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Titles for 2009
NO Quarter
New York Times bestselling author Robert Asprin, writing with Eric Del Carlo and Teresa Patterson, delves into the dark secrets of the New Orleans French Quarter in this suspenseful tale of murder and revenge, justice and unexpected courage. List Price: $15.95 Direct to Reader Discount: $14.95 Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9819866-0-9 DarkStar Books-Fall 2009 --Click to Order-- cover painting by Nathan Smith After you've lived in the French Quarter for a while, you develop the cynical belief that you've seen it all ... that nothing can get to you anymore. You and your bar acquaintances tell yourselves and each other that you've gotten so used to the drunken tourist idiocy and random acts of violence ... that it doesn't bother you. That's bullshit. Sunshine came to New Orleans to escape her past and to catch up with her elusive dreams, but she got lost in the old city's seductive Southern nights. The tempting dark side of the French Quarter catered to her weaknesses, offering her just exactly what she desired-cheap drugs, the wrong kind of men, and the thrill of living on the edge. Alienated from her friends and in need of help, she called out to one of them ... but her message didn't get through in time. When she tries to go it alone, she walks down the wrong street into the wrong patch of darkness and meets the brutal, bloody end to her dreams at the point of a knife. In another city, her death might be written off as a mugging, just another statistic on the police blotter. Not so for the NOPD, to whom the safe reputation of the French Quarter is a priority, even if the victim is a waitress and not a treasured, pampered tourist. Not so for the French Quarter locals, because no matter how far she'd fallen, Sunshine was one of their own. And no mere mugger in New Orleans or any other city would have left a victim's body framed by the crude remnants of a botched Voodoo ritual, a display designed to insult the true practitioners of that religion. To Maestro, Sunshine's death represents not only a tragedy but an obligation, because he's the one who missed responding to her call for help. A master of both the pool cue and the rapier, a man of regular habits and close secrets, he prefers keeping to the shadows-but to avenge Sunshine and to satisfy his tarnished honor, he'll risk opening his own less-than-savory past to question. To Bone, a waiter, and his girlfriend Alex, Sunshine was family, and the pain of her savage murder is made even more crushing by their recent estrangement from her. Because of his past connection to Sunshine, and because of a bitter, public argument with her, Bone becomes a suspect in her murder. He comes to the realization that just clearing his name won't be enough for him. Justice won't be enough. His heart cries out for vengeance, and Alex refuses to be left out of his quest. But what can three ordinary people do that the police can't? As fate draws Maestro, Bone, and Alex together in the hunt for the murderer, they find unlikely allies among the street people, bartenders, performers, and other denizens of the French Quarter. Their hunt leads them through the darkest corners of the Quarter, into the dangerous depths that lie beneath the benign "party-town" surface of the old city-and into shattering revelations about themselves. Death and destruction lie in the turning of the Tarot cards, and blood will lead to blood before honor and desire are satisfied. Fans of Robert Asprin's Dragons Wild and Dragons Luck, the adventures of gambler/dragon Griffen McCandles, will recognize Bone, Maestro, and other denizens of NO Quarter's mysterious, supernatural, and clannish French Quarter from their minor roles in that series of novels. 
Reviews and Links: "A hard-boiled mystery, over Easy" -- William R. Page  A review of NO Quarter by Rhonda Eudaly
A Newsvine.com review of NO Quarter by Falkeep
A Crescent Blues Interview with Robert Asprin and Eric Del Carlo about their collaboration on NO Quarter.
The St. Charles House
a rock 'n roll mystery set in the famous--and infamous--6th Street district of Austin, Texas by Stephen Banister List Price: $15.95 Direct to Reader Discount: $14.95 Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9819866-3-0 DarkStar Books-Fall 2009 --Click to Order-- cover painting by Nathan Smith Sixth Street in Austin, Texas, is notorious for its party atmosphere and its strange goings-on, but things get just a little too strange when bartender Anthony Court takes a terminal swan dive off the roof of the St. Charles House Hotel. When easygoing Emerson "Tuck" Tucker, who won the old residence hotel/office building in a poker game, starts to clear out his recently deceased tenant's apartment, he finds a large stash of cocaine hidden in a brass spittoon and an AR-15 rifle cached behind a concealed panel. The cops maintain that Court's death was a suicide, but Tuck thinks different. Drugs and guns aren't that hard to find on Sixth Street, but what he found was more coke than your average bartender would have, and way too much rifle. Tuck can't leave the question of Court's death alone. When he starts to nose around, someone breaks into his apartment in the St. Charles House and puts a bullet into Pig Dog, his beloved, if somewhat socially challenged, golden retriever. As a warning and a threat, shooting a Texan's dog is just about as effective as drawing to an inside straight. The people responsible are about to find out just how rough a poker-playing slacker of a good-old boy can play their game.
