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Neon Meridian #1

Catch and Kill

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A high-octane Urban Fantasy adventure perfect for fans of Six of Crows, The Iron Druid Chronicles, and Shadowrun.

Magic is no longer a mystery—it’s a corporate asset.
Seventy years ago, people turned on their televisions and saw magic on the streets of Manhattan. Real magic, and real monsters, in broad daylight.

Today, corporate sorcerers defend their employers’ interests with curses and bullets, street vendors sell cheap talismans to the masses, and the most popular late-night talk show host is a demon. It’s a world of wonders and terrors, but you still have to earn a living.

Emily Yeats is a blue-collar witch from Brooklyn, selling her services as a security auditor. For a price, she and her unconventional team will invade your business after hours, find every last loophole and flaw, and tell you how to fix it.

Until now, the challenges were all simulated.

Strapped for cash, Emily agrees to a dangerous an executive with the world’s biggest media conglomerate wants her boss out of the way, and she hires Emily to dig up a scandal that he took a bribe to bury.

Now bodies are dropping left and right, a supernatural assassin is on Emily’s trail, and everyone from the Mafia to the mayor’s office wants to silence her for good. It’s too late to back out the only way to survive is to finish the job, or the story she’s hunting won’t be the only thing getting killed.

Experience the first book in the Neon Meridian series by bestseller Craig Schaefer, a high-octane Urban Fantasy perfect for fans of gritty cyberpunk aesthetics, heist-driven plots, and magic that cuts deeper than a blade.
Grab your copy and join the hunt today!

Perfect for fans of Six of Crows, The Iron Druid Chronicles, and Shadowrun!

358 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 19, 2026

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About the author

Craig Schaefer

47 books1,343 followers
Craig Schaefer's books have taken readers to the seamy edge of a criminal underworld drenched in shadow (the Daniel Faust series), to a world torn by war, poison and witchcraft (the Revanche Cycle), and across a modern America mired in occult mysteries and a conspiracy of lies (the Harmony Black series).

Despite this, people say he's strangely normal. Suspiciously normal, in fact. His home on the Web is www.craigschaeferbooks.com.

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5 stars
100 (61%)
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44 (27%)
3 stars
17 (10%)
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
May 25, 2026
“Honor is dumb, and treachery always wins.”
Just when I thought Heather couldn't outdo herself, she does.

Just when I thought she couldn't make this universe even more addictive than it already is, she propels it into the future and takes it to the next level (hello, cyberpunk meets urban fantasy!).

She expands the world, introduces a whole bunch of scrumptious characters (I want to be both Gilly and Deci when I grow up), offers slightly delirious oh-my-shrimp-oh-my-shrimp-oh-my-shrimp moments to First Story addicts (the Paladin?! Oh my bloody stinking fish!! THE PALADIN!! *cue hysterical fangirling*), and, much like her characters, engages in some cunning mischievousness, directed tomfoolery, purposeful antics, and high-impact shenanigans.



That's me not being a hysterical fangirl right there. In case you were wondering.

Also, “Beep boop” + genetwists + spiders as most conscientious roommates + Queen Widow + not getting mistaken for a toaster + Resurrection Mary + infernal tech + treacherous bastards everywhere + the Battle of Broadway + diagnosed clinical sociopaths Himura Chiharu + 😂😂😂 =



Yeah, this is me still not being a hysterical fangirl right there. In case you were wondering.



[February 2026]



Profile Image for Todd.
2,344 reviews8 followers
June 4, 2026
Very different from the author's Daniel Faust series and maybe better.

Emily Yeats is a bit of a magician, nothing overt and showy but she tends to get the job done living in the shadows. It's a cross between urban fantasy and cyberpunk.

I look forward to the continuation of the series
Profile Image for Robin (Bridge Four).
2,003 reviews1,689 followers
June 19, 2026
This review was originally posted on Books of My Heart

Catch and Kill is the first book in the Neon Meridian , a new series set in the same world as Schaefer's Harmony Black and Daniel Faust series.  A little more on the cyberpunk side of urban fantasy Catch and Kill is set in a world aware of the magic in it.  Having witches, demons and undead on the payroll is the normal coast of business.  This heist style story features a misfit team, who wanted to be on the right side of law but now find themselves walking dangerous lines to stay together and beat out the competition.

Emily Yeats ran a good business testing security, breaking into companies to show them the weak points.  Her team is probably the best in the business, but because of their strange composition another security group has targeted her jobs and swooped in last minute to pick up those contracts.  Emily is now stuck with a lot of bills, no way to pay the team and barely hanging onto her business.  Opportunity comes knocking when an executive hires the team to get some dirt on her boss and the Mayor of the city.  This is not the kind of job her team usually takes but the payout would be great if they could make it happen and it isn't quite on the black ops side, it is more a gray area.  However, when the job goes sideways Emily and team need to regroup, replan and figure out how to get out of the mess they are in and hopefully not get killed in the process.

I enjoy a good heist, down on your luck team story.  The team is composed Deci, an android that moonlights as a dominatrix and probably has a soul, Brewster the ex-military muscle and companion to Deci and then Gilly who is a wiz at computers and hacking but has had enough body work that she actually might be more cat than human at this point.  They are an interesting mash up of characters, but they did remind me a lot of other combos of characters Shaefer has written in the past.  Still rag tag teams are fun story lines so while unoriginal it was still entertaining.

I found Emily easy to root for.  She doesn't really have family to lean on but she does have some great friends and mentors from her past.  Some of the most interesting things about her were her specific ties to magic and how she interacts with both spiders and her normal spirit guide that helps powerup her magic.  Emily is smart, resourceful and true to her friends.  I do hope that a relationship from her past with a man running a family (mob) group gets a little more time in the next story in the series.

The overall plot of the story has some surprise turns that did make the story just that more exciting.  A few possible cameos and a few references to characters in other books set in this world and going to be fun easter eggs for fans of those series.  While you don't need to have read any of Shaefer's other works I think it would help to understand the state of the world at this point.   Not my favorite Schaefer book as I really enjoyed their fantasies more than urban fantasy but a solid fun quick read.
“Honor is dumb, and treachery always wins.”


Narration:
Performance: ★★★★★
Character Separation: ★★★★
Diction: ★★★★
Pacing/Flow: ★★★★★
Sound Effects: none

Susannah Jones is a fantastic narrator. I've probably listened to over 40 books she has narrated and I'm never disappointed in her performance. She does UF and PNR so well and her voice brings the magic practically to life. All the characters are distinguishable and feel unique. She always adds to my overall enjoyment of a story with her capture of both the serious and the silly in a story.

Listen to a clip: HERE 
Profile Image for Chris.
196 reviews7 followers
May 20, 2026
Super interesting blend of cyberpunk and urban fantasy that expands Schaefer's existing series in very different and exciting new ways, but doesn't require reading all the rest to enjoy a fun gritty heist story with a rag-tag group of investigators and thieves-for-hire.

It's set far enough in the future of the Faust-verse to drop some fun tid-bits for existing fans, and there's also some outright cool and spooky applications of magic and spirituality that will give any fan something cool to latch onto. (As long as you're okay with spiders, heh.) I'm pumped for more misadventures with this crew in the future.
Profile Image for Dayanara Ryelle.
Author 5 books16 followers
June 2, 2026
It’s been too long since I’ve had a “grade by category” review! But sometimes, those are the fairest, as everyone can see where I’m coming from when I pick my final score. (Including my future self, when I choose to read this review again sometime!)


Overall Story: I always cringe when I prepare to give beloved writers a low rating, but if the best thing to do as a reviewer is to be as honest as you’d want the author to be to you if the roles were reversed, then I shouldn’t hesitate.

This was not Heather’s best work. In fact, I’m going to say that I haven’t been as disappointed in one of her series openers since the Charlie McCabe books. (The only difference is that I plan to keep going with this series.) Books like Castaways show us that she still has the gift and that she can create a world that’s only tangentially related to the First Story, but this is the first time I’ve wondered if being traditionally published is more of a hindrance than a help with this story. (I have a long-ignored blog entry about the stupid shit editors have made writers do over the years!) Rating: ⭐⭐

Characters: feel like a knock-off of the Harmony Black quartet. They don’t map one-to-one, but the similarities are there.

Emily ▶️ Harmony: Harmony would absolutely have gone to school for the “occult sciences” if she could’ve. (Maybe it would’ve stopped the necessity of “[whatever kind of magic], learned at her mother’s knee” every dang book!) The only difference is that Emily is less rigid than Harmony, as the latter would never make “exchange pacts”—too far outside The Rules. (Plus, Harmony gives me the feeling of, “If my ancestors wouldn’t do it, neither would I!”)

Deci ▶️ Jessie: this one was a little harder, as Brewster is a bit Jessie, too. Given that Queens were meant to be at the top of the Talon Worldwide “android food chain”, it’s no wonder that Deci has speed, agility and fighting skills, just like Jessie. (I suspect Deci’s sensors are no match for Jessie’s wolfish nose, however.)

Brewster ▶️ April: I realize Brewster is a little less of an advisor than April, but he still strikes me as the coolest head of the bunch.

Gilly ▶️ Kevin: at least Kevin doesn’t have an annoying repeated word! (Patting himself on the back for his talents seems to be a sort of cliché amongst fictional hackers, though, so that doesn’t count.) ⭐

=Errors=
When the group is discussing the yacht, they say that that model runs “low to high eight figures” and Brewster grumbles that the price tag is “over a hundred million”. Except that wouldn’t be over a hundred million unless/until you added tax, and only if the price was on the high end in the first place.

With New York City’s 8.875% tax rate—assuming that’s the one that applied during the purchase—the lowest possible price would be $10,887,500 and the highest would be $108,874,998.91. (Another comment was made toward the end of the chapter that mentioned “a few hundred million”, which would also be wrong.)

“Renumeration” is mentioned in terms of Emily’s contract, but it isn’t a word. It should be “remuneration”.

I’ve seen worse errors - ⭐⭐⭐

Possible Cameo: the part that takes place during the musical portraying the Battle of Broadway mentions a man in a suit, which is nothing special.

And then it mentions a woman in a long white trench coat, which immediately triggers a, “Was Caitlin at the Battle? And are we to assume that the man was Daniel?” 🤔

Exciting enough to warrant ⭐⭐⭐⭐.

Celebrity Name Drops well, well, well…so Gilly’s human name was “Gillian D’Onofrio”, hmm? Do you suppose she has a famous ancestor? 😉

That was definitely an eyebrow raiser for me, but not as much as the next one!

Special Agent Patrick Remar


(According to this former fangirl, you don’t! 😂)

I thought back to when the author and I used to talk on Bluesky (before I ended things a few years ago) and felt like she’d said (either there or on The Other Site) that she liked The Warriors—a feeling that was affirmed when she chose to name a security officer “Cochise”. (A character from the movie, for those unfamiliar.)

Now the two things could be unrelated, because I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the name elsewhere. (It was the name of a Chief of the Chiricahua Apache, after all.) But what remains of my Fangirl Brain says you don’t invoke the two in the same book without intention.

Three stars apiece for mentions of Jamie and Vinnie. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 🥰

Total Rating: ⭐⭐⭐.2

P.S. (thank you to Sarah for reminding me of this): what's up with Ada being the Pally when we know The Paladin is Melanie? Was Ada some kind of rebel pally?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Lukasz.
1,916 reviews493 followers
May 24, 2026
Maybe 4.5/5 or lower if you're a high-brow reader but I had a blast reading it, so.

At this point Craig Schaefer has basically become an instabuy author for me. Whenever a new book appears, I buy it, move it straight to the top of my TBR pile, and assume I’m about to have a good time. So far this strategy has worked quite well. I don’t think Schaefer has actually disappointed me once.

Catch and Kill definitely continues the streak.

This book feels like Schaefer operating in peak form again: fast, tight, funny in the right places, surprisingly charming, and full of twists that keep the story moving without turning it into nonsense. It’s also definitely adult. People get shot, cursed, murdered, manipulated, and occasionally reduced to a warning. But if you’re picking up cyberpunkish urban fantasy involving magical corporate espionage, that's probably what you're looking for.

Magic became public knowledge decades ago and people decided to monetize it. So now Hell has embassies, corporations employ witches and undead accountants probably exist somewhere off-page filing cursed paperwork forever.

Emily Yeats is a blue-collar Brooklyn witch running security audits with her team by staging elaborate magical break-ins for clients. She may not be the strongest person in the room physically, but she compensates with skill, stubbornness, and enough magical talent to make very dangerous people regret underestimating her. Her team is fantastic, and it includes a sentient android who moonlights as a dominatrix, a hacker/catgirl genius, and a hardened military operative who balances out the team’s collective tendency toward chaos.

Also, Emily shares her apartment with venomous spiders. Weirdly enough, they are excellent roommates. Quiet. Helpful. Probably better at cleaning than most humans.

The whole thing is insanely readable. Schaefer throws cyberpunk elements, urban fantasy, corporate conspiracies, magical contracts, supernatural assassins, and heist elements into the same blender and somehow the story never feels overloaded. It just moves. Every chapter pushes forward cleanly, and before long you realize you read half the book in one sitting.

And while this is clearly the start of a series, the actual story feels complete. There's no massive cliffhanger or "to be continued" ambush right as things get interesting. The central plot wraps up properly while still leaving plenty of room for future books.

Which is good, because I absolutely want future books. Book two. Book three. Book seven if sales permit. I’d happily keep following Emily and her dysfunctional little team through magical cyberpunk disasters for quite a while.
421 reviews1 follower
May 20, 2026
Capers for the Win

If you like a good heist caper this book will satisfy all those desires plus. It’s got a small team of uniquely competent people, all the tech skills and some very excellent magical talents all working together to keep the plot racing and readers on the edges of our seats.
Profile Image for John Shaw.
1,290 reviews14 followers
June 22, 2026
It is so rare for an author
to be this prolific
AND
produce a quality
novel, every damn time.
That I feel the need
to mention it.

The new series from
Schaefer is the
unholy and
unlikely to
combination of
cyber punk
and urban magic.
In the form of a heist story.

Damned if I didn't love it.
131 reviews5 followers
May 20, 2026
Liked ktt

Really fun new story. Easy entry point into the author's work. And there's a cat! And she's so cute! I hope there is more cat girl. She's funny. And cute. The robot should have her chase the red dot.
70 reviews2 followers
June 14, 2026
Just Rewards?

This was a hold-your-breath kicker. I was enthralled. What an incredible plot. Only a couple of typos, which is rare. And the characters -- so believable. The ending surprised me.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews