Like rum in your eggnog, these delightful and frighteningly entertaining tales are sure to warm you up on a cold winter evening. Fifteen bestselling authors, including Charlaine Harris, Patricia Briggs, Keri Arthur and Carrie Vaughn, have contributed a raucous collection of short stories that were bound by two rules: they had to be set during the Christmas season, and they had to contain werewolves. Authors Harris and Toni L.P. Kelner edited the collection, with offerings from the wickedly funny to the truly horrifying. Following is a short peek at some of the fifteen tempting holiday tales.
In “Gift Wrap” by Charlaine Harris, Sookie Stackhouse expects to spend some quiet “alone time” during Christmas when she discovers a wounded werewolf in the woods. This is a cozy, light story that combines a lovable and well-known character, Sookie, with a mischievous and sexy werewolf.
With Lucy, at Christmastime, Simon R. Green weaves elements from his popular Nightside books into this tale about a werewolf crying into his beer at Christmas about his past loves. While the ending is obvious, Greens story still amuses.
In “The Night Things Changed” by Dana Cameron, the magical creatures of the Fangborn are the good guys; they fight evil and capture the wrongdoers. In this interesting tale the brother and sister team of werewolf and vampire have to find a serial killer who, much to their dismay, is one of them.
Kat Richardson incorporates twisted humor in her story The Werewolf before Christmas. Matthias is a werewolf who has found himself in an unlikely predicament in the North Pole. After having munched on Rudolph the Reindeer, he is forced by St. Nick to be his replacement. How will this mighty werewolf handle being tied to a sleigh?
In true Christmas spirit, Carrie Vaughn writes an uplifting story with her “II Est Ne” contribution. An unlikely encounter in a Waffle House finds Kitty and her new friend, a recently turned werewolf, hunting down a serial killer and changing both their dismal outlooks.
What happens when Soviet vampires discover that Santa is one of their own and has been using Christmas as a way to satisfy his bloodthirsty desires? They want in, of course! But somehow they end up in Africa after being bamboozled by a werewolf. Nancy Pickard writes an amusing tale of vampires-gone-wild with her story, You’d Better Not Pyout.
Karen Chance, who writes the Cassandra Palmer series, sets her story Rogue Elements in Las Vegas and spins an intriguing tale of mystery among a tight-knit pack of werewolves and a woman named Lia, who’s fighting to discover her true heritage.
Wolfsbane and Mistletoe showcases short stories from the finest authors in the fantasy/horror genre. Although the tales are tall and sometimes full of gore, they definitely offer something different for fantasy fans.
