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A cache of bones is found in a shallow grave in local woods...

Meanwhile missing persons cases in Portland seem to be on the increase.
As more bones are discovered, Portland homicide Detective Nick Burkhardt and his partner Hank Griffin investigate - but there seems to be no connection between the victims...

A brand-new original story set in the Grimm universe.

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An Excerpt from Grimm: the Chopping Block by John Passarella Ebook

Brian Mathis wondered if he’d made a mistake bringing Tyler, his twelve-year-old son, to Claremont Park. Their little adventure had been fun and cheerful and full of father-son-bonding promise until they left behind the paved path and picnic tables, and wandered into the woods on a course prescribed by the virtual compass in the GPS app on Brian’s smartphone. The overnight rainfall had turned what would have been a reasonable hiking path into a treacherous endeavor. Lagging behind his father, Tyler had already fallen twice on gentle inclines slick with mud. And now the boy was coated with the stuff?hands, knees, shoes, and a caked spot on his chin he’d rubbed the same moment his patience had expired.
Victim of his own clumsy misadventure, Brian proceeded on a twisted ankle?which continued to throb in counterpoint to his heartbeat?and reminded himself to take his eyes off the compass now and then to pay attention to his footing. Minutes later, head down and cursing under his breath, he walked right into a low-hanging branch. Hell of an example he was setting for his kid.
“You said we were close, Dad,” Tyler groaned, prefacing that indictment with a prolonged sigh.
“We are close,” Brian said. “But I told you before. The coordinates aren’t exact.”
“So what’s the point?” Tyler hurled a rock the size of a ping-pong ball at the nearest tree trunk. The thwock of the impact startled a squirrel, which scampered along one branch, jumped to another nearby and scurried out of sight.
“Don’t throw rocks.”
“Nothing else to do.”
Ignoring the boy’s complaint, Brian explained, “The coordinates take us to the general vicinity, then we look around until we find it.”
“Why?”
“Because… it’s like searching for buried treasure.”
“I’m keeping it.”
“No,” Brian said. “We sign the logbook and leave the container where we found it. The honor system. If we take it, the next person will go through all this trouble for nothing.”
“You said I could take something,” Tyler reminded him.
“Swap something,” Brian said. This particular geocache supposedly contained small toys. If you took something, you were supposed to leave behind an object of equal value. “You brought a soldier?”
“Yeah,” Tyler said, rolling his eyes at his father.
It had been years since Tyler played with toy soldiers, which was why he had no qualms about leaving one behind. Tyler hoped for an upgrade, maybe a used video game or something equally unlikely. So his father had spent most of the car ride to the park trying to quash those expectations.
“The search is the fun part, not the prize at the end.”
“Some fun,” Tyler grumbled loud enough for his father to hear.
Secretly, Brian regretted not selecting a cache with the lowest level of difficulty for their first attempt. Instead, he’d chosen a cache closer to home, but with the next highest level of difficulty. A cache with toys, even cheap toys, he’d thought, would appeal to the boy. Brian’s second mistake was misjudging the rapid pace of Tyler’s maturity. At his current age, things transitioned from “cool” to “lame” in a hurry. Since the divorce, Brian saw his son less than he would have liked. The boy’s growth spurts took place in the uncompromising strobe light of his meager custody schedule.
As a bank of rain clouds passed overhead, the woods became prematurely dark. Shadows deepened like an ink spill soaking the ground around them. The odor of moist earth rose like a clinging mist, enveloping them.
Brian stopped, rubbed the back of his forearm across his damp forehead and said, “We’re here.”
Tyler stood beside him, turned in a circle and shrugged. “Nothing.”
“It’s here somewhere,” Brian assured him, but worried somebody before them might have removed the cache in violation of the honor system. If they left the park without finding anything, his son would never let him forget it. “Remember that time you dragged me through the woods in waist-deep mud for nothing?” Because exaggeration would become a key component in this particular trip down memory lane.
“What about the clue?” Tyler asked.
“Oh?right! The clue.” In his growing paternal anxiety, Brian had almost forgotten about the clue associated with the cache. He checked his phone. “It says, ‘Fall up the hill.’”
They both cast expectant gazes around, as if expecting a hillside to magically rise from the surrounding forest, crowned with a glowing treasure chest like a reward in one of Tyler’s video games.
“That hill?” Tyler finally asked, pointing straight ahead. Brian looked behind them, then straight ahead. They had been following an incline for a bit, something he might have noticed if he hadn’t been mesmerized by the compass on his cell phone. Ahead of them marked the top of the rise, surrounded by an irregular ring of deciduous trees in various states of decay.
“Must be it,” Brian acknowledged. “So how do we ‘fall up’?”
We both figured out the falling down part easily enough, he thought, with a chagrined shake of his head.
Tyler scrambled up the slope, littered with broken branches, twigs, and clumps of dead leaves well on their way to mulch that nevertheless rustled underfoot. He slipped once and caught himself on both hands before his knees touched the muddy ground again.
“Careful,” Brian said, making his own way upward, mindful of his tender ankle.
Tyler picked up a stout branch the length of a cane and swung it around to disperse the leaf mounds. When he reached down to flip over a football-sized rock, Brian caught his shoulder.
“Watch out for snakes,” he cautioned.
The possibility of encountering a snake, poisonous or otherwise, seemed to excite the boy’s imagination, but he took extra care as he grabbed the edge of the rock and flipped it over, poised to spring away to avoid the threat of fangs. Instead, he grunted in obvious disappointment as several freshly exposed worms coiled in the dirt.
Tyler circled to the left, poking and sweeping with his branch, while Brian wandered into a tangle of dried brush and broken tree limbs at the edge of the clearing. Brushing away twigs and dried leaves, he discovered a jagged tree stump and, angling away from it, on the far side of the rise, the decaying length of the entire tree trunk, which retained only a few scattered branches.
“A deadfall,” Brian whispered, then again, louder. “A deadfall.”
“What?” Tyler called, glancing briefly over his shoulder.
“This downed tree,” Brian called to his son. “It’s a deadfall.”
“So?” Tyler replied, more preoccupied with a section of tangled underbrush and loose mounds of dirt?excavated, no doubt, by some burrowing woodland creature?than his father’s pronouncement.
“Don’t you get it?” Brian asked. “The clue: ‘Fall up the hill.’ It’s a deadfall?on this hill.”
“You found it?”
“Not yet…” Brian pocketed his phone and swept both hands across the brittle and decaying debris piled around the deadfall. He omitted telling Tyler that this was a more likely spot for a hidden snake than the underside of a rock. Besides, if Brian had unraveled the clue to the cache’s location, he wanted to find it before leading the boy to yet another disappointment. Once he unearthed it, he’d call Tyler over to claim the prize. He might just salvage the day after all.
Crouching, Brian caught a glint of color in the natural pocket formed between the tree stump and its fallen trunk; something metallic, painted bright red. Gotcha! he thought in an unexpectedly strong moment of satisfaction.
Before calling his son over to claim the small square tin, he leaned forward to examine the shadowy depression. He swept the ground with the beam of his keychain flashlight. Though he doubted he’d find broken glass or rusty nails or even an irritable snake, he wanted to be sure, lest their excursion end on a sour note?or a trip to the emergency room.
“Tyler, come here,” Brian said. “Think I found something.”

