Wolfsbane and Mistletoe

Hair-Raising Holiday Tales

By: Charlaine Harris - editor, Toni L.P. Kelner - editor

Narrated by: Kevin T. Collins, Nicole Poole

Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins

Publisher's summary

Edited by Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner, this hair-raising holiday collection includes 15 original tales - including an original Sookie Stackhouse story.

The holidays can bring out the beast in anyone - particularly lycanthropes. Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner have harvested the scariest, funniest, saddest werewolf tales by an outstanding pack of authors including Patricia Briggs, Keri Arthur, Karen Chance, Simon R. Green, and more....

Whether wolfing down a holiday feast (use your imagination) or craving some hair of the dog on New Year's morning, the werewolves in these frighteningly original stories will surprise, delight, amuse, and scare the pants off listeners who love a little wolfsbane with their mistletoe.

Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner (Introduction); Copyright 2008 by Charlaine Harris, Inc. (“Gift Wrap”); Copyright 2008 by Donna Andrews (“The Haire of the Beast”); Copyright 2008 by Simon R. Green (“Lucy, at Christmastime”); Copyright 2008 by Dana Cameron (“The Night Things Changed”); Copyright 2008 by Kat Richardson (“The Werewolf Before Christmas”); Copyright 2008 by Alan Gordon (“Fresh Meat”); Copyright 2008 by Carrie Vaughn (“Il Est Ne”); Copyright 2008 by Dana Stabenow (“The Perfect Gift”); Copyright 2008 by Keri Arthur (“Christmas Past”); Copyright 2008 by J. A. Konrath (“S. A.”); Copyright 2008 by Patricia Briggs (“The Star of David”); Copyright 2008 by Nancy Pickard (“You’d Better Not Pyout”); Copyright 2008 by Karen Chance (“Rogue Elements”); Copyright 2008 by Rob Thurman (“Milk and Cookies”); Copyright 2008 by Toni L. P. Kelner (“Keeping Watch Over His Flock”)

©2008 See above (P)2021 Tantor

These authors understood the assignment

Instead of just gathering together already written shorts, these editors requested stories with two things: werewolves and Christmas. While one or two were a bit light on Christmas, nearly every short was entertaining, especially with the phenomenal narration. Although a few involved the authors’s existing series, all worked fine as standalones. I liked that each author was introduced with a little about them or their series before each short, I also liked that the Table of Contents organized the shorts, each between 15 minutes and 1.5 hours, by Title and Author (nothing worse than an anthology with 15 stories and 50 unlabeled chapters, am I right?).

There’s the violence you’d expect for shorts with werewolves, irreverence you might expect in holiday urban fantasy, and more than a few raunchy references or innuendos without any actual sex.
I caught two shorts using the G word to describe the Romani, but considering these were all written in 2008, when I admittedly had no clue that “gypsy” was pejorative, and considering that the use in these fictional shorts didn’t seem designed to insult or offend, I didn’t hold it against the authors. Frankly, it’s a challenge to keep up with words I’ve used for years that are now verboten, like “spaz” and “gals.”

1. Gift Wrap by Charlaine Harris. A Sookie Stackhaus prequel (pre-Bill) story.
There’s room at the Sookie inn for an injured werewolf.
2. Haire of the Beast by Donna Andrews. Fun with an experimental brew, but not very Christmassy. 🎄🐺
3. Lucy at Christmastime by Simon R Green. 13 minutes of mood in the Nightside. 🎄🐺
4. The Night that Things Changed by Dana Cameron. From the Fangborn series,
this didn’t work for me. Also, not very Christmassy.
5. The Werewolf Before Christmas by Kat Richardson. A little cheeky, then a little dark. 🎄🐺
6. Fresh Meat by Alan Gordon. Love. Death. Xmas. Werewolves. Horror & romance? Worked for me! 🎄🐺
7. Il Est Ne by Carrie Vaughn. A bloody Xmas Eve from the Kitty Norville series. 🎄🐺
8. The Perfect Gift by Dana Stabenow. Investigating bloody deaths and something about a seventh son?
A little too much left out for me to understand. Didn’t work for me.
9. Christmas Past by Keri Arthur. 2nd chance romance between cops. More bickering than blood.

10. “SA” by J.A. Konrath. Hahahaha. My favorite of the bunch. 🎄🐺🎄🐺🎄🐺
“but they were all bad.”
“I hoard nuts.”
“Are they evil nuts?”
Trust me, there are better quotes, but it would spoil the story.

11. The Star of David by Patricia Briggs. Who doesn’t love a werewolf- vampire holiday mashup? 🎄🐺
12. You’d Better Not Pyout by Nancy Pickard. When Santa is a vampire. 🎄🐺
13. Rogue Elements by Karen Chance. The war mage thing sounded cool,
but mostly ended up being your average urban fantasy cop procedural.
14. Milk and Cookies by Rob Thurman. Loved the Red Riding Hood twist. 🎄🐺
15. Keeping Watch Over His Flock by Toni L. Kelner. A werewolf style family Xmas.

Werewolves, Christmas, and bigotry!!

I cannot recommend this book.

Three of the stories used a racial slur for the Roma people! Three!! And the last story had some mild homophobia.

Aside from that, the stories ranged from lousy to just ok. There wasn’t one that I’d care to listen to again, even if I wanted to ignore the bigotry.

The only positive is that both narrators did a good job.

But overall, I was massively, massively disappointed.