Seven for a Secret - In which a life-weary wampyr and his aged mortal coven uncovers an alter-universe plot of world domination by a Nazi-ish Prussian government, a plot where little girls are schooled in the way of becoming deadly supernatural murderers in the Fascist army.

Bone and Jewel Creatures - A geriatric sorceress is confronted by a mutilated child-jackal of the streets, a warning from the chauvinistic lover who once spurned her, a lover and necromancer whose plague fueled rotting army she must overcome with the own ability to return life to inanimate things.

These books are dense, if a little bit compressed, tidy, full of anticipation, and for most of those reasons are delightful novelettes to delve into. Elizabeth Bear, the author, has an easy prose style and a vivid goth/steampunk sensibility. And while these stories are very full with themes of aging, death and transcendence, Bear's imagery doesn't get overburdened with just symbolism - wilted rose petals and maggots for death, or skeletal animations that represent a reincarnation of sorts. Rather, her facility with narrative modes underscores the personal amidst the incipient death drive behind the Wizard's War in Bone and Jewel Creatures, or the weary inevitability of war in Seven for a Secret. Those half buried resentments or regrets, still feral - as in Highsmith's animal books - rattle in fabulist worlds, highly honed with detail, and take on the atmosphere of an old school fairy tale - a grisly Grimm one.