Debut Showcase: Salt and Silver

Salt and Silver (Amazon USA - UK - Canada)
by Anna Katherine (website - blog)
Tor Books
Released April 28th
Excerpt

Publisher's Blurb:
One night six years ago, Allie and her friends got drunk and chanted a fake spell they made up... and accidentally opened a portal to Hell. Now it resides in the basement of the diner Allie runs, and it's a pain in the ass -- mystical crap is always coming out, and then it has to be killed. Demon guts get everywhere, stuff gets smashed up, there are salt circles and sigils all over the place... It gets tedious.

The up side is that Allie gets her own personal demon hunter guarding the Door and killing the demons: a sexy and mysterious, Stetson-wearing, snide-remark-making, dark-eyed demon hunter named Ryan.

But after six years of jibes and sexual tension, the Door disappears at the same time there's a surge in demonic activity -- and no one seems to know what's going on. Not Narnia the bitchy psychic witch, or Roxie, a kickass demon hunter from the other side of town.

It's not Allie's idea for a team of demon hunters to find another Door and go into it to see if Hell is about to take over Earth, but she definitely wants in on that plan. After years of seeing the havoc a Door to Hell wreaks on the world, she's ready to grow up, take responsibility for helping open a Door in the first place, and kick some demon butt.

Okay, and she'd also like some quality make out time with Ryan, and mortal peril is always a turn-on, right?

Kind of a long blurb, but it works. I find this more interesting than the average urban fantasy because it appears that the demons are solidly on the bad guy's side. Anna Katherine is a pseudonym for two publishing industry professionals. I won't divulge their identity, but they tell me that their names are right there on the copyright page, so it's a badly-kept secret.

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