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Kitty & Cadaver
Rome's Burning is a five-piece band with its roots in the 13th century; a line of musicians gifted with the magic-wielding Minstrel Tongue. For hundreds of years, Rome's Burning and its forebears have used music to protect the world from vampires, trolls, zombies, ghosts, banshees, dragons, water demons and other denizens of the dark.
But after one hellish night in the suburbs of Budapest, Rome's Burning defeated a nest of vampires at a terrible cost; their lead singer and the love of his life are dead, Rome's Burning is no more.
The survivors retreat as far as they can - to Melbourne, Australia - to deal with their grief, decide on their future, find a new leader and, as tradition demands, a new name. Before any of that happens, however, these minstrel-warriors have to find out why the dead keep rising everywhere they go.
Everyone has secrets and some of them might explain what's going on.
Perhaps the key is in the hands of Kitty Carrasco, the Melbourne funeral home beautician who doesn't know the secrets of her own past.
Kitty and Cadaver is a story of grief, love, vampires, music, magic, secrets and the restless dead.
But after one hellish night in the suburbs of Budapest, Rome's Burning defeated a nest of vampires at a terrible cost; their lead singer and the love of his life are dead, Rome's Burning is no more.
The survivors retreat as far as they can - to Melbourne, Australia - to deal with their grief, decide on their future, find a new leader and, as tradition demands, a new name. Before any of that happens, however, these minstrel-warriors have to find out why the dead keep rising everywhere they go.
Everyone has secrets and some of them might explain what's going on.
Perhaps the key is in the hands of Kitty Carrasco, the Melbourne funeral home beautician who doesn't know the secrets of her own past.
Kitty and Cadaver is a story of grief, love, vampires, music, magic, secrets and the restless dead.
- GenresUrban Fantasy
250 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 8, 2019
7 people want to read
About the author
Narrelle M. Harris
66 books120 followersI grew up in a home bursting with books. My father was in the Royal Australian Air Force – we moved roughly every three years – and my parents were passionate advocates of reading and the importance of access to a library of ideas, no matter where we lived.
Between a childhood spent on the move yet steeped in literature, and a naturally dramatic personality, it’s no surprise I became a storyteller.
At home, and at libraries all over Australia, I read everything from Little Golden Books to The World Book Encyclopaedia. As my family moved so frequently, my companions wherever I went were the Pevensies of Narnia, a horse named Flicka and the Hardy Boys. I grew up with the characters created by Diana Wynne Jones as they too learned independence and responsibility. Miss Marple and the Dragonriders of Pern were always at my side.
Writers like Eric Frank Russell and Lois McMaster Bujold were as influential on my character and my writing as surely as Shakespeare and the Brontes. I’m still always picking up new influences, from modern writers like Emily Larkin and Neil Gaiman as well as classics by PG Wodehouse and Arthur Conan Doyle.
Before you figure I am always and forever reading, I’m a traveller too. My early years spent moving from state to state led to itchy feet. After moving out of the family home, I lived in Perth, then met Tim Richards and we decided to have adventures of our own. We moved to Egypt to teach English as a Foreign Language, then went on to Poland.
After we finished teaching, we kept travelling: we’ve been to the UK and US, to Thailand, Germany, Hungary, Syria, Jordan, France, Italy, Slovenia, Czech, and Canada – and we’re not done travelling yet.
The places I’ve visited – London, Hungary, Canada – often appear in my work, but the home of my heart is the place I write about most often.
Melbourne, Australia. The town we chose to live in always. The city I love so much she is practically a character in her own right in books like The Opposite of Life and short stories like Near Miss. I even researched the Marvellous Melbourne of the 1890s for my Holmes♥Watson romance, The Adventure of the Colonial Boy.
Given my background and all my literary influences, it’s hardly astonishing that my storytelling is eclectic: crime, adventure, fantasy, horror and romance – separately or combined.
For all the different genres I write in, everything I write generally includes the same tone and the same type of themes. They are full of the families one is born with and the families we make for ourselves. The protagonists all face challenges they’ve made for themselves as well as external threats that test them. They’re full of people who’ve made mistakes who seek to learn and to make better choices.
Whether you’re reading a vampire adventure in modern Melbourne, a Holmesian mystery in London or a racy lesbian romance in the Middle East, you’ll find humour, heart, friendships and love.
Awards
Jane: In 2017, my ghost/crime story Jane won the Athenaeum Library’s Body in the Library prize at the Scarlet Stiletto Awards, hosted by Sisters in Crime Australia.
Other nominations and shortlistings include:
Fly By Night (nominated for a Ned Kelly Award 2004)
Witch Honour (shortlisted for the George Turner Prize as Witching Ways in 1998)
Witch Faith (shortlisted for the George Turner Prize in 1999)
Walking Shadows (Chronos Awards; Davitt Awards in 2012)
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Narrelle's erotica published as NM Harris is listed on Goodreads here: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
Between a childhood spent on the move yet steeped in literature, and a naturally dramatic personality, it’s no surprise I became a storyteller.
At home, and at libraries all over Australia, I read everything from Little Golden Books to The World Book Encyclopaedia. As my family moved so frequently, my companions wherever I went were the Pevensies of Narnia, a horse named Flicka and the Hardy Boys. I grew up with the characters created by Diana Wynne Jones as they too learned independence and responsibility. Miss Marple and the Dragonriders of Pern were always at my side.
