When I'm in the middle of one book and I get another one I really want to read, I usually can exert enough patience to finish the one I'm on. But that wasn't the case when Juniper Wiles arrived in the mail; the other book went back on the shelf for another day.

You have to understand, Charles de Lint has been one of my favorite authors since I first discovered Yarrow in the mid-1980s. His work introduced me to the world of contemporary fantasy, which dominated my reading for the next few decades. I eventually drifted from the genre -- I suppose because it had largely been taken over by the young-adult paranormal subset that saw romance with vampires and werewolves and wizards in training as the pinnacle of literature. That's not to say I stopped reading it entirely, but it definitely fell from grace while I explored other things.

If anything could draw me back to the fold, it was news that a new de Lint tale was coming out. Although the book featured a brand new protagonist -- the eponymous Juniper Wiles -- it marked a return to de Lint's mystical city of Newford and a host of familiar and beloved characters from past novels and short stories.

Imagine my delight when I saw in the story shades of Yarrow -- not a retread, certainly, but some similar themes and ideas. (Imagine my amusement when de Lint himself, through his characters, took a subtle shot at the paranormal subgenre, too.)

Juniper, although still fairly young, has retired from acting after a successful run on television as detective Nora Constantine and a less successful string of films. She's back in Newford, where she grew up, living off her residuals and painting with Jilly Coppercorn, the most ubiquitous of de Lint's Newford populace. Then a young man appears who seems to have Juniper confused with Nora ... but when it turns out he's been dead for at least a few days, her interest is piqued to "take the case" and emulate her defining role.

That begins an interesting series of bewildering days as Juniper -- with the help of Jilly and the rest of the Newford crew -- strives to unravel the mystery. At the same time, Juniper must come to grips with the mysticism that permeates much of Newford, particularly when Jilly is near. There are alternate realities and magical beings that Jilly and her friends accept without question, but which Juniper had no idea even existed.

Well, until now. It all comes crashing down as Juniper meets faeries and other mythic beings (including a werewolf!) and crosses planes into places where fiction becomes reality. Even the fiction of Nora Constantine, it turns out, which started out as a series of novels before being adapted for TV. Apparently an unfinished and unpublished novel has changed things in Nora's world for the worse. Much worse.

But how can a retired actress from Newford help correct a wrong done in the fictional world of Nora Constantine? Of course Juniper will work it out.

Juniper Wiles is full of all the excitement and wonder of a world that blurs the lines between the mundane and the otherworldly. And if the story is at times a bit grimmer than we're used to from Newford -- well, let's just say the book borrows some themes from Yarrow, yes, but also some of the fear and violence that defined de Lint's brief stint as horror writer Samuel M. Key.

It also contains lots of music, a little bowling, a few grudging autographs and a positive message about adopting dogs from shelters -- even if they usually aren't quite so well behaved as Bobo and Sonora when you first bring them home.

Oh, the book seems poised to be the first in a new series, a suspicion given weight in de Lint's introduction to the book, so we likely have more excitement in store from Coppercorn and Wiles. I for one am looking forward to the next adventure!