Walking Dead (Walker Papers Series #4) »

Though C.E. (Catie) Murphy lives in Alaska, she has never watched a single episode of Northern Exposure or helped a film crew simulate terrorist attacks on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. She has, though, been forced to convince people that she neither lives in an igloo, rides a polar bear, nor has a penguin for a pet. She's married to a chef, has two small cats, and a large dog who is afraid of everything.

According to one source, Catie began her writing career when she ran away from home at age five to write copy for the circus that'd come to town. You would think she'd remember this, but her own earliest memory regarding writing is from age six, when she submitted three poems to a school publication. The teacher producing the magazine selected (inevitably) the one she thought was by far the worst, but also told her--a six-year-old kid--to keep writing.

It's likely she would have, anyway, but she took the advice to heart. And a good thing, too: far more people after that (some of them famous authors!) told her to do anything other than write, if she possibly could.

It turns out she couldn't.

Her hobbies include swimming, walking, traveling, drawing and moose-wrestling.

For once, Joanne Walker's not out to save the world. She's come to terms with the host of shamanic powers she's been given, her job as a police detective has been relatively calm, and she's got a love life for the first time in memory. Not bad for a woman who started out the year mostly dead.

But it's Halloween, and the undead have just crashed Joanne's party.

Now, with her mentor Coyote still missing, she has to figure out how to break the spell that has let the ghosts, zombies and even the Wild Hunt come back. Unfortunately, there's no shamanic handbook explaining how to deal with the walking dead. And if they have anything to say about it—which they do—no one's getting out of there alive.

Publishers Weekly

Shaman Joanne Walker juggles ghosts, zombies and her day job as a greenhorn Seattle homicide detective in her feverishly cluttered fourth adventure (after 2007's Coyote Dreams). Fortunately, ghost whisperer Billy Holliday is on hand at Joanne's Halloween party when ghosts burst out of a cauldron. When the ancient Cauldron of Matholwch is stolen from a Seattle museum and a dark pall spreads over the city, it's not hard to spot the connection. After a dire premonition, Walker travels the astral planes to join the Wild Hunt on a seemingly unrelated quest. The plot doesn't so much thicken as sag from too many tricky twists and a mishmash of mythology, including Celtic and Native American lore, witchcraft, stage magic, clairvoyance and gods, but at least Joanne remains an appealing protagonist. (Sept.)

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