From Publishers Weekly

Hugo and Nebula–winner Haldeman infuses this yarn with his teen narrator's intelligent curiosity. Carmen Dula, part of the first human colony on Mars, looks like a typical young adult heroine: distanced from her parents, irritated by her bratty younger sibling and beset by tyrannical colony administrator Dargo Solingen. Then she accidentally discovers real Martians living in an underground city and has to convince Solingen that her story is true. When the Martians reveal a terrible threat to life on Earth, it's up to Carmen and her friends to save the day. Recalling Robert A. Heinlein's Red Planet and Podkayne of Mars, Haldeman updates the Martian setting while keeping faith in his characters' ability to respond to unexpected challenges. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The career path of recent high-school graduate Carmen Dula takes an adventurous turn when her family wins a lottery that sends them to the first human settlement on Mars. After an alternately tedious and exhilarating six-month journey, Carmen gets her first taste of living under a crimson sky while butting heads with authoritarian colony leader Dargo. In fact, it’s a fateful run-in with Dargo that prompts Carmen’s rebellious solo walk on the Martian surface and near-fatal plunge into an underground cavern. Her unimaginable savior is a multilimbed, potato-headed creature that has apparently been living with his brethren under the Martian surface for untold millennia. When the astonishment of first contact gives way to an orgy of study by the colony’s xenobiologists, a new shock presents itself—the Martians are the artificial creation of a distant alien race dubbed the Others, to whose universe humans are definitely not welcome. As one of sf’s most consistently inventive storytellers, Haldeman gets bountiful mileage out of this ingenious blend of Martian exploration and extraterrestrial anthropology. --Carl Hays

From New York Times bestselling author Deanna Chase, a Jade Calhoun series short story.

It’s Christmas time, and newly engaged Jade Calhoun and her fiancé Kane are having a party at Summer House in Cypress Settlement. The tree is decorated, the mistletoe is in place, and the crab puffs are to die for. Nothing can spoil this celebration…except for some wayward magic and a pesky ghost who crashes the party.

Engaged off Bourbon Street is a 6500 word short story. It is number 3.5 in the series, right after Demons of Bourbon Street. Originally published in Holiday Wishes in 2012.

Series order:
Haunted on Bourbon Street
Witches of Bourbon Street
Demons of Bourbon Street
Engaged off Bourbon Street (A short story)
Angels of Bourbon Street
Shadows of Bourbon Street
Incubus of Bourbon Street
Spirits of Bourbon Street (A novelette)

**