Helen Harper's Blog

If you’ve already laughed and loved your way through Ilona Andrews, Darynda Jones, and Patricia Briggs, and you’re hunting for something new to rescue you from the doomscroll, this list is your portal out.

Below are 5 funny, fast-paced urban fantasy series starters from some bestselling urban fantasy authors featuring smart, funny heroines, found family feels, and supernatural shenanigans.

A Little Bite by Lauretta Hignett

It’s Buffy meets The Big Bang Theory… binge this hot, hilarious new series now!

Okay, look, being a seventeen-year-old child genius working my way through Harvard was supposed to be the hardest part of my life.

I’m Marie—smart mouth, zero impulse control, laser-focused on one goal: getting custody of my baby brother to keep him out of foster care. Oh, and building an Iron Man suit and eventually taking over the world. One thing at a time, though.

But when a gorgeous older man at a museum tempts me with a combination of mansplaining and faulty math, I find myself tied up in the basement of an abandoned dentist school. Standard serial killer, right?

Not quite. Turns out, he was a vampire. And he’s turned me into a bloodsucker on the way out.

Bye-bye, Harvard. Hello, tiny, creepy night college in Eternity, Louisiana. I've got a place in a dorm room at Noctiluna House because, get this, the previous occupant was brutally murdered in what is now my room.

Common sense would dictate I should try and find her killer, just in case they come for me and try to carve my heart out like they did to her. So, I’m on the case, and it should be easy. After all, I’m something of an expert on serial killers.

But I’m about to discover that interviewing suspects can be tricky when all you can think about is chewing on their neck.

https://mybook.to/alittlebite

Glimmer of the Other by Heather G Harris

Burn through this complete, multi-award-winning series!

I can tell when you’re lying. Every. Single. Time.

I’m Jinx. As a private investigator, being a walking, talking lie detector is a useful skill – but let’s face it, it’s not normal. You’d think it would make my job way too easy, but even with my weird skills, I still haven’t been able to track down my parent’s killers.

When I’m hired to find a missing university student, I hope to find her propped up at a bar – yet my gut tells me there’s more to this case than a party girl gone wild. Firstly, she’s a bookish soul who’s as likely to go off the rails as Mother Theresa. Secondly, I’m not the only one on her trail; she’s also being tracked by the implacable and oh-so-sexy Inspector Stone.

Stone and I team up, and he shoves me into a realm where magic is real – a place where there are vampyrs and werewolves, dragons and trolls. And where my skills are more than just detecting lies…

Oh, and my dog? He’s a freaking hellhound who can manipulate the magical realms themselves.

I need to find the girl.

I need to discover who killed my parents.

And I need to find out more about the attractive but mysterious Zachary Stone…

Read this after Ilona Andrews' Kate Daniels series.

https://readerlinks.com/l/1928018



Great Balls of Fury by Annabel Chase

Welcome to Chipping Cheddar, where supernaturals are hidden in plain sight...
Annoying but loving family? Check.
Picturesque small town with a hot police chief? Check.
A rescue hellhound, a black cat with attitude, and a pet python that thinks he’s a puppy? Triple check.
My story has all the hallmarks of a sweet and cozy supernatural tale, but there’s a twist— I am evil.
Well, I’m supposed to be evil thanks to both nature and nurture, but I fight it with every fiber of my being. I just want to live a normal life. I even joined the FBI instead of the Federal Bureau of Magic, until my powers reared their ugly head and the agency sent me packing back to my hometown to fight magical crimes instead. Now I’m back in Chipping Cheddar, living with my evil family, with a new job and all my old baggage.
Oh, and there’s a dead body, which was definitely not an accident. So there you have it.
Welcome to my world.

Great Balls of Fury is the first book in the Federal Bureau of Magic series.

http://mybook.to/GreatBallsofFury



The Unlikable Demon Hunter by Deborah Wilde

The mission: kill demons. The distraction: one hot-as-hell slayer. Welcome to urban fantasy’s funniest, spiciest, demon-hunting trial by fire.
Nava Katz is an expert at lowering expectations. She’s cynical, aimless, and perfectly content to let her twin brother, Ari, be the family’s golden boy. He’s the one who trained his whole life to join the Brotherhood.
He’s also the one the magical induction ring was supposed to choose. But when Nava crashes the ceremony, the ring doesn’t fit Ari. It snaps onto her finger.
It’s her worst nightmare: a purpose.
Stuck with powers she doesn't want or know how to use, and a Brotherhood that’s just waiting for her to fail, Nava needs a crash course in survival. Unfortunately, her teacher is Rohan Mitra—an ex-rock god turned slayer whose inner demons earn nods of respect from actual ones. He’s dangerous, tempting, and the best bad decision ever.
Now she must master her magic and survive the demons hunting her long enough to stay alive.
The Brotherhood wants her gone. The demons want her dead. She’s already nailing it.

Read this complete series after Darynda Jones' Charley Davidson for more laugh-out-loud humor.

https://deborahwildebooks.com/collect...


A Demon Bound by Debra Dunbar

I never wanted to save the world... or these damned werewolves.
Life was pretty sweet until my hellhound bit one of them. Then I accidentally killed him—the werewolf, not my hellhound. Now I need to help the local alpha track down and destroy a rogue angel or I’ll lose everything that's important to me, like my Corvette, and my awesome house with a pool.
I might wind up dead. I might wind up back in Hel. Or I might just pull something impish and manage to wiggle my way out of the whole mess.
WARNING: This series has laugh-out loud antics, an OCD werewolf, and a sexy angel.

Get ready to binge read this bestselling antihero urban fantasy series! This is the perfect series to read after Jenn Stark's Immortal Vegas Series!

https://books2read.com/u/mY6xnw

Scorched Heart, the fourth book in the Firebrand series is almost ready to go. It won't be long now until it's released and it's been such a joy being able to escape to a world where there's no pandemic. That doesn't mean there's not plenty of trouble, however. Detective Constable Emma Bellamy is drawn back to the small village where she lived when she was a child - and the very place where her parents were brutally murdered. Will she find out why she is what she is? Or will the secrets from the past overwhelm her?

Either way, you'll find out very soon!

Scorched Heart (Firebrand #4)

Another weekend, another fancy dress party. Oddly, I find that the older I get, the more fancy dress parties I get invited to; it's as if a by-product of growing up is the need to act more like a child than ever. It's like stepping back into a world of make-believe that is suddenly acceptable.

This time around the theme was 'song titles'. I have to admit that it was an inventive idea with plenty of scope for those who didn't want to put in much effort to those who wanted to go the whole hog and spend the week prior going to elaborate lengths. And there were indeed some fabulous costumes: Love Machine, Yellow Submarine, Hammer Time, White Wedding, to name but a few (I personally, in case you were wondering, went as Angels, that old Robbie Williams' ode, but as there was only one of me I was frequently mistaken for the Eurythmics' There Must be An Angel. Fair enough.).

I wonder if that desire for make-believe and to feel like someone else for a night is part of the allure of reading. It's easy to imagine yourself as the protagonist, plunged into a world danger, fantasy and desire, in a way that moving image doesn't allow. Read Pride and Prejudice, for example, and we all can put ourselves in the shoes of Lizzy Bennett. At least for myself, that's considerably harder to do when it's watching Keira Knightley on the big screen - enjoyable, sure, but I don't think I'll ever have that waistline!

Writing somehow seems to ramp up that connection. I'm not my characters and neither are they even based on real people. However, as if by osmosis, somehow by writing them onto a page, they can become real. I can picture myself as a fiery dragon shapeshifter all of a sudden. Or as a mage irritated by her precocious behaviour. It's amazingly easy to lose myself in that world until it almost does become real. Hmmm...I wonder if I could get hold of an uncumbersome dragon costume for the next (no doubt soon) fancy dress party?

I've had a good week: out with friends for dinner twice, a wonderful school music concert (I realise that often the words 'school music' and 'wonderful' don't often go together, but it's true), successful meetings for work, and the Future Music Festival last night in KL. But there's been no time to read!

I have more than a few exciting new titles on my Kindle, burning their way through the electronic text and demanding my attention: and no time to properly read them. Yes, yes, I could be reading now instead of writing this, but I need several hours to do them justice, not the ten minutes I currently have spare to type this.

There's Kate Atkinson's Life After Life - apparently some kind of do over Groundhog Day type book that has had me excited for weeks waiting for it to be released; Events, Dear Boy, Events - political diaries that my grandmother keeps raving about; the latest Victor the assassin book...and that's just to name a few. I need twenty four hours AT LEAST, with some kind of minion to occasionally feed me and provide me with cups of tea (is that why people get married?).

I reckon that governments should seriously consider setting mandatory reading time. It would be good for the mental health of every nation, boost literacy skills, improve general knowledge...I could go to my boss tomorrow and say, 'no, it's not that I want a duvet day - it's a self-improvement day'. Or something much catchier but in the same vein. One can only hope ;)

As I write, there's an epic thunderstorm going on right outside my window: booming crashes of thunder that have sent the cat running under the bed, streaks of impressive lightning and sheets of rain that have added a veil of grey to the entire landscape. And while I would hate to be out in this rain, I love watching it. I love it for another reason too, of course - living in Malaysia, the storms provide a welcome respite to the blazing sun and overpowering humidity and, believe me, this last week it has been HOT.

As a (fairly) new author, I have to admit to a certain amount of love and hate for my own books as well. The third book in my series Blood Destiny was only just published before the weekend and, despite a lovely review already on Amazon, I can't help feeling that it's weaker than the previous two. But then I hated book 2 for a long time after I'd written it and absolutely love it now. And I'm pretty sure I felt the same about about book 1 for a while too.

I wonder how common it is for authors to temporarily despise their own work. Is it because the painful process of editing and proofreading is still too fresh in my mind? Or maybe it's because my baby is now out in the world and no longer just belongs to me...whatever the reason I know I can't pinpoint the moment when, in my mind, the books turn back around and become the prodigal children who I love again (and deep down always loved because they're my own kids after all).