie) are thrilled you’re joining us today at Fresh Fiction as we’re long-time fans of your work. Thanks for inviting me here! Can you tell us a little about your newest book, BLACKBIRD RISING, and what inspired it? I’d been thinking about writing an Arthurian inspired novel for a while, but in all honesty, it was just bubbling away in the background with no real substance. Then one of my favorite cover designers–J Caleb Design–put the Blackbird pre-made up for sale and boom, the whole story was right there. Needless to say, I grabbed that cover as soon as I could (his pre-made go really fast, so it was definitely meant to be). And so, The Witch King’s Crown series was born. You’ve written a variety of paranormal books, including other shifters. What made you decide on a blackbird shifter? The cover! I honestly had no intention of adding shifters into an Arthurian-based story, although I was always going to have witches and demons. In all of your various book series’ you have come up with very strong women ( for example – Tiger in the…

Have you ever had mixed feelings about a series you have read and enjoyed coming to an end? You might be relieved that the heroine gets her happily-ever-after or be thinking “No – there is so much more they can do!” That is exactly where I stand on the ending of Keri Arthur‘s Outcast Novels. This series centers on Tiger, a dechet – a super-soldier the humans manufactured to fight the species war. At the end of the war, the dechet’s were eradicated, men, women and children, by the shifters as they deemed them abominations. Tiger survived and is surrounded by ghosts of those who died in the bunker including two little ones, Bear and Cat, her constant companions. She can’t help what she is, what she was made to be but she can use her skills to help others when she has to. Unfortunately, the bombs that ended the war also tore holes between worlds and allowed the entrance of other beings that were happy to find new hunting grounds, so demons, vampires and wraiths entered the destroyed world. So now, humans and shifters alike, live in artificially lit cities as the new beings love to hunt in the…

Fresh Pick for Thursday, May 22nd, 2014 is CIRCLE OF DESIRE by Keri Arthur #SupernaturalThursday A Damask Circle #3 Random House April 2014 On Sale: April 1, 2014 352 pages ISBN: 0440246571 EAN: 9780440246572 Kindle: B00FO5YFSY Paperback / e-Book Add to Wish List Romance Paranormal Buy A Copy Amazon.com Kindle BN.com Powell’s Books Indiebound Circle of Desire by Keri Arthur Two children have been found dead, their souls torn from their bodies. Two more are missing, and Ethan Morgan’s niece is one of them. A dedicated cop, Ethan has every intention not only of bringing her back alive but of catching the monster behind these kidnappings. And he will use anyone and everyone to achieve those aims—even a crazy woman who claims to be a witch. But time is ticking. The victims rarely stay alive for more than seven days. Four of those days have already passed. In ten years of working for the Damask Circle, shapeshifter Katherine Tanner has never come across anything that goes after kids the way this monster does. The last thing Kat needs is interference from a cop who has no idea what he’s up against. But the greatest threat to Kat may come not…