Magical Series Not To Missed

[The Poisoned Pen Bookstore]

I was Reading Rachel's Blog at Changing Hands and saw that she had posted a list of the Top 5 Books to Reread and Rediscover and while I agreed with some of her selection (see below) I just had to add a few.

From Rachel:

1. The Stand, Stephen King
2. Outlander, Diana Gabaldon
3. Swan Song, Robert McCammon
4. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
5. Sunshine, Robin McKinley

While this is a good list I would have to add Charlaine Harris's Sookie Series and Kim Harrison's Dead Witch Walking and two authors I recently discovered who were an absolute treat:
Rachel Caine and John Levitt

Rachel Caine is the author of the YA Morganville Vampire series but it was her Weather Warden series that caught my fancy.
The first in series is Ill Wind. Meet Weather Warden, Joanne Baldwin. Usually all it takes is a wave of her hand to tame the most violent weather. But now Joanne is trying to outrun another kind of storm: accusations of corruption and murder. So she's resorting to the very human tactic of running for her life ...

Her only hope is Lewis, the most powerful Warden of them all. Unfortunately, he's also on the run from the World Council. It seems he's stolen not one but three bottles of Djinn -- making him the most wanted man on earth. And without Lewis, Joanne's chances of surviving are as good as a snowball in -- well, a place she may soon be headed. So she and her classic Mustang are racing hard to find him because there's some bad weather closing in fast ..

This series is fresh, fun and magical Be warned, there is a slow part in the middle of book one but if you hang on until David makes his entrance it's all up from there. I devoured this series in less than a week...

John Levitt has written two so far in a wonderful urban series featuring Mason, a magical musician and member of San Francisco's self-appointed "enforcer" group.

"Jazz, scotch, and dark magic, it's all waiting around every unfamiliar corner and at the end of every shadowed alley in a world that has both bark and bite. The supernatural lives, breathes, and slithers in a San Francisco where the dog days don't just get you down; they eat you alive."
-- Rob Thurman, author of Nightlife and Moonshine

Dog Days is the first in this urban fantasy series-with a bite as magical as its bark.
Mason used to be an enforcer, ensuring that suspect magic practitioners stayed in line. But now he scrapes out a living playing guitar. Good thing he has Louie, his magical...well, let's call him a dog. But there are some kinds of evil thateven Louie can't sniff out. And when Mason is attacked by a supernatural assailant, he'll have to fall back on the one skill he's mastered in music and magic-improvisation.

New Tricks continues Mason's story
Former enforcer Mason would normally be concerned with finding ghosts and vampires stalking the Castro section of San Francisco. Fortunately, Halloween provides the perfect explanation for the abundance of ghouls. But someone is trying to possess his old flame, Sarah. Now, with the help of his magical dog Louie, Mason must uncover the black magician responsible.