Review: The ‘Kitty Norville’ series, by Carrie Vaughn

Author: Fred

The paranormal romance genre has exploded since 2005. During the past three years practically every mass-market publisher has started one or more annual series with titles like Undead and Unwed; Tall, Dark & Dead; Bitten & Smitten; Love Bites; Sex and the Single Vampire; and How to Marry a Millionaire Vampire.

However, as you may guess from these titles, 90% of the paranormal romance series feature sexy vampire chicks. Others are about young witches or hunters of (handsome) demons. One of the few about werewolves and other shapeshifters is Carrie Vaughn’s Kitty Norville series. This is also one of the earliest, going back to Vaughn’s first short story, “Dr. Kitty Solves All Your Love Problems”, in Weird Tales #324, Summer 2001 (integrated into Chapter 5 of Kitty and The Midnight Hour).

Kitty Norville starts out as a mid-twenties, blonde late-night DJ at radio station KNOB in Denver. (Vaughn lives in Boulder.) One night she starts chatting about a tabloid’s improbable stories about Bat Boy, and invites her listeners to call in if they have ever seen him. For the next few hours she gets callers who talk about vampires and werewolves; enough callers that the station manager reassigns her as a talk show hostess of a new weekly program, “The Midnight Hour”, offering frank advice to those who have problems because of their hidden vampire or werewolf lifestyles.

“Kitty and The Midnight Hour”, November 2005, paperback $ 7.99 (ix + 272 pages); Kindle $ 7.99.
“Kitty Goes to Washington”, July 2006, paperback $ 6.99 (x + 342 pages); Kindle $ 6.99.
“Kitty Takes a Holiday”, April 2007, paperback $ 6.99 (318 pages); Kindle $ 6.99.
“Kitty and the Silver Bullet”, January 2008, paperback $ 6.99 (approx. 352 pages); Kindle $ 6.99.
All by Carrie Vaughn, published by Warner Books of NYC.