Nibbles \'N\' Bits

Rednecks 'N' Roses - Judy Mays
Amber, and her cat Midnight are headed up to the house in the mountains to scatter Aunt Ernestine's ashes over the hillside of wild roses, as she had requested. The trips beginning didn’t prepared Amber for what she would find once she got there, a dead man in her bathtub. The only thing is, he isn't really dead, he's a vampire. Amber is excited to have a vampire of her own; she'll get first-hand knowledge for the book she is writing.

Rusty Nipple doesn't know what to make of this woman he couldn't scare away from the house. She acts all excited that he's a vampire, asking all kinds of personal questions. Telling him he can stay at the house if he'll help her with her book. Rusty may not of been a vampire for long, but he knows nuts when he sees it, and out the door he ran, only he can’t stay away from her.

This story kept me reading to see what these two characters were up to next, I couldn’t put it down. I was laughing so hard, I had tears falling down my face.

Fangs 'N' Foxes - Mardi Ballou
Darnell had need of a dentist, but none of them would take him as a patient, not after what he'd done to the last one. But man, his fang was killing him, with having to make plans for his imminent meeting with Micco, the leader of the Cosa Nostra Vampires, meant he had to take care of this toothache. His advisor, Wanda the Wise, got him an appointment with Lalilia and told Darnell he'd better not hurt her. When he sees Lalilia in the reception area, lust slams into his solar plexus and lower. After being with Lalilia, Darnell doesn’t know how he’ll be able to be with anyone else, and being the leader of the Black Guards, he has to show his strength as a leader and as a lover.

Lalilia and Wanda had set it up so that she could try to talk Darnell into being a peaceful vampire and not fight Micco, her being a dentist and a tooth fairy was a plus. She had to make him understand that the tooth fairies and other beings wanted peace, she hadn't counted on him being able to remind her how long it had been since she'd been with a man. But she had to remember this was important, Lalilia had to make Darnell see that if he persisted in going through with the fight, she wouldn't be able to be with him anymore, and she'd be transferred to Wyoming. Things had to work out; she didn't want to go to Wyoming or loose Darnell.

Darnell had me sympathizing with him about his toothache. I liked the scene where Darnell tells Wanda that he only hurt the dentist because the dentist had hurt him, made me laugh and wish I could adopt his philosophy

Frannie 'N' the Private Dick - Delilah Devlin
Frannie has just seen her fiancé having sex with his secretary; she decided to make him wait before she forgave him. But she had one little problem, before she got home to him, she died. When she woke up she couldn't move, she wondered if she was in hell, where someone was singing off key and talking about super gluing fake eyelashes on her eyes, she knew she had to get out of there and fast. The more she thought about it, the more she remembered that it wasn't the bus that had killed her; it was the taxi driver Niall.

Niall had never really thought about taking a mate, but he couldn't let Francis die, so he did the only thing he could and that was make her a vampire. Now he that he had her in his life, or death whichever way you looked at it, she wants him to teach her how to be a private investigator, only he didn't want a partner, not in being a private dick anyway. He wondered how he was going to explain to her that it wasn't just a chance meeting that had him following her into the bar that night. When she goes after one of the men from the "DV" files, he knows he has to go save her. Maybe she'd make a good partner after all.

I really enjoyed this story as it wasn’t the run of the mill romance. When Frannie finds that she now is a vampire, instead of wanting to lean on her man, she wants to make it on her own.

Ms. Mays, Ms. Ballou, and Ms. Devlin have written three stories that will have readers falling out of their chair laughing. The characters are down to earth, making the readers feel they know them and are watching friends in a comedy of errors. It isn't easy to write a book that will make readers laugh, but these authors have no trouble and will have people talking about the scenes in these books for a long time to come.

Reviewed by: Donna