July 29th, 2026
Home | Log in!
Welcome to FreshFiction

Are you a reader
or an author?

Help us personalize your experience. Choose your role below.
You can always change this later using the switcher button.

or

You can switch anytime using the floating button.

Limited Time Fresh Fiction Access

Exclusive Marketing Opportunities for Authors

Curious about how Fresh Access helps authors gain more visibility and connect with active readers?

Discover premium promotional opportunities, enhanced exposure, and author-focused services designed to help your books stand out.

Read More →
📚 New Books This Week 📰 Latest News 🎪 Reader Games

Escape Into Adventure, Romance, Suspense, and Magic This July

Find Your Perfect July Escape

Slideshow image


Since your web browser does not support JavaScript, here is a non-JavaScript version of the image slideshow:

slideshow image
Sink your teeth into the first novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling Sookie Stackhouse seriesโ€”the books that gave life to the Dead and inspired the HBOยฎ original series True Blood.


slideshow image
#1 New York Times bestselling author Sandra Brown delivers a new signature sexy suspense about a detective seeking justice for his murdered wife with the help of a psychotherapistโ€ฆwhile fighting an undeniable attraction to her.


slideshow image
Open the book. Enter the nightmare. Escape is no longer guaranteed.


slideshow image
Under Wyoming skies, love doesn't care about titles.


slideshow image
Family secrets, lost love, and a mystery hidden beneath the sea.


slideshow image
The bear is unleashed. The danger is real. The attraction is impossible to resist.

HOME IMPROVEMENT

Home Improvement, August 2011
by Patricia Briggs, Charlaine Harris, Heather Graham, Melissa Marr, James Grady

Penguin
Featuring: Sookie Stackhouse; Sam
352 pages
ISBN: 0441020356
EAN: 9780441020355
Hardcover
Add to Wish List

Purchase

"Nothing makes home improvement interesting like assorted ghosts, vampires, wizards and demons."

Fresh Fiction Review

HOME IMPROVEMENT
Patricia Briggs, Charlaine Harris, Heather Graham, Melissa Marr, James Grady

Reviewed by Lynn Cunningham
Posted August 26, 2011

Paranormal - Supernatural

When people start making improvements to their homes, it can bring out the worst in them. It can also unearth some of the most temperamental and hateful creatures you've ever had the misfortune to meet. Some of them don't even bother introducing themselves to you. They just stick around all invisible and make the air poisonous with their venom that eventually you're going to have affecting you.

In this edition of Charlaine Harris and Toni L.P. Kelner's anthologies, they have tackled the topic of home improvements and how creatures of the undead would fit in. What they came up with is an entertaining and, often, chilling assortment of tales centered on improving houses. To begin with, there's a never before published Sookie Stackhouse story that is sure to delight fans of that series. Sookie and Sam are helping Tara and her husband remodel a sun porch to turn it into a bedroom for Tara's twins. Everything goes along pretty well until an old blood stained hammer turns up from inside the wall. After that, nothing seems to go right. The story behind the hammer and the way they resolve it makes for a very entertaining ghost story.

Meet Broahm, a wizard in the story Wizard Home Security, written by Victor Gischler. He's been having some issues with break-ins at his home and his supplies and spells have been stolen. Obviously, his security isn't strong enough so he hires a young wizard with security as his specialty to beef up the safety on his house. Needless to say, Broahm never saw it backfiring on him.

Vampire Elyna Gray wants to buy a condo so that she can remodel it to become her home. She also has some very personal ties to this place that she's not willing to share with just anyone. Problems soon hit, though, as she crosses the wrong vampire in this captivating story by Patricia Briggs.

Rochelle Krich offers Squatter's Rights, the story of a couple that moves into a house with a bad history with plans to make it their own. It doesn't take long before the bad vibes start to take over the wife, and that's not a good sign.

Famous writer Heather Graham offers a story of a home of a different kind. Entitled Blood on the Wall, this story is set in New Orleans, where someone, or something, is going around ripping people to shreds.

James Grady brings The Mansion of Imperatives to this "short story party." Two couples decide to totally renovate an old Gothic style home only to find that evil definitely exists and it can make you do what it wants.

The Strength Inside is presented by Melissa Marr in her story of other worldly beings trying to co-exist with humans. It also begs the question of just how evil the Homeowner's Association can be.

Toni L. P. Kelner ends the anthology with In Brightest Day with a cheerful little tale of a woman that raises the dead for a living. Her current "client" just keeps dying---again--- before he can complete what he was brought back to do.

There are so many things to say about HOME IMPROVEMENT: UNDEAD EDITION. These are delightful, entertaining and chilling stories. Some of them you'll be carrying around in your head for days. Do yourself a favor and spend a rainy afternoon with this book.

Learn more about HOME IMPROVEMENT

SUMMARY

There's nothing like home renovation for finding skeletons in the closet or otherwordly portals in the attic. Now, for any homeowner who's ever wondered, "What's that creaking sound?" or fans of "how to" television who'd like a little unreality mixed in with their reality shows, editors Charlaine Harris and Toni L. P. Kelner return with an all-new collection of the paranormal perils of Do-It-Yourself. Sookie Stackhouse resides in these pages, in a never-before-published story by #1 New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris. And New York Times bestselling authors Patricia Briggs, James Grady, Heather Graham, Melissa Marr, and nine other outstanding writers have constructed more frightening and funny fixer-upper tales guaranteed to shake foundations and rattle readers' pipes.

EXCERPT

No excerpt available.

BOOK SERIES


 

 

 

© 2003-2026 off-the-edge.net  all rights reserved Privacy Policy