The Dresden Files Series
by Jonathan Westbrook

     Look in the Chicago phone book under Wizards and you will find only one – Harry Dresden. Or at least according to Jim Butcher, you will. The only professional wizard in Chicago offers to find lost items, paranormal investigation, consulting, but no love potions, endless purses or entertainment. Mostly he defends unsuspecting Chicago from an endless attack of all manners of supernatural threat.
     As a special consultant for the Chicago PD Special Investigations Unit, headed by Lt. Karrin Murphy, he is usually brought in to help solve some of the more gruesome and unexplained crimes. Throughout the eight published novels of the Dresden Files, Harry has to deal with an evil sorcerer selling magick as a drug, a wild rampaging pack of werewolves, solving a murder for the Winter Queen of Faeries, starting a war with the Red Court of Vampires and later ending it, as well as many, many other tasks that fall into his lap.
     He’s not a man who lives above everyone else throwing spells and solving troubles. He has plenty of problems of his own. Jim Butcher gives the reader a deep understanding of the daily and deep troubles that face his characters. The reader can easily begin to feel the frustration of not having the money to pay the rent or the frustration of having to deal with faeries who cannot lie, but can easily twist the truth.  Every reader will feel Harry’s despondency at having to face such great and difficult troubles, such as having thirty demons linked with thirty certain pieces of silver trying to stop him from finding a major religious artifact that has been stolen, while at the same time defending himself against vampires, mob assassins and occasionally his own friends, only to rebound with him as a winning strategy is figured out and implemented.  Not all problems are as simple though, and not every problem comes out with the best results for Harry. When his current and longest lasting girlfriend, Susan Rodriguez, is permanently changed by an ill-planned attack on the Red Court of Vampires, Harry carries that torment in his soul. He also has to hide the fact that his own half brother is a member of the White Court of Vampires, which could get him into a lot of trouble with the White Council, ruling body of vampires.
     The novels of the Dresden Files series are Storm Front, Fool Moon, Grave Peril, Summer Knight, Death Masks, Blood Rites, Dead Beat, and Proven Guilty. The ninth novel White Night is due in April 2007. The Sci-Fi Channel has recently started putting out episodes featuring the Dresden Files on Sunday nights.
     Visit your favorite branch of the Rapides Parish Library for these and other great titles.
     Jonathan Westbrook is a Reference Specialist at the Main Library of the Rapides Parish Library.