Books like Mercy Thompson Series Collection

I read the six books (to date) in this series within a month and a half, around the winter holidays: Patricia Briggs's urban fantasy centered around coyote shapeshifter Mercy Thompson flipped my happy switch right away. Mercy shifts form at will--a gift from her dead Native American father--and tries to live a clean life working as sole mechanic at her garage. She specializes in Volkswagons (though her name gets punned on very little), lives with her Manx cat, Medea, and tries to pay her bills on time. Oh, and she was raised by werewolves, has her trailer just outside an Alpha werewolf's home, and counts a metalsmithing fae and a vampire among her closest friends, both of whom are old and dangerous.In Briggs's alternate world, the fae have been "outed" and get treated with suspicion by humans and other non-humans alike. Mercy's coyote self gives her access to the rest of the hidden realm, those who pass as humans to help preserve their own kind. Each book in the series deals with a particular element of the nonhuman realm; Moon Called centers on werewolves, namely, Mercy's intriguing neighbor and his pack. The others alternate focus among vampires and the fae, with werewolves always being involved, because Mercy is ever involved. Unwilling detective but tough, loving person that she is, Mercy entangles herself in the problems of her nearest and dearest, making her a threat--or a desirable acquisition--to powerful forces. The novels read like good mysteries, with the parameters of the problems mapped out well.In any fantasy story, whether it concerns the afterlife or fairies or another planet or talking animals, I ask myself, "Did it have to be X?" That is, did this story require talking fish or rabbits or wizards or aliens, or could the story have been told with regular old humans and not lost anything? Patricia Briggs answers that question for me beautifully: Her tales are purely supernatural, paranormal, otherworldly. The rules she writes are werewolf rules, vampire rules, fae rules...and coyote rules. And Briggs's coyote, Mercy Thompson, rules.