- Available in: Currently Out of Print
- Published: September 1, 2009
Moonshine: A Zephyr Hollis novel
The roaring twenties in New York City: speakeasies and suffragettes, flappers and pole-sitters…and vampires, djinn, golems, skinwalkers and all manner of Others that go bump in the night.
Zephyr Hollis is a demon hunter turned social activist who teaches night school to the underprivileged and overworked denizens of the Lower East Side. Strapped for cash, Zephyr agrees to help one of her students— a dark, handsome djinn named Amir. He proposes she use her charity worker cover to infiltrate a local street gang and find the secret location of the notorious vampire mob boss Rinaldo.
Soon enough she’s tutoring an insane child-vampire with an angelic voice, dodging suckers crazed on a new blood-based street drug, and trying to determine the real reason behind Amir’s request. When her father, Montana’s most famous demon hunter, drops by for an unexpected visit, Zephyr wants to head for the hills. But it’s too late: Amir has dragged Zephyr into his mess, and she’ll have to brush off her old demon hunting skills to get them both out.
Moonshine melds the historical richness of Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian with the wry humor of Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody, imagining vampires at the heart of the epic social struggles of 1920s New York City. Johnson’s assured prose tells a witty, fun, emotionally gripping story that has wide crossover appeal.
Speakeasy: A Zephyr Hollis novel (formerly Wicked City)
New York City, 1927
In the sticky heat of a New York summer, most of the city’s vampires are drunk on Faust, a blood-based intoxicant. The mayor has tied his political fortunes to the controversial bill that would legalize the brew. Zephyr Hollis, a.k.a. the vampire suffragette, has other ideas. She has dedicated herself to the cause of Faust prohibition–at least when she isn’t knocking back sidecars in speakeasies with her friends (and one persistent djinni).
But the game changes when dozens of vampires end up in the city morgue–apparently after drinking Faust. Are they succumbing to natural causes, or have they been deliberately poisoned?
When an anonymous tip convinces the police of her guilt, Zephyr has to save her reputation, her freedom and possibly her life.
Will she give information to the mayor that will help him legalize Faust–and alienate all of her progressive friends? Will she finally use her bond with the djinni Amir to make a wish–and permanently tie herself to the person responsible for bringing Faust to the city?
Zephyr doesn’t have much time to decide. Someone is after her blood–and it isn’t a vampire.
Still: A Zephyr Hollis novel
The last installment of the trilogy, takes place two years after the harrowing events of SPEAKEASY. On the eve of the Great Depression, the dead aren’t resting easy in their graves. As a matter of fact, they seem determined to climb out of them–and attack any vampire that passes nearby. Zephyr’s personal life isn’t going any better: Her father has disappeared, Amir hasn’t come back in two years and she knows she’s supposed to leave him for dead. But just as she tries to move on, she starts to have disturbingly realistic dreams in which she sees him struggling for his life in other dimensions. Are they real, or just the fantasy of a girl who can’t let go?
Zephyr’s vampire-killing blood got her into trouble two years ago, but that’s nothing compared to the hell she’ll face if the truth gets out: it isn’t only toxic to vampires–it allows her to control the unprecedented plague of shambling dead. Before he vanished, her father revealed the horrific truth of her birth, and how she became the only weapon that could kill an imprisoned vampire of impossible strength. Zephyr had refused to hear more–but now her father is gone, that vampire has broken free, and she doesn’t know how to use the weapon that he paid so much to give her.
As the day of financial and supernatural reckoning draws closer, Zephyr has to find her father, save Amir, and try to keep the city streets zombie-free. But in a city built on graveyards, a plague of shambling dead has frightening implications for the robber barons who had thought their secrets safely buried in the ground. And Zephyr will have to fight for her life when they discover that she’s the only one who can help them–willingly or not.
[NOTE: The Zephyr Hollis novels are currently out of print, but check this space for more details about a future re-release!]
