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The call to Detective Willy Kunkle came from the NYPD. Willy's ex-wife, Mary, had been found dead in her New York apartment and he was asked to provide the next-of-kin ID. Although he hadn't been in touch with Mary since their divorce, Willy knew he was the only one left to vouch for her remains. Now, years after fleeing the city, Willy returns laden with misgivings that are deepened all the more by seeing Mary's pathetic corpse on a gurney. With a fresh puncture mark in her arm and heroin still in the syringe, the police think she overdosed. But while the evidence is compelling, Willy's instincts tell him something is missing. Driven by his loss, his doubts, and a blossoming guilt, Willy defies the authorities in an increasingly dangerous search for answers along New York's mean streets. Pulled deeper and deeper into a past before Vermont, before the drunken abuse he inflicted on Mary, before his abandonment of his family and friends, Willy encounters his ghosts from Vietnam where he was known as "the sniper," a lethal loner who struck without mercy. From gutted slums to the town houses of Brooklyn Heights, Willy Kunkle will plummet through the dark shadows of his past, confront his demons... and live up to his menacing nickname.<

A brutal snowstorm has blanketed the area and brought with it translucent phantoms that invade humans and drive them to murder.<

SUMMARY: What happens when resources become scarce and society starts to crumble? As the competition for resources pulls America's previous stable society apart, the "New Normal" is a Soft Apocalypse. This is how our world ends; with a whimper instead of a bang.<

From Publishers Weekly

World Fantasy Award–winner McKillip revisits the setting of her masterful novel Winter Rose (1996) in this compelling contemporary fantasy. Summoned home for her grandfather's funeral, Sylvia Lynn arrives with the intention of leaving as soon as possible. Once there, however, she feels the treacherous pull of the old house, the shadowy forest around it and the otherworldly beings who live there. Sylvia's grandmother introduces her to the Fiber Guild, women who meet once a month to sew the magical barriers that protect Lynn Hall from the fay, "a cold, loveless, dangerous people." But the hall's protective magic has weakened, leaving Sylvia—both mortal and faery herself—vulnerable as "the bridge across the boundaries" between the two worlds. Can generations of mistrust and long-hoarded secrets yield to a truce, let alone a new understanding and even trust between faery and human? Though McKillip has traded her usual lyrical style for a sparser approach, she doesn't stint on characterization, mood or mystery in this multilayered tale. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Starred Review Sylvia Lynn owns a thriving bookstore in Los Angeles, where she has spent most of her adult life avoiding her past and the grandmother who raised her. But when her beloved grandfather dies, she knows she must go to Lynn Hall, the huge, old house that has been the Lynn family's center for generations, and to the frightening, tantalizing wood behind it. Returning, she is surprised when Gram invites her to attend the Fiber Guild, a sewing circle that's been around forever, for Sylvia can't even thread a needle. True shock comes when she learns that the circle is a coven of witches working spells with their knitting and needlework that protect Lynn Hall and the town from the ancient powers of the forest and the evil Fay, and that the spells are unraveling faster than the witches can weave, and paths between worlds are reopening. The Fay kidnap Sylvia's 14-year-old cousin, Tyler, replacing him with a changeling. Sylvia finds a way into the wood's magical realm to look for him but hasn't a clue as to where he is or how to find the way back. If she manages to return, her long, closely kept secret will be out--and then will the people she loves most accept her, and Gram still love her? McKillip dazzles with this lovely tale of fairy and human worlds meeting and melding. Paula Luedtke
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

The fifth Murray Whelan adventure.

Even in the political wilderness, hope springs eternal for the Honourable Murray Whelan MP. He has found true love, with the salty-tongued Lyndal Luscombe, and there is a baby on the way. But dreams of domestic bliss are shattered when a jail fugitive kills his beloved, then eludes recapture.

Obsessed and bitter, Murray refuses to let the matter lie. When a chance encounter at a beach resort sets him on the killer's trail, he finds himself in very deep water indeed. In a world of abalone poaching, shady restaurateurs, tree-hugging ferals and teenage romance, you can depend on Murray Whelan to stumble upon Something Fishy.