Opening just a few weeks after the previous book left off, the penultimate entry in the series is, as the author foretold, the darkest and most unsettling yet.

The deeds of Voldemorts Death Eaters are spreading even to the Muggle world, which is enshrouded in a mist caused by Dementors draining hope and happiness. Harry, turning 16, leaves for Hogwarts with the promise of private lessons with Dumbledore.
No longer a fearful boy living under the stairs, he is clearly a leader and increasingly isolated as rumors spread that he is the Chosen One, the only individual capable of defeating Voldemort. Two attempts on students lives, Harrys conviction that Draco Malfoy has become a Death Eater, and Snapes usual slimy behavior add to the increasing tension. Yet through it all, Harry and his friends are typical teens, sharing homework and messy rooms, rushing to classes and sports practices, and flirting. Ron and Hermione realize their attraction, as do Harry and Ginny.

Dozens of plot strands are pulled together as the author positions Harry for the final book. Much information is cleverly conveyed through Dumbledores use of a Pensieve, a device that allows bottled memories to be shared by Harry and his beloved professor as they apparate to various locations that help explain Voldemorts past. The ending is heart wrenching. Once again, Rowling capably blends literature, mythology, folklore, and religion into a delectable stew. This sixth book may be darker and more difficult, but Potter fans will devour it and begin the long and bittersweet wait for the final installment.

