Trio of Sorcery

Powerful women solve magical mysteries in this trio of short urban fantasy novels from the enormously prolific Lackey (The Phoenix Transformed). Fans of the Diana Tregarde series will welcome prequel story "Arcanum 101," in which Diana, a Harvard freshman in the early 1970s, must secretly work as a sorceress Guardian and investigate a psychic involved in a kidnapping case. "Drums" returns to the setting of 1994's "Sacred Ground," where Native American sleuth and medicine woman Jennie Talldeer must find a way to deter an angry Osage ghost determined to claim a living bride. In the standout "Ghost in the Machine," techno-shaman Ellen McBridge moves between the real world and that of an online role-playing game to debug a magical monster that's not behaving quite as programmed. This volume is a worthy addition to the urban fantasy bookshelf. (Oct.)