Kelly Meding – författare

In Stray Moon—the follow-up to Stray Magic—Shiloh Harrison’s team of Paranormal Marshals is once again put between upholding the law and doing what is rightPara-Marshal Shiloh Harrison has always been a great number two for the East Coast unit. But after her boss is found dead (having betrayed the paranormals he was sworn to protect), she’s suddenly thrust into a leadership role she isn’t prepared for.And it doesn’t help that she traded away memories of one of her most important team members to save another’s life during her last mission.Too, she’s in charge of a unit that is mired in bureaucratic red tape, meaning she’s essentially under house arrest. But a West Coast Para-Marshal has astral-projected a warning: werewolves are going missing, and she needs Shiloh’s help.Last time it was vampires. This time it’s werewolves. Half-djinn herself, she knows she can’t just sit around and do nothing while paranormals are getting snatched.Her old boss may have broken his oath, but Shiloh will do anything to serve and protect.

She can heal her own wounds. She can nail a monster to a wall. But there’s one danger Evangeline Stone never saw coming. Been there. Done that. Evy Stone is a former Dreg Bounty Hunter who died and came back to life with some extraordinary powers. Now all but five people in the world think she is dead again, this time for good—immolated in a factory fire set specifically for her. Evy and Wyatt, her partner/lover/friend, can no longer trust their former allies, or even the highest echelons of the Triads—the army of fighters holding back from an unsuspecting public a tide of quarreling, otherworldly creatures—they can trust only each other. Because when the Triads raided a macabre, monster-filled lab of science experiments and hauled away the remnants, they failed to capture their creator: a brilliant, vampire-obsessed scientist with a wealth of powerful, anti-Dreg weaponry to trade for what he desires most of all—Evy Stone: alive and well, and the key to his ultimate experiment in mad science.From the Paperback edition.

Monster hunter Evangeline Stone woke up on the wrong side of dead this morning—and now there’s hell to pay.  Barely recovered from her extended torture at the hands of mad scientist Walter Thackery, Evy can use a break. What she gets instead is a war, as the battered Triads that keep Dreg City safe find themselves under attack by half-Blood vampires who have somehow retained their reason, making them twice as lethal. Worse, the Halfies are joined by a breed of were-creature long believed extinct—back and more dangerous than ever. Meanwhile, Evy’s attempts at reconciliation with the man she loves take a hit after Wyatt is viciously assaulted—an attack traced to Thackery, who has not given up his quest to exterminate all vampires . . . even if he has to destroy Dreg City to do it. With Wyatt’s time running out, another threat emerges from the shadows and a staggering betrayal shatters the fragile alliance between the Triads, vampires, and shapeshifters, turning Evy’s world upside down forever.From the Paperback edition.

An original collaboration among five of the genre’s brightest authors, A Glimpse of Darkness is urban fantasy as it’s never been done before. Originally featured on Suvudu.com, this is Random House’s first multicontributor chain story in which the readers voted on the outcome—now published here in its entirety as a thrilling eBook. Munira bint Azhar, the half-human daughter of a djinn, is a skilled Retriever in the city of Port Nightfall. Now the powerful sorcerer Temesis has given Munira a dire ultimatum: steal a magical lantern—the Light of Ta’lab—from the horrific undead kingdom below the city, or watch her father die at Temesis’s hand. Will she be able to retrieve the lantern and save her father’s life, or will they both perish in the process?   With an Afterword featuring the choices readers were given at the end of each chapter.

They’ll never see her coming. . . .When Evangeline Stone wakes up naked and bruised on a cold slab at the morgue—in a stranger’s body, with no memory of who she is and how she got there—her troubles are only just beginning. Before that night she and the two other members of her Triad were the city’s star bounty hunters, mercilessly cleansing the city of the murderous creatures living in the shadows, from vampires to shape-shifters to trolls. Then something terrible happened that not only cost all three of them their lives but also convinced the city’s other Hunters that Evy was a traitor—and she can’t even remember what it was.Now she’s a fugitive, piecing together her memory, trying to deal some serious justice—and discovering that she has only three days to solve her own murder before the reincarnation spell wears off. Because in three days Evy will die again—but this time there’s no second chance. . . .From the Paperback edition.

