In the Shadow of Spindrift House by Mira Grant

Exceedingly close to this sequence in premise is the Parasitology series – comprising to date Parasite ( 2013), Symbiont ( 2014) and Chimera ( 2015) – in which SymboGen tapeworms are installed in human guts in order to fight diseases, but develop sentience, transforming their human hosts into Zombie-like masks over the alien species within (see Parasitism and Symbiosis). McGuire's assumption that traditional deep-structure news media still barely exist may be hopeful, and her contiguous assumption that social media will take up the investigatory slack may overstate the professionalism of internet sleuths, but her news- and revelation-oriented angle of approach refreshingly justifies both the expository detail of the sequence, and the numerous scoops that stimulate the plotting and her newshound protagonists.

McGuire's second series, the NewsFlesh sequence – book-length instalments including Feed ( 2010), Deadline ( 2011) and Blackout ( 2012), all as by Mira Grant – is of direct sf interest for its depiction of a Dystopian Near Future world a few decades after an outbreak in 2014 of a virus whose effect is to create Zombies who spread the Pandemic and who drive most of the survivors into urban Keeps.

The later InCryptid sequence beginning with Discount Armageddon ( 2012), which employs some similar strategies, sets its kick-ass female protagonist in an Urban Fantasy version of New York, where as a member of a family long engaged in this enterprise, she and her brother work as cryptozoologists studying mythological Monsters and other Supernatural Creatures, all of whom exist. Her first series, the October Daye sequence beginning with Rosemary and Rue: An October Daye Novel ( 2010) and ending with Chimes at Midnight ( 2013), is mainly of fantasy interest, featuring half-breed private detective Toby Daye in a noirish San Francisco (see California) who exists half in this world and half in Faerie the series conforms to the twenty-first century definition of Urban Fantasy as a form deeply infiltrated by paranormal romance idioms, and Shapeshifter characters, including in this case magical Talking Animals in quasi-human form, like Tybalt the King of Cats. She shared the newly introduced Hugo for best fancast with other presenters of the Audiozine SF Squeecast in 20. (1978- ) US filker (see Filk), Internet presence and prolific author, who also writes as by A Deborah Baker and Mira Grant she began publishing work of genre interest with 'Lost' in Ravens in the Library: Magic in the Bard's Name (anth 2009) edited by SatyrPhil Brucato and Sandra Buskirk, and became prominent very quickly, winning the John W Campbell Award for best new writer in 2010.

In the Shadow of Spindrift House by Mira Grant