Bloody Bones : Laurel K Hamilton http://www.anitablake.co.uk/the_books.html
As soon as Anita arrives to sort out a dispute over land ownership by raising the dead in a graveyard, she realises that her clients have not been totally honest with her - the dead are 200+ years old and their graves have been disturbed. Before she can get to the bottom of that mystery she is called out to a police investigation of a murder of 3 children in nearby woods - killed by a blade so sharp she has never seen its like before - and apparently they knew their killer or were entranced, because not one had tried to run away or dodge the attack.
But Anita and her preternatural expertise is not made welcome by the local police department, in fact she is shut out of the case, and when another teen is murdered (drained of blood in her own bed) Anita is the one to identify a connection, and leads a vampire hunt out in the woods - at night, with an untrained team - hmm that wont go well.
Anita is still in a love triangle with a vampire sheriff and a werewolf pack leader, (hello - Sooky Stackhouse - been there, done that!) and now she finds herself pulled into a power struggle with the vampires and faeries in this region who fight dirty and have evolved in ways she did not know vampires could. Several times Anita's life, and the lives of those on her 'team', are in grave danger. Anita pulls on strengths that she hardly knows the origins of but will it be enough....?
Beautiful Creatures : Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl http://beautifulcreaturesnovels.com/
I felt a bit reluctant to try this book initially, because the film had so obviously been pitched at the Twihard market - now cut adrift with no new Twilight material to watch or read, but I was blown away by the book!! It is romantic - sure, but the central magical character does not really know what she is, what her powers will develop into: her fate is to be determined on her 16th birthday (not far away by the time she moves to this tiny Southern town) and on that night she may be claimed by the dark side!
The story is told from the view-point of Ethan - a very lonely boy (his mother has recently died which has caused his father to become a recluse) - who is desperate to leave Gatlin (a town where your business is everybody's business and nothing ever changes.) In befriending new girl Lena, he ostracises himself from everyone except his best friend & basketball team-mate Link and his housekeeper Amma, and even she is fairly disapproving. He has always been surrounded by tarot/and voodo, civil war re-enactements and the local library is like his second home. But since Lena came into his consciousness it seems as if nothing and nobody is as it was before .... Gripping and fast paced, this tight story had me chained to the armchair right to its conclusion (which luckily is not the end, just the end of book 1!)
There are surely more secrets to be revealed in Beautiful Darkness, Beautiful Chaos & Beautiful Redemption.
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