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The first book in the magical Esther Diamond mystery series...

When mysterious mystical disappearances disrupt her career, struggling actress Esther Diamond teams up with Maximillian Zadok, an eccentric elderly wizard whose day job is protecting the Big Apple from Evil. Meanwhile, the sexy NYPD detective investigating the disappearances fears that Esther and Max may be a bigger problem than the vanishing performers.

In Laura Resnick's Doppelgangster, the New York actress is 'resting' between roles by working as a singing waitress at a Manhattan mob restaurant because wiseguys tip well. Then duplicated gangsters appear, bullets start flying, and it's up to Esther and her friend Max the Magician to fight Evil by stopping the gang war before it starts killing the wrong people. And if she has time, maybe Esther can actually keep a hot date with her hunky detective friend Lopez, who doesn't believe in magic. Yet. Unplug the phone and settle down for a fast and funny read.

From the award-winning author of Doppelgangster comes the newest novel in the popular Esther Diamond series

Acting jobs don't grow on fire escapes, so struggling actress Esther Diamond is outraged when her guest role as a hooker on controversial TV drama The Dirty Thirty is jeopardized by zombies, angry spirits, and a voodoo curse. But will Esther's courage backfire and end up leading her to become a human sacrifice on the altar of the sinister supernatural powers that are taking over New York City?

Playing a scantily clad vampire victim in an off-Broadway play, struggling actress Esther Diamond now may be the target of someone who claims to be a genuine bloodsucker…

In the days leading up to Christmas, and in accordance with the rituals of a religion which is not her own, struggling actress Esther Diamond is working as a singing-and-dancing elf at Fenster & Co, a major Manhattan department store. Meanwhile, Detective Lopez, Esther's former almost-boyfriend, is investigating a series of mob-related truck hijackings of Fenster's costly merchandise. Lucky Battistuzzi, a semi-retired hit man in the Gambello crime family, is also investigating the thefts, since the Gambellos, who didn't commit the robberies, are being inconveniently implicated in these events.

Esther becomes aware of mysterious and alarming events at Fenster's, quite apart from lurking wiseguys, squabbling shoppers, and half-naked elves. Alerted to her concerns, her friend Dr. Maximillian Zadok, Manhattan's resident mage, soon suspects that Evil is afoot in the crowded department store.Before long, Max and Esther realize that the famous shopping mecca has become the planned staging ground for the rebirth of a voracious ancient demon that's plotting to take advantage of the winter solstice, when darkness prevails, to escape its amorphous mystical prison and commence a reign of terror in New York City.

Can Max and Esther protect their city, save Detective Lopez from a sex-starved ancient entity, and survive Christianity's most exhausting holiday?

Esther Diamond's year gets off to a rocky start when NYPD's Detective Connor Lopez, who slept with her and then didn't call, shuts down the Little Italy restaurant where Esther works between acting jobs and gets her arrested. Once she's out of handcuffs, Esther takes a small role in a grad student's film project in Chinatown—where her friend, semi-retired hit man Lucky Battistuzzi, is hiding out in a Chinese-Italian mortuary.

Esther and Lucky soon realize that something strange is going on in Chinatown, where mysterious gourmet fortune cookies are inflicting deadly mystical curses on the hapless victims who receive them as gifts—and before long, Esther learns that Detective Lopez is one of the recipients. As preparations heat up for the Chinese New Year, when the icy streets will be filled with costumed lion dancers, firecrackers, and dense crowds, Esther and Lucky summon the help of their friend Max, a semi-immortal mage, to help them save Chinatown and Lopez—though he doesn't deserve it—from the menace of a maniacal murderer.

R.I.P. = Reanimated, Infernal, and Pretty damn dangerous

Struggling actress Esther Diamond, whose year got off to a rough start (what with incarceration, unemployment, and mystical death curses), finally catches a break when she lands an acting job.

She's hired to reprise her guest role as prostitute Jilly C-Note on The Dirty Thirty, a TV crime drama about depravity and corruption in the New York Police Department. Esther's ex-sometime boyfriend, NYPD's Detective Connor Lopez, hates that show with undying passion -- especially after Esther convinces her narcissistic co-star to shadow Lopez on the job, in order to add verisimilitude to his performance as a morally bankrupt cop.

But Esther's fellow thespian is her best bet for keeping an eye on Lopez 24/7--and, more to the point, on Lopez's new partner, Detective Quinn. Esther and her friend Max, a 350-year-old mage whose day job is protecting the city from Evil, suspect Quinn of being involved in the latest mystical mayhem to menace Manhattan...

Corpses suddenly aren't staying quite as dead as they should.

While Max and Esther try to determine what Quinn's role is in the supernatural reanimation of the deceased downtown, a dangerous foe with deadly intent changes everyone's dinner plans one cold winter night...

For a thousand years, Sileria has toiled under the yoke of foreign conquerors. Savage Moorlanders, sorcerous Kints, and now the hedonistic Valdani have forced the Silerian mountain clans into harsh slavery. Villages have been razed, and the innocent populace dragged to the mines, there to toil until death with no hope of escape.

But there is hope. Five disparate people have been brought reluctantly together by the prophecy of a young Guardian -- a prophecy that promises the coming of a savior. These five must put aside ages-old blood feuds before the conquerors force all to bend to their vicious will.

It is a time of vast changes in the island nation of Sileria. Oppressed for centuries by one conqueror after another, this land of fierce pride and ancient rivalries awaited the prophesied Firebringer, who would free them.

Josarian, a mountain peasant, survived his leap into the volcano to become the Firebringer. He united the impoverished shallaheen, the magical fire-wielding Guardians, and the vastly powerful mages known as Waterlords in an unprecedented alliance that defeated the foreign Valdani who had ruled Sileria for too long.

But now Josarian is dead, betrayed by the alliance and slain by the ice-dragon of Kiloran, the most powerful Waterlord in Sileria. Tansen, Josarian's second-in-command, has taken up the banner of independence, and leads the shallaheen and the Guardians against the Waterlords so that Sileria can be free of a tyranny far worse than Valdani rule.

As the volcano goddess Dar rumbles her displeasure in earthquakes and lava flows, the forces of fate, prophecy, and magic combine to create new heroes -- from the desolate mountains, from the water-starved cities, from the sea, and even from beneath the earth. Ancient forces join with unlikely allies to fulfill the prophecies that inspire revolt and excite religious fervor.

But in Sileria, betrayal has long been a way of life, and it wears many faces as the ambitions of the high and the low ensnare the fates of people across the land, wreaking havoc among the faithful.

The island nation of Sileria lies in the shadow of Darshon, the Destroyer Goddess, the great volcano that dominates the landscape and people of Sileria. When she awakens, their world trembles. She has lain quiet for decades, throughout the occupation of foreign invaders.

But Darshon has begun to stir.

Sileria has finally been freed from foreign rule, only to fall under the power of the ruthless waterlords, powerful mages who terrorize those who depend on their mercy for the water that all life must have.

Now their mercy is denied.

Tansen, the rebel warrior, joins forces with Mirabar, a Guardian who is feared and admired for her fire magic, and Zarien, a mysterious sea-born boy, in a stand against the waterlords rule.

As the power struggle among Sileria's warring factions intensifies to a fevered pitch, the tremors of Darshon increase, threatening to engulf them all in molten death. There will be a final reckoning that will change Sileria forever. But no one may triumph unless the Destroyer Goddess wills it.