“They need a smug bastard in the next village.”

3. Brazen – Kelley Armstrong

A Nick the werewolf story. This novella has the best cover out of the Subterranean Press Kelley Armstrong novellas in my opinion – one wolf, many skulls, and yet not too crowded or in any way tacky.

So, Nick is meeting with a half-demon to apparently stop being the total playboy extraordinaire that he usually is and do some damn work tracking down the biggest villain of the werewolf parts of the Otherworld series. It’s a departure that is welcome in several ways. For one, Nick doesn’t get as much opportunity to be cocky and use his apparently existing charm to get out of things. Two, the villain is an actual important villain and not just some schmuck newly made up for this story. Three, Vanessa the half-demon is a very worthwhile character to follow and has some tension with Nick. This was basically just a fresh little addition from a perspective that was more welcome to me than I expected.

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Ozma’s relationship with the sweet gherkin toy was fraught with tension. Sometimes it was in the twigloo, sometimes the sweet gherkin was banished to the corner.