Mercy Thompson

The monsters were always here. They just got tired of hiding. Meet Mercedes Thompson: coyote-shifting "walker," daughter of a Blackfeet rodeo rider, and the best VW mechanic in the Tri-Cities of eastern Washington — which matters, because the werewolf who runs the local pack keeps parking his problems in her garage. This is urban fantasy with grease under its fingernails: a working-class Pacific Northwest where the fae have gone public, vampires still work in the dark, and a woman with no pack and a wrench for a weapon keeps ending up between them. Patricia Briggs builds this world across two interlocking series. Mercy's own run opens with Moon Called and follows her from lone mechanic to mate of Adam Hauptman, Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack. The companion series, Alpha and Omega, steps north into the Montana mountains to follow Charles Cornick — enforcer son of the Marrok who rules every wolf on the continent — and Anna, the rare Omega who calms the wolves the rest of the pack can't. A handful of graphic-novel adaptations round out the shelf. Start with Moon Called for Mercy, or the Alpha and Omega novella (then Cry Wolf) for the wolves; Briggs posts a combined chronological order that braids the two once you're hooked. Loyal, funny, and hard to kill — begin at the garage.