Mel didn't think anything of it. A quick makeover before her sophomore year of high school and she would be set. All she needed was a crash course in how to look presentable. But when her foundation application goes terribly wrong and gives her a massive allergic reaction, she finds herself losing all sanity as she transforms into a ZOMBIE! Clearly, that's impossible. There's no way. Yet everyday, the brains in science class on display seem to be more and more edible, calling out to her in the middle of class. And if she's going to become a zombie, she would try her best to be the most civilized zombie ever. But Mel has other secrets and problems, bigger than trying to find a brain to ingest each week. Being a girl was never so hard, even if you are undead. {WARNING: GORE AHEAD}

Armed with magic and a gun, Nicole Hallian works as an investigator in the Supernatural Investigations Bureau (SIB) branch office located in the town of Callahan's Morrow. She likes her job, but not these days when mysterious abductions make the front pages in the newspaper. People are scared and SIB is getting nowhere with the investigation. Just as everything seems black, a prominent supernatural figure, Giuseppe Viola, arrives back in the town. Nicole unsuccessfully tries to extract some information from him; a vampire as old as him is a tough nut to crack. But not everything is as it seems to be: Nicole's boss, Adrian Crawshaw, has a few skeletons in his closet - and those come to bite him in the ass. He would love nothing more than everyone staying unaware of his connection to Giuseppe, no matter how much easier life could be if he made peace with the past. As a dead body thumps to the ground in front of the investigation team, members of the SIB office branch form a tentative partnership with Giuseppe to get to the bottom of this unresolved case.

This is my attempt at an English translation of the Chinese book "Memoirs Of A Palace Maid". "Memoirs Of A Palace Maid" 《宫女谈往录》is a book published by the Forbidden City Press in July 1992. The authors are Jin Yi and Shen Yiling. The book contains the memoirs of Rong, a palace maid who spent eight years serving Empress Dowager Cixi in the Forbidden City in the late Qing Dynasty. Rong entered palace service when she was thirteen. At age 18, she was given to an eunuch in marriage by Empress Dowager Cixi. Her life was sad and quiet, punctuated by turmoil and suffering. In her aging years, she spoke intimately about life in the Forbidden City. Her memoirs reveal details about Empress Dowager Cixi's day-to-day routines, little known events in Emperor Guangxu's life and touches on the humiliation and anguish of the eunuchs. I read the Chinese book a few years ago while doing research into the lives of women in the Forbidden City. Recently, I looked up the book again and noticed there was no English translation of the book. (If there is an official English translation, please let me know!) The memoir offers an intimate inside perspective of the Forbidden City that is rarely available in historical documentaries and books. I thought it was a shame that the knowledge in this book wasn't available to English readers. This is my naive attempt to translate the book into English.