The Cassandra Palmer series is a set of fantasy novels written by Karen Chance

Karen Chance

Karen Chance is an urban fantasy novelist. She grew up in Orlando, Florida. She has lived in France, Great Britain, Hong Kong and New Orleans, where she has taught history...

. The series tells the story of a young woman named Cassie Palmer

Cassie Palmer

Cassie Palmer is a fictional character in the Cassandra Palmer series of novels written by novelist Karen Chance. Her first appearance is in Touch the Dark, the first book in the series....

, a powerful clairvoyant who has the ability to communicate with the spirit realm.

Novels

• Touch the Dark
  Touch the Dark
  Touch the Dark is the first book in The Cassandra Palmer series, written by best-selling author Karen Chance. The book introduces the series heroine, Cassandra "Cassie" Palmer, as well as several other series regulars.-Synopsis:...
  
  , June 2006, ISBN 0-45-146093-6
• Claimed by Shadow, April 2007, ISBN 0-45-146152-5
• Embrace the Night, April 2008, ISBN 0-45146199-1
• Curse the Dawn, April 2009, ISBN 0-45-141270-2
• Hunt the Moon, June 2011

Short stories

• The Day of the Dead - currently available on Karen Chances website and also in anthology The Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance
• The Gauntlet - a Kit Marlowe short, currently available on Karen Chance's website
• The Queens Witch - a Kit Marlowe short, currently available on Karen Chances website
• A Family Affair - a John Pritkin novella, currently available on Karen Chance website
• Shadowland - a John Pritkin short, forthcoming
• Masks - A Mircea Basarab short, forthcoming

Touch the Dark

Cassandra Palmer can see the future and communicate with spirits -talents that make her attractive to the dead and the undead. the ghosts of the dead aren't usually dangerous; they just like to talk... a lot.
The undead are another matter.
Like any sensible girl, Cassie tries to avoid vampires. But when the bloodsucking mafioso she escaped three years ago finds Cassie again with vengeance on his mind, she's forced to turn to the vampire senate for protection.
The undead senators won't help her for nothing, and Cassie finds herself working with one of their most powerful members, a dangerously seductive master vampire- and the price he demands may be more than Cassie is willing to pay.

Claimed by Shadow

A recent legacy made Cassandra Palmer heir to the title of Pythia, the world's chief clairvoyant. It's a position that usually comes with years of training, but Cassie's circumstances are a little...unusual. Now she's stuck with a whopping amount of power that every vamp, fey, and mage in town wants to either monopolize or eradicate-and that she herself doesn't dare use.

What's more, she's just discovered that a certain arrogant master vampire has a geis on her-a magical claim that warns off any would-be suitors, and might also explain the rather ... intense attraction between them. But Cassie's had it with being jerked around, and anyone who tries it from now on is going to find out that she makes a very bad enemy.

Embrace the Night

Recently named the world’s chief clairvoyant, Cassandra Palmer still has a thorn in her side. As long as Cassie and a certain master vampire—the sizzling-hot Mircea—are magically bound to each other, her life will never be her own …

The spell that binds them can only be broken with an incantation found in the Codex Merlini, an ancient grimoire. The Codex’s location has been lost in the present day, so Cassie will have to seek it out in the only place it can still be found—the past.

But Cassie soon realizes the Codex has been lost for a reason. The book is rumored to contain some seriously dangerous spells, and retrieving it may help Cassie to deal with Mircea, but it could also endanger the world.

Curse the Dawn

Cassie has the unenviable distinction of being the world's chief clairvoyant. This, as she knows to her cost, is often more trouble than it's worth.

After coming close to an agreement with the Silver Circle, a magical organisation that's been trying to kill her for years, Cassie gets kidnapped by one of its more embittered members. She escapes, and to prevent this kind of thing happening again, she invests in a magical device for protection: a statue that grants wishes.

What her clairvoyance doesn't tell her is that the statue has a warped sense of humour and grants wishes according to its own wicked whims. When she wishes to shift herself and companion Pritkin out of a sticky situation, the statue does something so bizarre and uncalled for that life for Cassie and Pritkin will never be the same again.