Evangeline Stone, a rogue bounty hunter, never asked for a world divided between darkness and light . . . . . . or the power to die and live again in someone else’s borrowed body. After a murder plot meant to take her out leaves an entire race of shapeshifters nearly extinct, Evy is gnawed by guilt. So when one of the few survivors of the slaughter enlists her aid, she feels duty-bound to help—even though protecting a frail, pregnant shifter is the last thing Evy needs, especially with the world going to hell around her.Amid weres, Halfies, gremlins, vamps—and increasingly outgunned humans—a war for supremacy is brewing. With shifters demanding justice, her superiors desperate to control her, and an assassin on her trail, Evy discovers a horrifying conspiracy. And she may be the only person in the world who can stop it—unless, of course, her own side gets her first. From the Paperback edition.

Kelly Meding’s war-ravaged Los Angeles is ground zero for the ultimate Meta human showdown in this sexy, action-packed new series. Fifteen years ago, Teresa “Trance” West was a skilled telepath and a proud member of the Ranger Corps. But ever since the Rangers were inexplicably rendered powerless at the climax of the devastating Meta War, she’s bounced from one dead-end job to another. Now her powers have reappeared just as mysteriously as they vanished— only they’re completely transformed and more potent than ever. And they’re threatening to destroy her. Trance heads to Los Angeles to track down the surviving Rangers and discover who restored her powers—and why—but a phantom enemy is determined to kill them before they can reassemble. As they dodge his deadly attacks and come to terms with their new role as heroes, Trance and the rest of the team set out to annihilate the sinister madman . . . only to discover their own powers are his greatest weapons.

HEROES FOR HIREAfter barely escaping a madman’s attempt to annihilate all MetaHumans, Kelly Meding’s supernatural crime fighters have banded together to take back the streets of war-ravaged Los Angeles.Dahlia “Ember” Perkins still feels like an outsider among her new Meta friends, despite everything she’s been through since coming into her miraculous ability to absorb heat and extinguish fires. But when the police need help investigating human skins discarded like slipcovers on the street, the Metas’ youngest team member quickly finds her place. Evidence points to a murderer the likes of which they have never encountered but who inexplicably seems to be gunning for Dahlia—and who may be neither human nor Meta. After a bullet meant for her nearly kills one of her teammates, Dahlia uncovers a connection to the crimes buried deep in her past. As the danger escalates and her personal life falls apart, Dahlia soon learns there’s no such thing as a “normal” relationship when you’re a superhero. . . .

The public doesn’t trust them. The government wants to control them. Being a superhero has never been this hard, especially for Tempest.Two months after the discovery of the powerful, non-Meta Recombinants, the former Rangers—Meta-powered humans dedicated to preserving the peace—have made no progress in uncovering the newcomers’ origins, or convincing the public to trust them. Newly powered Metas are popping up and causing trouble, while the former Banes—Metas who harm humans and create chaos—show no inclination that they even want to leave the island prison of Manhattan. With a presidential election looming, the hot political debate is all about Meta rights—and whether they deserve to have any. Still haunted by the murder of so many in the Meta War fifteen years earlier, Ethan “Tempest”Swift accepts an assignment in Manhattan, working with a team that’s interviewing Banes to determine which are still threats and which have reformed. But Ethan has a personal reason for going to the island as well. Armed with questions for the Bane who just might be his father, Ethan’s quest for answers is interrupted by an unexpected assault on the island. Forced to side with old enemies to uncover who''s responsible for the devastating attack, Ethan begins to question more than just his past—he questions his place in defending a world that sees him as its enemy.

A mysterious and dangerous conspiracy deepens, threatening the superpowered Rangers and pushing Flex to join forces with one of her team''s mortal enemies: a Bane called Chimera.Growing up with blue skin never made Rene "Flex" Duvall feel like at outcast. She learned early on to put people at ease with her wit and exuberant personality. So she''s certainly not going to let her façade crack when she and her teammates suddenly face a new breed of genetically manipulated and brainwashed Metas: the well-trained teenage criminals known as the Recombinants.When a desperate battle leaves one of their friends wounded, Renee and Ethan follow a clue to Manhattan Island, where the Banes have been imprisoned. There they find a Bane named Chimera, who refuses to cooperate despite possessing information that could help them stop the Recombinants. Chimera''s emotional scars are as devastating as Renee''s physical scars, and soon the two find common ground in shared pain. Against her better judgment, Renee forms an alliance with this Bane. They both can gain much from working together, so the only question is who has more to lose by cooperating…