Reviews and Links: "In Stephen Banister's The St. Charles House (DarkStar, $15.95), the protagonist is so busy cracking jokes that he's unaware of the danger that surrounds him. Emerson "Tuck" Tucker is a slacker gambler who has won a small Austin, Texas, apartment building in a poker game. No longer forced to work, he spends most of his days and night prowling the lively Austin music scene. When one of his tenants takes a dive off the top of his building, Tuck suspects that his death wasn't suicide. During his rather casual investigation (remember, he's a slacker), he meets the woman of his dreams. That's when his life really gets complicated." Tuck and his golden retriever, Pig Dog, make fine companions for a cold winter's night, especially when Tuck's propensity for humor is given free rein. Let's hope this merry prankster returns soon." -- Betty Webb, Mystery Scene Magazine, Winter Issue #113, February 2010
 Petrogypsies
the first novel in the "Sprocket" Series, set in an alternate world of organic, semi-sentient oilfield drilling rigs by Rory Harper List Price: $15.95 Direct to Reader Discount: $14.95 Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9819866-1-6 DarkStar Books-Fall 2009 --Click to Order-- cover painting by Brad Foster For Sprocket and Henry Lee,
it was love at first blow-out ... Henry Lee MacFarland is a big ugly man, a farmer who is so strong that he has to be gentle, whether he's dealing with livestock or with normal people. Sprocket is a hundred and twelve feet of healthy young male Driller, dark as a moonless night, with a spiked tongue that can bore four miles into the earth in his relentless quest for the thing he loves best--Texas heavy crude oil. Doc, Razer, Big Mac, and the others in Sprocket's crew are the roughest, rowdiest bunch in the oilpatch. They live inside of Sprocket's body and travel like gypsies from one drilling job to another. They work like animals. Party like 'em, too. Then there's Star, the stunning Casing gypsy who has a hankering for fine cigars, a killer instinct at poker, and a taste for big, ugly, strong men. Looking for adventure, Henry Lee leaves the farm behind and signs on with Sprocket's crew. He gets a helluva lot more "adventure"--as in monsters, mayhem, and murder--than he bargained for.
Reviews and Links: "Rory Harper's sensibility is warm, earthy, whimsical, cleverly off-center, and, when he wants it to be, bawdy as all get out ... Petrogypsies is a blue-collar, red-neck world where folks sweat and love and work and get hurt ... Petrogypsies has got to be one of the most auspicious debuts of the year." -- Locus Magazine A Newsvine.com review of Petrogypsies by Falkeep
Play Zombie Tunes by Rory Harper
from EatOurBrains.com Downloads: Fast Zombie Blues
Nothing Else Better To Do
 Morticai's Luck
the first novel in the Duanor Series, a swashbuckling fantasy adventure by Darlene Bolesny List Price: $15.95 Direct to Reader Discount: $14.95 Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9819866-2-3 DarkStar Books-Fall 2009 --Click to Order-- cover painting by Veronica V. Jones Knives in the Night ...
Welcome to the haunted, twin-mooned world of Duanor. Meet Morticai--reckless rogue, man of many names, ladies' man, skilled gambler and believer in gods-given luck, expert bladesman, adept thief ... and respected lawman. The Droken, the bloodthirsty devotees of a sadistic, outlawed god, murdered Morticai's parents, leaving him to survive alone as an unwanted corryn orphan on the meanest streets of Watchaven, a human city. Once a professional thief, he escaped the criminal underworld by joining the Northmarch, the kingdom's elite paramilitary peacekeeping force. But even while honoring his peace officer's oaths, he holds even stronger to his childhood vow to find and punish those who murdered his parents, and to oppose the works of Droka wherever he finds them. Using his second-story skills from his past life, he discovers a nest of Droken that has infiltrated his own city and is commanded by powerful, nearly untouchable members of the nobility. His unofficial actions against them nearly cost him his life and his commission, but Morticai refuses to give up. Stubbornly following the lead, and aided by his loyal Northmarcher squad mates and a Knight of the Faith, he finds evidence of a shadowy conspiracy designed to embroil Watchaven and the corryn kingdom of Dynolva in a disastrous trade war that threatens to overwhelm not only Watchaven and Dynolva but all of the kingdoms, human and corryn, of Duanor. It's not the first time that Morticai has found himself in over his head ... but it may be the last.
Forthcoming DarkStar Titles
 Werewolve$
a new novel of adventure and terror by John Steakley NYT bestselling author of Armor and Vampire$
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