Supernatural beings are willing to fight for their legal rights!
Since the Summer of Love, the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco has been known for attracting weird and unconventional souls, but things got even stranger when the monsters moved in.
Magic has returned to the world and with it a host of supernatural creatures—not just vampires and ghosts, but sentient gargoyles, ghouls, sprites, faeries, and more. The frightened citizenry, holier-than-thou bigots, headline-seeking reporters, and harried police refer to them as OTs (Other-Than-Humans), but Thomas Brock and Evelyn Love believe even supernatural creatures have legal rights.
Delve into their case files for a genre-bending mix of mystery, horror, suspense, thrills, courtroom drama, and romance. The city’s OT element is sometimes malevolent, sometimes misunderstood, and often discriminated against. Brock and Love represent them all, dead, undead, or alive—whatever the case, whatever the species.
EXCERPT
Janet Wyndam-Smyth wore a dark green pin-stripe pencil skirt and an ecru silk blouse, the outfit designed to accentuate her thinness. Her suit jacket lay carefully draped across the top of a low bookshelf that held legal tomes and her awards for various civic accomplishments. Her bleached blonde hair was pulled back in a tight bun that looked severe, and her makeup was precise, dark brown mascara, eyeshadow a new shade she’d just picked up: iron violet, lipstick peony blush. The jewelry was minimal and sterling silver, the necklace a lariat style with a small onyx fob. She strove to look professional and serious, polished, and girded for war.
She paced in front of her desk, working to keep her ire in check, and knowing she wasn’t wholly successful.
Janet detested Thomas Brock, and her stomach twisted irritably in his presence. Oh, he hadn’t been all that bad when he was alive—tolerable in those days. He’d been handsome then, a formidable opponent that she’d unfortunately lost to in court on a couple of occasions. Her stomach knotted tighter and she balled her hands into fists. She imagined that her knuckles were turning as white as Thomas Brock’s misty form.
She glanced at him, floating in and out of the client chair. Then she pivoted on the ball of her foot in military fashion, swung around behind her desk, and sat in her high-backed burgundy leather chair.
Janet made a show of looking through a file folder.
“Janet, I was hoping—”
She raised a manicured index finger to silence him and continued flipping papers. She wasn’t reading anything, having examined the documents already more times than necessary. She was just making him wait to show that she was in charge.
Thomas Brock’s ghost was no longer the man she crushed on in law school. He’d had the broad shoulders of a swimmer, amazing cornflower blue eyes, and rich earthy-brown hair. A little above six-feet-tall, he’d always dressed well, but not flashy, and though his nose was slightly crooked, the rest of his face was perfect angles and planes. He’d been on the university’s swim team and dive team, narrowly missing out on the Olympics. And after passing the bar exam he’d rebuked his father’s offer to join the prestigious Brock, Davis & Davis Law Firm to strike out on his own in an old building on the corner of Haight and Ashbury. Worse, he started championing the causes of OTs.
Brock, Davis & Davis had never taken up the defense of an OT, though they had gladly pursued cases against them, every once in a while doing it pro bono, especially if Thomas Brock was on the other side.
And then, more than a year ago, Thomas was brutally murdered by some demon-looking thing high on drugs. The OT-supportive attorney killed by an OT. Poetic. It briefly had made headlines. His death had almost been the end of the little practice on Haight. But Thomas returned as a ghost, and his perky assistant Evelyn Love managed to pass the bar and keep the office going—barely. Janet knew they struggled to pay rent and salaries, and always hovered a hair’s width above the red.
God, to think she’d actually been smitten with the man while he sucked oxygen! Now, he was nothing but a vile OT … and looked as much like his former self as a photocopy when the toner was getting low.
She closed the file folder and tapped her manicured nails against it.
Janet Wyndam-Smyth detested OTs because she loved working for Brock, Davis & Davis, and the senior partners detested OTs—for myriad and whatever reasons. The dislike had become ingrained in her soul, and though it sporadically left an unfortunate taste in her mouth, it suited her. She drew a sizeable salary and was close to making partner.
“I was hoping—” Thomas began again.
“—that you’d be speaking with your father about this matter,” Janet finished. She knew Thomas and his father hadn’t gotten along for several years, and that the schism had worsened since Thomas died and came back as a ghost. “Reginald Brock is tied up in important meetings today and does not have time for something as minor as this civil suit. Consider yourself fortunate that I managed to slip you in.”
“Thank you, Janet.”
**Winner of three prestigious Silver Falchion Awards **
for mysteries, thrillers, and suspense novels: Best Fantasy, Best Urban Fantasy, and Best Multi-Genre Novel.
ASIN: B098K6SG49
Publisher: Craig Martelle, Inc (September 20, 2021)
Publication date: September 20, 2021
Language: English
Genre: Paranormal Mystery Thriller
Check it Out on Amazon: http://mybook.to/LoveHaightBk2
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About the Authors:
Jean Rabe:
USA Today best-seller, Jean Rabe’s impressive writing career spans decades, starting as a newspaper reporter and bureau chief.
From there she went on to become the director of RPGA, a co-editor with Martin H. Greenberg for DAW books, and, most notably, Rabe is an award-winning author of more than forty science fiction/fantasy and murder mystery thrillers.
She writes mysteries and fantasies, because life is too short to be limited to one genre–and she does it with dogs tangled at her feet, because life is too short not to be covered in fur.
Find out more about her at http://www.jeanrabe.com, on social media, or sign-up for her newsletter here: https://jeanrabe.com/sign-up-for-my-newsletter/
Donald J. Bingle
Donald J. Bingle is the author of eight books and more than sixty shorter works in the horror, thriller, science fiction, mystery, fantasy, steampunk, romance, comedy, and memoir genres, including the Dick Thornby Thriller series (Net Impact; Wet Work; Flash Drive), Frame Shop, a murder mystery set in a suburban writers’ group, Forced Conversion, a near future scifi thriller, GREENSWORD, a darkly comedic eco-thriller and (with Jean Rabe) The Love-Haight Case Files, Books 1 & 2, a paranormal urban fantasy series about two lawyers who represent the legal rights of supernatural creatures in a magic-filled San Francisco. He also edited Familiar Spirits, an anthology of ghost stories. More on Don and his writing can be found at http://www.donaldjbingle.com.
Sign-up for his newsletter here: https://www.donaldjbingle.com/newsletter-sign-up
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