From critically acclaimed author Laura Bickle (Dark Alchemy) comes the 1st book in the Wildlands series, NINE OF STARS. Longmire fits Patricia Brigg’s Mercy Thompson in this fascinating new series that shows how odd and amazing the Western world can truly end up being.

Winter has always been a deadly period in Temperance, but this time around, there’s more to dread than simply the cold…

As the daughter of the alchemist, Petra Dee has faced all manner of occult horrors – especially since her arrival in the tiny about Nine of Celebrities: A Wildlands Book town of Temperance, Wyoming. But she can’t explain the creature today stalking the backcountry of Yellowstone, butchering wolves and leaving just their skins behind in the snow. Rumors surface from the return of Skinflint Jack port, a nineteenth-century wraith that kills in fulfillment of a historical bargain.

The new sheriff in town, Owen Rutherford, isn’t helping matters. He’s a dangerously haunted man on the trail of both an unsolved case and a fresh kill – a bizarre murder leading him right to Petra’s partner Gabriel. Even though Gabe once got little to dread through the mortal globe, he’s all as well human now. This time, when violence strikes close to home, you will find no magical solutions.

It’s up to Petra and her coyote sidekick Sig to get ahead of both Owen and the unnatural being hunting them all – before the trail changes deathly cold.