The Reluctant Monster - Joe Foster

The debt is paid. The inventory is cleared. But in the Ninth Ward, some souls are never truly free.

Valerius is a man of simple, gritty constants: the hum of his five-ton armored repo truck, the Charon; the sting of the needle; and the weight of the supernatural debts he's hired to collect. As a paranormal repo-man in a flooded, neon-drenched New Orleans, Val stays out of the crossfire between the street gangs and the ancient gods-until a routine job pulls a ghost from his past out of a submerged trunk.

When a simple car repossession reveals a boy clutching the badge of Val's deceased wife, the job transforms from a payday into a desperate rescue. Alongside Socket, a tech-genius mechanic with a penchant for high-stakes tinkering, and Natasha, a "crystalline-armored" miracle of biological destabilization, Val is forced to navigate a city where the water is rising and the monsters are hungry.

From the sterile, fluorescent medical bunkers of Montreal to the rain-slicked sprawl of the Ninth Ward, The Reluctant Monster is a high-octane urban fantasy noir. It's a story of "MacGyvered" occult tech, blood-bound contracts with Baron Samedi, and a ragtag crew of misfits fighting to repossess a future from the hands of gods and hunters alike.

"Montreal didn't have weather; it had assault charges."

If you crave the blue-collar grit of John Wick mixed with the dark, atmospheric lore of Interview with the Vampire, step into the cab of the Charon. Just remember: The repo man is coming. And he doesn't take cash