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A Sneak Peek on Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince by J.K. Rowling ibook,

A Harry Potter Novel Series Book # 6

It was nearing midnight and the Prime Minister was sitting alone in his office, reading a long memo that was slipping through his brain without leaving the slightest trace of meaning behind. He was waiting for a call from the President of a far distant country, and between wondering when the wretched man would telephone, and trying to suppress unpleasant memories of what had been a very long, tiring, and difficult week, there was not much space in his head for anything else. The more he attempted to focus on the print on the page before him, the more clearly the Prime Minister could see the gloating face of one of his political opponents. This particular opponent had appeared on the news that very day, not only to enumerate all the terrible things that had happened in the last week (as though anyone needed reminding) but also to explain why each and every one of them was the government’s fault.
The Prime Minister’s pulse quickened at the very thought of these accusations, for they were neither fair nor true. How on earth was his government supposed to have stopped that bridge collapsing? It was outrageous for anybody to suggest that they were not spending enough on bridges. The bridge was fewer than ten years old, and the best experts were at a loss to explain why it had snapped cleanly in two, sending a dozen cars into the watery depths of the river below. And how dare anyone suggest that it was lack of policemen that had resulted in those two very nasty and well-publicized murders? Or that the government should have somehow foreseen the freak hurricane in the West Country that had caused so much damage to both people and property? And was it his fault that one of his Junior Ministers, Herbert Chorley, had chosen this week to act so peculiarly that he was now going to be spending a lot more time with his family?
“A grim mood has gripped the country,” the opponent had concluded, barely concealing his own broad grin.
And unfortunately, this was perfectly true. The Prime Minister felt it himself; people really did seem more miserable than usual. Even the weather was dismal; all this chilly mist in the middle of July. … It wasn’t right, it wasn’t normal. …
He turned over the second page of the memo, saw how much longer it went on, and gave it up as a bad job. Stretching his arms above his head he looked around his office mournfully. It was a handsome room, with a fine marble fireplace facing the long sash windows, firmly closed against the unseasonable chill. With a slight shiver, the Prime Minister got up and moved over to the window, looking out at the thin mist that was pressing itself against the glass. It was then, as he stood with his back to the room, that he heard a soft cough behind him.
He froze, nose to nose with his own scared-looking reflection in the dark glass. He knew that cough. He had heard it before. He turned very slowly to face the empty room.
“Hello?” he said, trying to sound braver than he felt.
For a brief moment he allowed himself the impossible hope that nobody would answer him. However, a voice responded at once, a crisp, decisive voice that sounded as though it were reading a prepared statement. It was coming — as the Prime Minister had known at the first cough — from the froglike little man wearing a long silver wig who was depicted in a small, dirty oil painting in the far corner of the room.
“To the Prime Minister of Muggles. Urgent we meet. Kindly respond immediately. Sincerely, Fudge.”
The man in the painting looked inquiringly at the Prime Minister.
“Er,” said the Prime Minister, “listen. … It’s not a very good time for me. … I’m waiting for a telephone call, you see … from the President of —”
“That can be rearranged,” said the portrait at once. The Prime Minister’s heart sank. He had been afraid of that.
“But I really was rather hoping to speak —”
“We shall arrange for the President to forget to call. He will telephone tomorrow night instead,” said the little man. “Kindly respond immediately to Mr. Fudge.”
“I … oh … very well,” said the Prime Minister weakly. “Yes, I’ll see Fudge.”
He hurried back to his desk, straightening his tie as he went. He had barely resumed his seat, and arranged his face into what he hoped was a relaxed and unfazed expression, when bright green flames burst into life in the empty grate beneath his marble mantelpiece. He watched, trying not to betray a flicker of surprise or alarm, as a portly man appeared within the flames, spinning as fast as a top. Seconds later, he had climbed out onto a rather fine antique rug, brushing ash from the sleeves of his long pin-striped cloak, a lime-green bowler hat in his hand.
“Ah … Prime Minister,” said Cornelius Fudge, striding forward with his hand outstretched. “Good to see you again.”
The Prime Minister could not honestly return this compliment, so said nothing at all. He was not remotely pleased to see Fudge, whose occasional appearances, apart from being downright alarming in themselves, generally meant that he was about to hear some very bad news. Furthermore, Fudge was looking distinctly careworn. He was thinner, balder, and grayer, and his face had a crumpled look. The Prime Minister had seen that kind of look in politicians before, and it never boded well.
“How can I help you?” he said, shaking Fudge’s hand very briefly and gesturing toward the hardest of the chairs in front of the desk.
“Difficult to know where to begin,” muttered Fudge, pulling up the chair, sitting down, and placing his green bowler upon his knees. “What a week, what a week …”
“Had a bad one too, have you?” asked the Prime Minister stiffly, hoping to convey by this that he had quite enough on his plate already without any extra helpings from Fudge.
“Yes, of course,” said Fudge, rubbing his eyes wearily and looking morosely at the Prime Minister. “I’ve been having the same week you have, Prime Minister. The Brockdale Bridge … the Bones and Vance murders … not to mention the ruckus in the West Country …”
“You — er — your — I mean to say, some of your people were — were involved in those — those things, were they?”
Fudge fixed the Prime Minister with a rather stern look. “Of course they were,” he said. “Surely you’ve realized what’s going on?”
“I …” hesitated the Prime Minister.
It was precisely this sort of behavior that made him dislike Fudge’s visits so much. He was, after all, the Prime Minister and did not appreciate being made to feel like an ignorant schoolboy. But of course, it had been like this from his very first meeting with Fudge on his very first evening as Prime Minister. He remembered it as though it were yesterday and knew it would haunt him until his dying day.
He had been standing alone in this very office, savoring the triumph that was his after so many years of dreaming and scheming, when he had heard a cough behind him, just like tonight, and turned to find that ugly little portrait talking to him, announcing that the Minister of Magic was about to arrive and introduce himself.
Naturally, he had thought that the long campaign and the strain of the election had caused him to go mad. He had been utterly terrified to find a portrait talking to him, though this had been nothing to how he felt when a self-proclaimed wizard had bounced out of the fireplace and shaken his hand. He had remained speechless throughout Fudge’s kindly explanation that there were witches and wizards still living in secret all over the world and his reassurances that he was not to bother his head about them as the Ministry of Magic took responsibility for the whole Wizarding community and prevented the non-magical population from getting wind of them. It was, said Fudge, a difficult job that encompassed everything from regulations on responsible use of broomsticks to keeping the dragon population under control (the Prime Minister remembered clutching the desk for support at this point). Fudge had then patted the shoulder of the still-dumbstruck Prime Minister in a fatherly sort of way.
“Not to worry,” he had said, “it’s odds-on you’ll never see me again. I’ll only bother you if there’s something really serious going on our end, something that’s likely to affect the Muggles — the non-magical population, I should say. Otherwise, it’s live and let live. And I must say, you’re taking it a lot better than your predecessor. He tried to throw me out the window, thought I was a hoax planned by the opposition.”
At this, the Prime Minister had found his voice at last. “You’re — you’re not a hoax, then?”
It had been his last, desperate hope.
“No,” said Fudge gently. “No, I’m afraid I’m not. Look.”
And he had turned the Prime Minister’s teacup into a gerbil.
“But,” said the Prime Minister breathlessly, watching his teacup chewing on the corner of his next speech, “but why — why has nobody told me — ?”
“The Minister of Magic only reveals him- or herself to the Muggle Prime Minister of the day,” said Fudge, poking his wand back inside his jacket. “We find it the best way to maintain secrecy.”
“But then,” bleated the Prime Minister, “why hasn’t a former Prime Minister warned me — ?”
At this, Fudge had actually laughed.
“My dear Prime Minister, are you ever going to tell anybody?”
Still chortling, Fudge had thrown some powder into the fireplace, stepped into the emerald flames, and vanished with a whooshing sound. The Prime Minister had stood there, quite motionless, and realized that he would never, as long as he lived, dare mention this encounter to a living soul, for who in the wide world would believe him?
The shock had taken a little while to wear off. For a time, he had tried to convince himself that Fudge had indeed been a hallucination brought on by lack of sleep during his grueling election campaign. In a vain attempt to rid himself of all reminders of this uncomfortable encounter, he had given the gerbil to his delighted niece and instructed his private secretary to take down the portrait of the ugly little man who had announced Fudge’s arrival. To the Prime Minister’s dismay, however, the portrait had proved impossible to remove. When several carpenters, a builder or two, an art historian, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer had all tried unsuccessfully to prise it from the wall, the Prime Minister had abandoned the attempt and simply resolved to hope that the thing remained motionless and silent for the rest of his term in office. Occasionally he could have sworn he saw out of the corner of his eye the occupant of the painting yawning, or else scratching his nose; even, once or twice, simply walking out of his frame and leaving nothing but a stretch of muddy-brown canvas behind. However, he had trained himself not to look at the picture very much, and always to tell himself firmly that his eyes were playing tricks on him when anything like this happened.