The traveling carnival is a leftover of a bygone era, a curiosity lurking on the outskirts of town. It is a place of contradictions-the bright lights mask the peeling paint; a carnie in greasy overalls slinks away from the direction of the Barker's seductive call. It is a place of illusion-is that woman's beard real? How can she live locked in that watery box? And while many are tricked by sleight of hand, there are hints of something truly magical going on. One must remain alert and learn quickly the unwritten rules of this dark show. To beat the carnival, one had better have either a whole lot of luck or a whole lot of guns-or maybe some magic of one's own. Featuring stories grotesque and comical, outrageous and action-packed, Carniepunkis the first anthology to channel the energy and attitude of urban fantasy into the bizarre world of creaking machinery, twisted myths, and vivid new magic.

A star-studded urban fantasy anthology starring bestselling authors Rachel Caine, Jennifer Estep, Kevin Hearne, Seanan McGuire, and Rob Thurman, and including Delilah S. Dawson, Kelly Gay, Mark Henry, Hillary Jacques, Jackie Kessler, Kelly Meding, Allison Pang, Nicole D. Peeler, and Jaye Wells, whose stories explore the creepy, mysterious, and, yes, sometimes magical world of traveling carnivals.Come one, come all! The Carniepunk Midway promises you every thrill and chill a traveling carnival can provide. But fear not! Urban fantasy’s biggest stars are here to guide you through this strange and dangerous world. . . . RACHEL CAINE’s vampires aren’t child’s play, as a naïve teen discovers when her heart leads her far, far astray in “The Cold Girl.” With “Parlor Tricks,” JENNIFER ESTEP pits Gin Blanco, the Elemental Assassin, against the Wheel of Death and some dangerously creepy clowns. SEANAN McGUIRE narrates a poignant, ethereal tale of a mysterious carnival that returns to a dangerous town after twenty years in “Daughter of the Midway, the Mermaid, and the Open, Lonely Sea.” KEVIN HEARNE’s Iron Druid and his wisecracking Irish wolfhound discover in “The Demon Barker of Wheat Street” that the impossibly wholesome sounding Kansas Wheat Festival is actually not a healthy place to hang out. With an eerie, unpredictable twist, ROB THURMAN reveals the fate of a psychopath stalking two young carnies in “Painted Love.”

The second in a new series by popular urban fantasy author Kelly Meding, about an X-Men-like group of young people with superpowers who must find a way to work together.Five months ago, Dahlia Perkins was a struggling newspaper journalist whose biggest responsibility was paying her rent on time. After learning she has the ability to absorb and deflect massive amounts of heat and fire, Dahlia is struggling to find her place as the newest hero in an established team of former Rangers freelancing their abilities in post-Meta War Los Angeles.The team’s first major case: two discarded human skins. One is a John Doe, the other was a janitor for Weatherfield R&D, a scientific research and development firm Dahlia once investigated—and she’s itching to investigate them again. The ability to use and shed another person’s skin isn’t a power any of them have encountered before, nor something any of their former Meta enemies possess. But when a third skin appears and one of Dahlia’s teammates is nearly killed by an assassin’s bullet, it’s clear someone else besides Weatherfield is targeting the Rangers—and their killer may not be Meta at all.

Now available together as an ebook boxed set, four action-packed urban fantasy novels (Trance, Changeling, Tempest, and Chimera) about an X-Men-like group of young people with superpowers.In a future America that’s been devastated by battles between Rangers (Metas using their powers for good), Banes (Metas using their power to wreak havoc), and the military, the now-grown surviving children of Rangers are regranted powers by a mysterious force. Facing threats from every side, the Metas must work together to keep the peace.

Kelly Meding, author of the Dreg City and Metas series, delivers a wickedly fun short story in the Carniepunk anthology—a collection of urban fantasy tales that put a supernatural spin on all things carnival.Sheltered and raised by her gypsy mother, Shiloh Harrison has never explored the djinn heritage of her absentee father—until she learns he’s been captured by a man whose underground paranormal freak show is the latest rage among the rich and elite.