If you are a trained hunter with the esteemed Order of Opus et Praesidium, you are honor bound to hunt and eliminate the undead who walk the Earth. They are the non-mortuus, or, in common parlance, vampires. That is, unless that vampire on your hit list has the charms to seize your heart. Such is the dilemma for Aníbal Ferreira Silva, who finds himself in the thrall of a ravishing blond non-mortuus of extraordinary allure that he has orders to kill. Non-Mortuus, the page-turning, wildly inventive young adult fantasy novel by the author Zola, spins a deadly dance of duty, heart's longings, and evil forces more powerful than both the hunter and the hunted. The London-based vampire hunter organization known as The Order has a well-established code of apprehending the nocturnal non-mortuus who walk the Earth slaking their thirst for existence with human blood. Trained at the age of ten, Aníbal and his partner Billy Ray Austen have racked up fifty-five kills by hewing to The Order's motto, "Invenio, Intuero, Interimo," or "Find, Observe, Eliminate." However, the odds are suddenly stacked against him when charged with traveling to Santa Barbara and killing the vampire girl known to them as Elle Orr, whose body temperature may be a little south of his but the chemistry abides. That's not the only problem for the hunter. It seems that a new breed of non-mortuus has rid itself of the "glamouring" trait that hunters can readily detect, wherein they morph into a human that is especially appealing to humans. With The Order growing increasingly alarmed, the hunter's prospects for love and freedom are growing slimmer by the moment. With intricate plot lines, absorbing characters, and plenty of man-on-non-mortuus action, Non-Mortuus is a heart-pumping story that poses the question: If you know someone has a heart of gold, do you have to drive a stake through it? Find out if mortals and nightwalkers can really mix in this globe-trotting, hot-blooded story for the ages.
