Home of the Alpha Showdown, and one-stop shop for urban fantasy, paranormal romance and fantasy news and reviews.
First, a huge thank you to everyone who donated, bid or spread the word about the Books Fighting Cancer charity auctions. Based on the receipts emailed to me (and I know many of you donated directly) and the Amazon commissions, the Books Fighting Cancer event raised $4,817 for the Barrow Neurological Institute and brain cancer research. Amazing. I was floored by the generosity and kindness of VBC readers... 
We’re planning to spend Thursday chatting up Kendare Blake’s Anna Dressed in Blood in our Goodreads group. But in the meantime, we need to select the group read title for January. (I know this is a bit late, but I’ve been traveling most of December. Don’t worry, I’m back at VBC HQ in Dallas again.) We have six stellar titles to pick from for the January read. Let us know which book you’d most like to read... 
Today’s roundup is all about the future — new series, new books and teasers galore. And, yes, this will probably be the last time I include a Harry Potter-related video in Book Bits. This one should make you laugh, though. Clockwork Prince excerpt Cassandra Clare posted a nice excerpt from Clockwork Prince for us. Actually, it’s the entirety of the prologue. Expect ghost-y goodness. Read the full excerpt... 
If I ever needed proof my family knows I read a lot of paranormal and fantasy books, the gifts I opened on Christmas Day covered it. Nine books from five different people. See for yourself: (Not pictured was book No. 9, a gluten-free cookbook. Unrelated, I made the most awesome peanut butter chocolate chip cookies this weekend and some damn good gluten-free pumpkin muffins. Very proud of this.) For those... 
We were updating our to-be-read list and realized just how many noteworthy titles are being released in September. Honestly, we were a little blown away. With this many books on deck, we all might benefit from a couple week’s time to prioritize. September release highlights are as follows (we know we’re forgetting several, so please add in the comments!): * denotes books currently on our review list. If... 
We like dark overtones in our novels. While usually these are urban fantasy, we can’t resist a great horror novel. Brenna Yovanoff creates a creepy world where children may be replaced with creatures from the underworld in The Replacement. She also puts some heavy problems on her protagonist Mackie from the get-go. He is one of those replacement children. He would give anything to stay in our world and...
