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Customer Picks
November/December 2006 Picks
Canyons by P.D. Cacek
"Picture this: you're riding the bus home from work, with the very first newspaper article every published under your byline clutched in your hot little hand, when a coked-up idiot attempts to hold up everyone on the bus. He takes a dislike to you and is about to slice you open when a large, gorgeously hairy man attacks him and saves your life. Only your rescuer is not a man, but a giant wolf who leaves a bloody pawprint on your newspaper, all over your precious byline . . .
If you're an intrepid reporter, you don't panic. You run for the newsroom to get a photo of the pawprint before it disappears . . . because the paper you work for thrives on stories of alien invasions and Elvis sightings and Bigfoot's baby, and this, unlike all of those stories, this is "real."
Of course, it's not that simple. The highly civilized Denver werewolves don't want anyone to know of their existence, not even beautiful young reporters who make Lucas, the leader of the pack, think lustful thoughts. But Lucas and his pack have a much bigger problem to deal with: there's another were-pack hunting in their territory--and being messy about it. If the police solve any of those brutal, apparently random, murders, Denver's more patrician lycanthropes may wind up in big trouble."
Recommended by Pam Kinney
$6.99
Redwall by Brian Jacques
"Only the lost sword of Martin the Warrior can save Redwall Abbey from the evil rat Cluny and his greedy horde. The young mouse Matthias (formerly Redwall's most awkward novice) vows to recover the legendary weapon. In the course of his quest, Matthias forges strong ties with various local animals. As much as the magic of the sword, it is the help of these new friends that enables Matthias to defeat Cluny once and for all. Jacques's clever use of detail creates an animal world as compelling as that of The Wind in the Willows. From the beginning, each of Redwall's characters is endowed with a unerringly distinct personality: there is a powerful badger named Constance; a mute squirrel named Silent Sam, who knows the forest better than anyone; and his mother Jess, a champion climber who leads a splendid rescue of a piece of the abbey's tapestry. This epic adventure contains elements of all grand quests, with heroic archetypes that will keep fans of Tolkein and King Arthur tales engaged to the final battle."
---Publishers Weekly
Recommended by Drew Taylor
$7.99
Miss Zukas and the Library Murders by Jo Dereske
"Meet Miss Zukas . . . the very proper, exceedingly conscientious, and relentlessly curious local librarian of tiny Bellehaven, Washington-; and one heck of an amateur sleuth!
The Bellehaven police are baffled when a dead body turns up right in the middle of the library's fiction stacks. But Miss Helma Zukas-; who never fails to make note of the slightest deviation from the norm of everyday life-; is not willing to let this rather nasty disruption stand. Her precious literary sanctuary has been violated, and if the local law cannot get to the bottom of this case, Miss Zukas certainly intends to-; with the help of her not-so-proper best friend, Ruth, a six-foot-tall bohemian artist with a nose for gossip and a penchant for getting into trouble. But their research project is bringing them a little too close to a killer . . . who'd like nothing better than to write Helma and Ruth out of the story completely!"
Recommended by Maggie King
$5.99
Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge
"Thousands of years hence, many races inhabit a universe where a mind's potential is determined by its location in space, from superintelligent entities in the Transcend, to the limited minds of the Unthinking Depths, where only simple creatures and technology can function. Nobody knows what strange force partitioned space into these "regions of thought," but when the warring Straumli realm use an ancient Transcendent artifact as a weapon, they unwittingly unleash an awesome power that destroys thousands of worlds and enslaves all natural and artificial intelligence.
Fleeing the threat, a family of scientists, including two children, are taken captive by the Tines, an alien race with a harsh medieval culture, and used as pawns in a ruthless power struggle. A rescue mission, not entirely composed of humans, must rescue the children-and a secret that may save the rest of interstellar civilization."
Recommended by Jim Toth
$6.99
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