Hunt the moon

Cassandra Palmer recently defeated a god, which you'd think would buy a girl a little time off. But it doesn't work that way when your job description is Pythia-the world's chief clairvoyant.
Cassie is busier than ever, trying to learn about her power, preparing for her upcoming coronation, and figuring out her relationship with the enigmatic sexy master vampire, Mircea. But someone doesn't want Cassie to become Pythia, and is willing to go to any lengths to make sure the coronation ceremony never happens- including attacking her mother before Cassie is even born.

Cassandra Palmer

Cassandra Palmer is the lead character in five novels: Touch the Dark, Claimed by Shadow, Embrace the Night, Curse the Dawn and Hunt the Moon. A powerful seer, she was brought up by a vampire who wanted to monopolize her gift. She escaped him, but soon her past caught up with her, although not in the way she'd feared. The pythia, the term for the supernatural community’s chief seer, was dying and she tapped Cassie to replace her.
That stuck Cassie with a lot of power she doesn't know how to use and a metric ton of new enemies. To make matters worse, a war has broken out and everyone is choosing sides. Now Cassie is trying to stay alive long enough to figure out how to use the power of her office, and to determine what to do with it when she does.

Mircea Basarab

Mircea is a bridge character, playing an important role in both the Cassandra Palmer and Dorina Basarab series. He's a five hundred year old master vampire of the Basarab line, and a member of the powerful vampire senate. The senate, which controls the actions of North American vamires, competes with the chief magical organization, the Silver Circle, for leadership of the supernatural community.

The senate is currently vying with the Circle for control of the new pythia—and of the power she commands. That puts Cassie in a bad position (as if she's ever in anything else). She's personally drawn to Mircea, but sometimes she suspects that his interest might have more to do with her power than with her person.
Other times, she's not sure she cares.

John Pritkin

John Pritkin is from the Cassandra Palmer series. He was a war mage—a member of the supernatural community's police force—with a specialization in demon killing. But then his bosses sent him on a new mission—to kill the upstart pretender to the pythia's throne, one Cassie Palmer. They didn't want an unknown taking such a powerful position and possibly interfering in their affairs. And they didn't think a demon-hunting assassin would have a problem with a spot of political murder.

They thought wrong.

Now Pritkin is a former war mage and the pythia's new bodyguard. So far, the move has brought him no pay, long hours, constant stress and has almost gotten him killed at least a dozen times.

Francoise

Francoise, from the Cassandra Palmer series, doesn't have a last name because she was born a poor village girl in seventeenth century France. She doesn't have much of anything else, either, after getting transported to the 21st century through an alarming series of events. Well, that's not entirely true. She still has her magic, and although it's seriously outdated, at least the Inquisition isn't after her anymore. And she has a new boyfriend who would be perfect if he wasn't possessed by an ancient demon. But Francoise has learned the hard way—you have to take what you can get out of life. And she's busy taking everything she can.

Tomas

Tomas, from the Cassandra Palmer series, also doesn't have a last name. He was born the bastard son of a Spanish conquistador who didn't stay around long enough to impart his surname—or much of anything else. Tomas could have taken on his master's name, once a life-challenged Spanish nobleman took a liking to him. But after being forcibly changed into a vampire and treated as a slave for four hundred years, he wasn't feeling too chummy. Now, all he wants is his hated master dead—permanently. He'll figure out the rest later.

Kit Marlowe

Kit Marlowe is a crossover character, appearing in both the Cassandra Palmer and Dorina Basarab series. A spy since Elizabethan times, he currently employs his abilities on behalf of the vampire senate. Of course, Marlowe isn't just any old spy; these days, he runs the senate's spy network and he does it very well. He's best known for being handsome, charming, and knowledgeable...and cunning, sneaky and utterly ruthless.

Billy-Joe

When she was 17, Cassie bought an "ugly old necklace" from a pawn shop and discovered that it was haunted by a ghost named Billy Joe. Billy had cheated at a card game and was subsequently shoved into a sack and tossed into the Mississippi River at the age of 29. Cassie and Billy are good friends and Billy often works as a good spy because practically none of the supernatural community can see him. He helps Cassie escape from a few scrapes throughout the novels.

Louis-César

Louis-César, a master-level vampire and duelling champion of the European Senate.