Crowbones, by Anne Bishop

Back in the world of the Others, in the small lakeside tourist town of Sproing, Vicki DeVine – the Reader - continues to act as a bridge between the Terra Indigene and human populations. The delicate balance of relations between the species is threatened by a malicious prankster on this world’s equivalent of Halloween. But there are much darker forces at work here, with both humans and Others manipulated to cause maximum trouble as some kind of experiment proceeds and a truly terrifying hunter is sent to clean out the rot. Vicki DeVine and her alliance of humans, shapeshifters, vampires and elementals must work together to protect the town and the future of interspecies cooperation. They risk being caught between the evil that threatens and the wild retribution that could ensue. Anne Bishop’s fantastic worlds are completely immersive and this one, a recognisable alternate of our own, contains striking parallels and warnings about the dangers of messing with the natural world. Hopefully she is not yet finished with its colourful characters.