Keeper of Light and Dust »

Natasha Mostert holds graduate degrees in lexicography and applied linguistics, and is the author of Season of the Witch.

A highly original supernatural thriller blending magic, science, martial arts, and the greatest desire of all: to live forever

Mia Lockheart has a secret. Her mother was a Keeper, as was her grandmother—women who were warriors, healers, and protectors. As Mia practices her craft among the boxers and martial artists of South London, and begins a romance with her childhood friend, the fighter Nick Duffy, she has no idea that a man who calls himself “Dragonfly” is watching from the shadows.

Adrian Ashton is a brilliant scientist, an expert in the breaking field of biophoton emissions from cells within the human body. He is also a skilled martial artist—and a modern-day vampire. With the aid of the enigmatic Book of Life and Death, written in the thirteenth century by the legendary Chinese physician Zhang Sanfeng, he preys on other martial artists and drains them of their chi—the vital energy that flows through the body.

Mia finds herself drawn to his dark genius, but when he targets Nick as his next victim, she is forced to choose between the two men. It becomes a fight to the death in which love is both the greatest weakness and the biggest prize.

Publishers Weekly

Mostert (Season of the Witch) cleverly melds mystery with the supernatural in this Zen-tinged thriller. Mia Lockhart Cortez, a South London tattooist and martial artist, employs her mystical gifts to watch over modern-day warriors-kickboxers-in her secret role as a "Keeper." Mia is particularly concerned to protect her boyfriend, Nick Duffy, who's preparing for a big fight. During an out-of-body excursion ("stepping out"), Mia has a violent, erotically charged encounter with Adrian "Ash" Ashton, an "impossibly good-looking" vampiric thief, who drains chi, a person's life force, instead of blood from his victims. Nick feels threatened by Mia's attraction to the seductive Ash, who may have drawn on the power of The Book of Light and Dust, "a mixture of personal philosophy, diary entries and science," to murder several U.K. kickboxers. Some Net-related touches, including Ash using text messaging to taunt Mia, add to the intrigue. (Apr.)

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