Ballad of the Bone Road

Paranormal gumshoes Belle and Brix battle a glamorous fae queen in this inventive dark fairy tale extravaganza from Wise (Wolf Moon). When a room in the haunted Peony Hotel vanishes, Belle and Brix discover that two young lovers are also missing. Eight months earlier, Leonie and Virgil eloped and settled at the Peony, where Virgil, a medium, summoned silver screen idol Jimmy Valentine, a one-time inhabitant of the Peony, from the dead. Their ghoulish ménage à trois drew the attention of one of Valentine’s old lovers, the fae Hollow Queen, who now vies for control over the hotel and the city. As Belle and Brix work to stop her, they also wrestle internal demons. Brix struggles to get over the death of his wife, whose spirit he keeps trapped in a salt circle even as she begs for release. Belle’s problems are even stranger: Belizial, an escapee from the Hollow Queen’s realm, shares her body, acting as both a lover and a guardian. The plot takes several sinister turns, some of which can be hard to connect back to the events at the Peony or to the “bone road” of the title, the path to the afterlife that both Brix and Virgil can access. Still, Wise infuses her worldbuilding with glitzy gilded age-esque details and builds plentiful supernatural suspense. This is eerie fun. (Jan.)