Ascendance: Dave vs. the Monsters [Paperback]

For fans of Jim Butcher and Kevin Hearne comes an exhilarating new urban fantasy series featuring monster-slayerDave Hooper and his magical splitting maul.
 
Kids, there are no monsters under the bed. They’re in the front yard.
 
As a hardworking monster-slayer, Dave Hooper tries not to bring his work home with him. But nowadays it’s hard to keep them separate. Email, cellphones, empath daemons, they never let a guy rest.
 
The Horde has been raising hell and leveling cities from New York to Los Angeles, keeping Dave and his fellow monster-killer, Russian spy Karin Varatchevsky, very busy. But when the legions of hell invade the small seaside town his boys call home, Dave has to make a call. Save the world? Or save his family?
 
Not as easy a choice as you’d think, since Dave’s ex-wife expects to be saved too. And there’s no convincing her that the supersexy Russian spy isn’t his girlfriend. She’s just his sidekick—and an assassin.John Birminghamis the author ofEmergence, Resistance, Ascendance, After America, Without Warning, Final Impact, Designated Targets, Weapons of Choice,and other novels, as well asLeviathan,which won the National Award for Nonfiction at Australia’s Adelaide Festival of the Arts, and the novellaStalin’s Hammer: Rome. He has written forThe Sydney Morning Herald, Rolling Stone, Penthouse, Playboy,and numerous other magazines. He lives at the beach with his wife, daughter, son, and two cats.Birmingham / ASCENDANCE

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Dave’s gun dropped to the floor with a loud metallic clatter. He flinched, expecting it to go off, but it didn’t. He had removed the magazine and thumbed the safety on carefully before warping out of the under­ground garage to infiltrate the Russian consulate. If by “infiltrate” you meant put a wrecking ball through the place.