The Garden of Abracadabra — Lisa Mason

“So refreshing. . . .Stephanie Plum in the world of Harry Potter.”At her mother's urgent deathbed plea, Abby Teller enrolls at the Berkeley College of Magical Arts and Crafts to learn Real Magic. To support herself through school, she signs on as the superintendent of the Garden of Abracadabra, a mysterious magical apartment building on campus. She discovers that her tenants are witches, vampires, and every stripe of supernatural entity.On her first day in Berkeley, she stumbles upon a supernatural multiple murder scene. She is torn between three men: Daniel Stern, her ex-fiancé, Jack Kovac, the enigmatic FBI agent, and Prince Lastor, the potent supernatural man living in the penthouse.Compelled into a dangerous murder investigation, Abby will discover the first secrets of an ancient and ongoing battle between humanity and a demonic realm, uncover mysteries of her own troubled past, and learn that the lessons of Real Magic may spell the difference between her own life or death.“Fun and Enjoyable Urban Fantasy. This is a very entertaining novel- sort of a down-to-earth Harry Potter with a modern adult woman in the lead. Even as Abby has to deal with mundane concerns like college and running the apartment complex she works at, she is surrounded by supernatural elements and mysteries that she is more than capable of taking on. Although this book is just the first in a series, it ties up the first episode while still leaving some story threads for upcoming books. I'm looking forward to finding out more.”Lisa Mason has published eleven novels including Summer of Love (a Philip K. Dick Award Finalist and San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book), The Gilded Age (a New York Times Notable Book and New York Public Library Recommended Book), a collection of previously published fiction, Strange Ladies: 7 Stories ("A must-read collection." The San Francisco Review of Books), and forty stories and novellas in magazines and anthologies worldwide. Her Omni story, “Tomorrow's Child,” sold outright as a feature film to Universal Pictures.