Writers like Eric Frank Russell and Lois McMaster Bujold were as influential on my character and my writing as surely as Shakespeare and the Brontes. I’m still always picking up new influences, from modern writers like Emily Larkin and Neil Gaiman as well as classics by PG Wodehouse and Arthur Conan Doyle.
Before you figure I am always and forever reading, I’m a traveller too. My early years spent moving from state to state led to itchy feet. After moving out of the family home, I lived in Perth, then met Tim Richards and we decided to have adventures of our own. We moved to Egypt to teach English as a Foreign Language, then went on to Poland.
After we finished teaching, we kept travelling: we’ve been to the UK and US, to Thailand, Germany, Hungary, Syria, Jordan, France, Italy, Slovenia, Czech, and Canada – and we’re not done travelling yet.
The places I’ve visited – London, Hungary, Canada – often appear in my work, but the home of my heart is the place I write about most often.
Melbourne, Australia. The town we chose to live in always. The city I love so much she is practically a character in her own right in books like The Opposite of Life and short stories like Near Miss. I even researched the Marvellous Melbourne of the 1890s for my Holmes♥Watson romance, The Adventure of the Colonial Boy.
Given my background and all my literary influences, it’s hardly astonishing that my storytelling is eclectic: crime, adventure, fantasy, horror and romance – separately or combined.
For all the different genres I write in, everything I write generally includes the same tone and the same type of themes. They are full of the families one is born with and the families we make for ourselves. The protagonists all face challenges they’ve made for themselves as well as external threats that test them. They’re full of people who’ve made mistakes who seek to learn and to make better choices.
Whether you’re reading a vampire adventure in modern Melbourne, a Holmesian mystery in London or a racy lesbian romance in the Middle East, you’ll find humour, heart, friendships and love.
Awards
Jane: In 2017, my ghost/crime story Jane won the Athenaeum Library’s Body in the Library prize at the Scarlet Stiletto Awards, hosted by Sisters in Crime Australia.
Other nominations and shortlistings include:
Fly By Night (nominated for a Ned Kelly Award 2004)
Witch Honour (shortlisted for the George Turner Prize as Witching Ways in 1998)
Witch Faith (shortlisted for the George Turner Prize in 1999)
Walking Shadows (Chronos Awards; Davitt Awards in 2012)
__
Narrelle's erotica published as NM Harris is listed on Goodreads here: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 3, 2019
This was a roller coaster for me, I enjoyed parts more than the rest. I do love that it's set in Melbourne, so I can picture it all in my head. There's a lot of secrets to discover in this one, we go back in time then travel forward again. This funeral home beautician by day is a vampire hunter among other things by night making for an interesting tale.
June 29, 2019
This is good fun. It’s also set in my hometown of Melbourne. Nice change from London or New York where so many urban fantasies are set.
August 3, 2019
A vampire novel set in my home town sounded intriguing, and it was. I hope it's the start of a series of Kitty and her band. They are a troupe of characters the reader warms to and enjoys discovering more of their background as it is teased out over the book. The songs throughout are catchy and fitting for the action unfolding. I enjoyed the multicultural aspects of society which really helped make it feel like the setting was Melbourne - so nice to read something set locally and also historically in Europe. Harris is certainly a writer to watch. I see potential for a mini series here too.
July 6, 2019
I try like hell not to ping authors on social media too often to rave at them about their books, because it feels invasive even though I'm being nice. I had to with Kitty & Cadaver. I found the entire story so engrossing that it was difficult to put the book down long enough to do so, but that was precisely why I had to! The characters are engaging and captivating, the mythology and worldbuilding is a delight, and I'm cursing my past self for not buying Scar Tissue: And Other Stories at Continuum when they had the chance (although to be fair, to afford another book past!Lauren would have had to not eat for the weekend, which would have sucked).
December 13, 2019
My Book of the Year!
Narelle first released this as a chapter a month style of integrated music and story on line. And I think it allowed her to hone it down into the brilliant story that it has become. There is so much I want to say about the believability of the diverse characters, the authenticity of the band dynamics, even the accuracy of the research into Melbourne’s past, and how it all comes together to be greater than the sum of its parts. Thoroughly recommended.
Narelle first released this as a chapter a month style of integrated music and story on line. And I think it allowed her to hone it down into the brilliant story that it has become. There is so much I want to say about the believability of the diverse characters, the authenticity of the band dynamics, even the accuracy of the research into Melbourne’s past, and how it all comes together to be greater than the sum of its parts. Thoroughly recommended.
August 17, 2019
Oh, I love all about this book! I love the world-building, I love the plot, I love the characters, and I love all the music-related stuff.
Having this group of misfit chasing monster with MUSIC! Can anything be better than this? And the characters... oh, they are all so well-drawn, so complex and interesting!
This is, no doubt, a series to which I'll be looking forward :)
Having this group of misfit chasing monster with MUSIC! Can anything be better than this? And the characters... oh, they are all so well-drawn, so complex and interesting!
This is, no doubt, a series to which I'll be looking forward :)
March 18, 2021
This book is fantastic! I devoured it in a couple of days. To call it a vampire novel is not to do it justice because it’s that but much more. The concept of the Minstrel Tongue and the use of music to weave magic and fight monsters is wonderful. Highly recommended!
July 23, 2019
So damn good. I want another fifty books about these characters.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews