Plot summary
Following on almost immediately from the events of Seduced by Moonlight , A Stroke of Midnight begins with Merry and the Ravens attending a press conference in the sithen. This is highly unusual as the home of the sidhe is usually off-limits to the human press. However, it is felt that it is more secure than holding the conference elsewhere.
This opinion is challenged almost immediately by the deaths of Beatrice, one of the lesser fae, and a human reporter. Merry, assigned to solve the murders by her aunt, Queen Andais, opts to bring in human forensics in the hope that science might be able to succeed where magic has so far failed - and bring a murderer to justice.
The entire novel takes place within approximately one day.
A fairy is a type of mythical being or legendary creature, generally described as anthropomorphic, found in the folklore of multiple European cultures, a form of spirit, often with metaphysical, supernatural, or preternatural qualities.
Fairies, particularly those of Irish, English, Scottish and Welsh folklore, have been classified in a variety of ways. Classifications – which most often come from scholarly analysis, and may not always accurately reflect local traditions – typically focus on behavior or physical characteristics.
Changeling: The Dreaming is a tabletop role-playing game originally published by White Wolf Publishing in July 1995, and is part of the World of Darkness series. Player characters are changelings, fae souls reborn into human bodies, a practice begun by the fae to protect themselves as magic vanished from the world. White Wolf Publishing released a second edition in 1997, and Onyx Path Publishing released a 20th Anniversary Edition in 2017.
Meredith "Merry" Gentry is the protagonist of an eponymous fantasy series by US writer Laurell K. Hamilton, best known for her other fantasy series Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter. The series comprises nine novels and was written between 2000 when the series began with "A Kiss of Shadows" and the final book, "A Shiver of Light", published in June 3, 2014.
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Faerie, The Fair Lands or The Twilight Realm is one of two fictional otherdimensional homelands for the Faerie, as published by DC Comics. The Vertigo Comics realm of Faerie is an amalgam of the mythological realms of Álfheimr, Otherworld, the Fortunate Isles, Tír na nÓg and Avalon. This mix is heavily influenced by Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream. It is home to the faeries and other mythical races, ruled over by the Seelie Court and King Auberon and Queen Titania. Faerie debuted in The Books of Magic #3, and was created by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess.
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The Merry Gentry series is a series of urban fantasy novels by New York Times bestselling author Laurell K. Hamilton. The series is narrated in first person format through the eyes of the series' title character Meredith "Merry" Gentry, a faerie princess turned private investigator in a world where faeries exist and are known to the general public. The first book in the series, A Kiss of Shadows, was released by Del Rey on October 3, 2000. There are nine books in the series.
Darkfever is the first novel in the Fever series written by #1 New York Times best-selling American author Karen Marie Moning. The book was published in October 2006 by Delacorte Press. The romantic fantasy novel tells the story of the main characters journey into the supernatural world of fairies after she travels across the world to find her sister's murderer. The story is set in Dublin, Ireland and involves Celtic mythology.
Lord of Shadows is a young adult urban fantasy novel by Cassandra Clare. It is the second book in The Dark Artifices, which is chronologically the fourth series in The Shadowhunter Chronicles. The book is set in the Los Angeles area in 2012. The titles from each chapter are derived from the poem Dreamland by Edgar Allan Poe.