'I look forward to the next Murray Whelan book with the same anticipation of pleasure that I feel for the new Carl Hiaasen or Elmore Leonard.' Sydney Morning Herald<

From Publishers Weekly

In most of McKillip's novels (Winter Rose, etc.) and short stories, this veteran author, a World Fantasy Award winner (for Forgotten Beasts of Eld, 1975), uses words in precisely the same way her mages do, to shape images and create fantastic visions where none previously existed. Sometimes the images are grotesque and violent, but more frequently they are ethereal and exquisite. McKillip's new novel is no exception. In it, a royal child escapes fire and certain execution by hiding in the ashes of the castle fireplace. Flame and death fill his mind and shape his thoughts so he is invisible to his enemies. After he is discovered, his rescuers rename him "Caladrius. After the bird whose song means death," and send him to the bards living on Luly, the music school on a rock at the end of the world. There he is called Rook. He masters the picochet, a peasant instrument, loves Sirina and begets Hollis, a son. Thirty-seven years pass and his family's enemy, Arioso Pellior, patriarch of the house of Basilisk, again reaches out his hand to crush any remaining members of the house of Tourmalyne. Rook remembers that his name is Griffin Tourmalyne and he journeys home. There he becomes an impetus for revolution and an inspiration for the royal opera, which draws the novel's principals together for a performance before the Basilisk and his family. McKillip is at the top of her form in this sweeping story about the redeeming powers of kindness and the potentially deadly beauty of music.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

A young man denies his past for a life as a teacher of bards until a chain of events too compelling to ignore plunges him once more into a confrontation with the Prince of Berylon, who slaughtered an entire noble family to gain his throne. The author of Winter Rose (LJ 7/96) weaves a lyrical story of passion and revenge set in a Renaissance-like world where music and magic are one and the same. McKillip's luminous prose and compelling characters combine to produce a masterwork of style and substance. Highly recommended for most fantasy collections.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A comet the color of blood and flame cuts across the sky. Two great leaders—Lord Eddard Stark and Robert Baratheon—who hold sway over an age of enforced peace are dead, victims of royal treachery. Now, from the ancient citadel of Dragonstone to the forbidding shores of Winterfell, chaos reigns. Six factions struggle for control of a divided land and the Iron Throne of the Seven Kingdoms, preparing to stake their claims through tempest, turmoil, and war. It is a tale in which brother plots against brother and the dead rise to walk in the night. Here a princess masquerades as an orphan boy; a knight of the mind prepares a poison for a treacherous sorceress; and wild men descend from the Mountains of the Moon to ravage the countryside. Against a backdrop of incest and fratricide, alchemy and murder, victory may go to the men and women possessed of the coldest steel...and the coldest hearts. For when kings clash, the whole land trembles.<

Four contend for power over the Iron Throne and the Land of the Seven Kingdoms; alliances shift, and betrayal is always an option. House Lannister's head, Joffrey, rules uneasily. Joffrey's enemy, Lord Stannis, is disgraced and enthralled. Robb of House Stark still rules the North, implacable in his enmity towards his Lannister foes, even as they hold his sister hostage. And the exiled queen Daenerys, mistress of the world's last three dragons, makes her way across a blood-drenched continent. But as opposing forces maneuver for the final titanic showdown, there appears an army of barbaric wildlings, led by undead Others. The unpredictable violence of a final cataclysm is inevitable; the one certain thing is that many men will die upon many swords.<

It seems too good to be true. After centuries of bitter strife and fatal treachery, the seven powers dividing the land have decimated one another into an uneasy truce. Or so it appears....With the death of the monstrous King Joffrey, Cersei is ruling as regent in King’s Landing. Robb Stark’s demise has broken the back of the Northern rebels, and his siblings are scattered throughout the kingdom like seeds on barren soil. Few legitimate claims to the once desperately sought Iron Throne still exist—or they are held in hands too weak or too distant to wield them effectively. The war, which raged out of control for so long, has burned itself out. But as in the aftermath of any climactic struggle, it is not long before the survivors, outlaws, renegades, and carrion eaters start to gather, picking over the bones of the dead and fighting for the spoils of the soon-to-be dead. Now in the Seven Kingdoms, as the human crows assemble over a banquet of ashes, daring new plots and dangerous new alliances are formed, while surprising faces—some familiar, others only just appearing—are seen emerging from an ominous twilight of past struggles and chaos to take up the challenges ahead. It is a time when the wise and the ambitious, the deceitful and the strong will acquire the skills, the power, and the magic to survive the stark and terrible times that lie before them. It is a time for nobles and commoners, soldiers and sorcerers, assassins and sages to come together and stake their fortunes...and their lives. For at a feast for crows, many are the guests—but only a few are the survivors.<