Title: Disappearing Nightly (Esther Diamond Book One)
Publisher: Astra Publishing/Penguin Random House
Author: Laura Resnick
Pages: 400pp
Price: $7.99/ebook

Esther Diamond may have finally gotten her big break. While performing in the off-off-off Broadway magical-musical Sorcerer!, she finds herself stepping in when the leading lady disappears mid-act. Unfortunately, that is not the only disappearance. All over New York, lovely assistants (and even a tiger) are going poof with no explanation. Dragged into the investigation by the mysterious and scatter-brained Dr. Max Zadok, Esther quickly discovers that the disappearances were due to real magic. Real. Magic. Thrown into a mystical world she doesn’t understand, Esther collects a ragtag assortment of amateur magicians, drag queens, and hackers and sets out to rescue those who have been kidnapped, unmask the villain, and save the city from an evil that all the acting classes in the world could never prepare her to face ….

Resnick is a well-known author in the urban fantasy community, but I reluctantly admit that I had never read her work before Disappearing Nightly. I thoroughly enjoyed the book, so I will definitely seek out her books in the future.

I love Esther. She’s smart and sassy, but not snarky; she’s never cruel, but she stands up for herself against bullies and snobs. She’s also loyal and she can keep a secret — which comes in handy when she suddenly discovers the secret magical underworld. She’s also level-headed enough to be able to reign in the disparate personalities that have come together to solve the mystery; without her to keep everyone on task, they never would have figured it out in time and saved the day. (Sorry. Spoilers.)

And those disparate personalities are a hoot. Max is great, Lysander is too educated for his own good, Satsy is a research genius, and Delilah is the drag queen mother hen. And then there’s Detective Conner Lopez, who’s stuck investigating what he thinks is an ordinary missing person case, and he can’t quite bring himself to see that there’s more to it than that.

Disappearing Nightly is a fun and engaging first volume in a lengthy urban fantasy series (seven volumes as of 2014). Highly recommended to fans of Resnicks’s other books, as well as fans of Poisoned Pearls by Leah Cutter, the Augustus Derlyth Occult Detective series by Blaze Ward, Hypnos by RJ Blain, Touched by Magic by Celine Jeanjean, and The Rules and Regulations for Mediating Myths and Magic by FT Lukens.

[Reviewed by Rebecca Buchanan.]