The first book I read this week was Book Four of the Jane Yellowrock series, Raven Cursed.

Jane is working security in Asheville, N.C. for a vamp parley. The vamps in Asheville want to set up their own territory. Evangeline Overheat, Molly’s older sister, has agreed to facilitate the parley. But a group of campers are attacked by something supernatural, and Jane realizes the two werewolves she didn’t kill have followed her to North Carolina and are on the hunt.

Then Lincoln Shaddock does not turn up at the parley and Evangeline begins changing, growing younger and prettier. What is going on?

Action packed and fun.

The second book I read was A Truth to Lie For by Anne Perry, the fourth Elena Stands mystery.

Elena is called into service again, tasked with pulling a scientist working on German warfare out of Germany. Elena calls upon her old friend for Jacob and they successfully find the scientist. But when they try to take him out of Berlin, traffic jams and roadblocks send them south to Munich. Just in time for the Night of the Long Knives; Hitler’s strike against Rohm’s brownshirts.

At the same, a young Gestapo officer, Hans Beckendorff is trying to navigate the politics of working for the Reich, and for an increasingly unhinged Hitler. In the end, he is forced to make a life-changing decision.

I had a few criticisms. The ending seems rushed. Perry relies on a few phrases over and over (I really got tired of ‘surprisingly good coffee’.) It is not really a mystery, more a thriller.

But here’s the thing. Despite the absence of blood and gore (a constant feature of the Yellowrock novels), A Truth to Lie For is absolutely terrifying. Maybe because the reader knows what is coming in the next few years, but I felt a sense of dread throughout. I was truly scared at several points in the book.