Ghost Train to New Orleans

Zoë Norris (introduced in The Shambling Guide to New York City) writes travel books for the coterie, America’s community of supernatural entities. Zoë is human, but her boss is a vampire, her bestie is a death goddess, and at least one of her coworkers wants to eat her. Dispatched with her team to create a guide book for exotic New Orleans, Zoë finds betrayal, disquieting revelations, power, and danger. Team members go rogue and demon dogs stalk the streets while Zoë learns more about the history of her fellow citytalkers and sleepwalks into a confrontation with one of New Orleans’s deadliest figures. Lafferty’s writing has an easy style that draws the reader in, and while many of the elements are familiar from other urban fantasies, she manages to shape the well-worked clay in entertaining new ways. (Mar.)