Vermilion: The Adventures of Lou Merriwether, Psychopomp Audiobook (Free)

From British Fantasy Award nominee Molly Tanzer comes her debut novel, Vermilion, a spirited weird Western adventure that puts the punk back into steampunk.

Gunslinging, chain-smoking, and Stetson-wearing Taoist psychopomp, Elouise “Lou” Merriwether might not be a standard nineteen yr old, but she’s too busy keeping San Francisco safe from ghosts, shades, and geung si to treatment much about this. It’s an important work, though most folks consider it downright spooky. Some have actually accused Lou of about Vermilion: The Activities of Lou Merriwether, Psychopomp being more comfortable using the dead than the living, and, well … they’re not wrong.

When Lou hears a couple of Chinatown boys have gone missing someplace deep in the Colorado Rockies, she decides to saddle up and go to the wilderness to research. Lou worries her particular talents make her better suited to help placate their spirits than assure they get home alive, but it’s the proper thing to do, and she’s the only one willing to do it. On the road to a strange sanatorium known as the Fountain of Youth, Lou will encounter bears, eager men, an extremely undead villain, as well as stranger challenges. She’ll need all of her skills and a whole lot of good luck to create it house alive.

“A splendid page-turner…This hugely entertaining combination of American steampunk and ghost tale is a wonderful yarn with among the better dialogue around.”-Web publishers Weekly (starred review)