The Midnight Cafe: *Signed*

I have owned the Anita Blake series for over 20 years and my paperbacks are FALLING APART! I have been searching for these versions so they will take up less space on my book shelf and be sturdier than paperbacks. Rereading the series from the start and still love it just as much as the first time!

Continues the saga with the next three books. A must have especially if you didn't get the original hardcovers.

"The Midnight Cafe" is the second of three hardback editions that collect several novels in Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series. "Club Vampyre" had the first three stories and "The Midnight Cafe" has the next three: "Lunatic Cafe," "Bloody Bones," and "Killing Dance." That last one has proven to be the pivotal novel in the series. In "Lunatic Cafe" our heroine no longer bears the marks of Jean-Claude or any other master vampire and is exploring a relationship with Richard, the middle school teacher. Of course there are problems: Richard is a werewolf whose pack leader is threatening to kill him, Jean-Claude will not take "no" for an answer and has a female vampire who wants to kill Anita, and Dolph wants help identifying the something that is killing lycanthropes (shapeshifters). The Lunatic Cafe is the name of the hangout where the werefolk meet and Anita is finding out more about their kind than she really wants to know. Good thing they want her help in finding out who is butchering their kind, although her involvement is certainly a mixed blessing. As always with Hamilton's Anita Blake novels, she managed to bring everything together by the end of the story. With each book in the series I become more convinced that the "Vampire Hunter" label is to attract fans of Buffy, but Anita is really an Animator (she was a Vampire Hunter in the time BEFORE the first novel) and these books are considerably more gruesome. One of the subplots in "The Lunatic Cafe" concerns a pornographic/snuff film with werewolves and a human girl, with Edward showing up to avenge her death. These are very intense horror novels and Buffy wannabees picking these up without having a clue as to what awaits them inside are not going to sleep for a week. Hamilton has created an alternative reality where monsters have legal rights, and she explores this world with creativity and intelligence. Her heroine endures a lot of physical damage in these books and the mysteries she investigates are always complex. This is a first rate horror series that deserves its reputation and its growing following. "Bloody Bones" is the name of a eating place out in the sticks it is also the name of something much, much worse. Anita and her trainee Larry (not Lawrence) Kinkaid are out in the sticks of Missouri to raise a bunch of really old zombies to settle a development issue. But then Dolph calls Anita to tell her the local cops need her help with a murder investigation that sure looks to our heroine like an incredible fast vampire using a really big sword. Of course, these and every other plot line in the book are all related. The "romantic" triangle between Anita, Jean-Claude and Richard is pretty much on the back burner this time around, although Jean-Claude and his pet werewolf Jason show up to help Anita meet Serephina, the local master. Boy, does that ever turn out to be a mondo-mistake. "The Killing Dance" is the pivotal novel in the series. When Edward he