Staff Picks for August/September 2000

Annie's picks

Dealing With Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede

Take one bored princess. Make her the seventh daughter in a very proper royal family. Have her run away. Add one powerful, fascinating, dangerous dragon. Princess Cimorene has never met anyone (or anything) like the dragon Kazul. But then, she's never met a witch, a jinn, a death-dealing talking bird, or a stone prince either. Princess Cimorene ran away to find some excitement. She's found plenty.

$4.99

Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite

To serial slayer Andrew Compton, murder is an art, the most intimate art. After feigning his own death to escape from prison, Compton make his way to the United States with the ambition of bringing his art to new heights. Tortured by his own perverse desires, drawn to possess and destroy young boys, Compton inadvertently joins forces with Jay Byrne, a dissolute playboy who has pushed his art to limits even Compton hadn't previously imagined. Together, Compton and Byrne set their sights on an exquisite young Vietnamese-American runaway, Tran, whom they deem to be the perfect victim.

$11.00 Signed copy available

The Vegetarian Dragon by Jules Bass. Illustrations by Debbie Harter

The dragons in the forest of Nogard liked nothing better than raiding Castle Dark and carrying off princesses to eat -- all except one. Herb was different. He was at his happiest tending his vegetable patch, for Herb was a vegetarian. That was why it was so unfortunate that he should be the only dragon to be captured in the great hunt, and but for the intervention of a little girl, Nicole, this story might have had an unhappy ending!

$15.95

Lelia's picks

Murder with Peacocks by Donna Andrews

So far Meg Langslow’s summer is not going swimmingly.  Down in her small Virginia hometown, she’s maid of honor at the nuptials of three loved ones -- each of whom has dumped the planning in her capable hands...Southern hospitality is strained to the limit by an offensive newcomer...it seems this lady has offended one too many when she’s found dead in suspicious circumstances, followed by a string of accidents---some fatal.  Soon, level-headed Meg’s to-do list extends from flower arrangements and bridal registries to catching a killer---before the next catered event is her own funeral...

$5.99

The Crossword Murder by Nero Blanc

FOUR LETTERS, STARTS WITH A ‘D’...That’s right---Thompson C. Briephs is dead. 

D-E-A-D.  The body of the flamboyant crossword puzzle editor was found under very suspicious circumstances---and his grief-stricken mother, a wealthy dowager, has hired private investigator Rosco Polycrates to come up with some answers.

$13.00 Signed Copy Available

Fractured Fairy Tales by A. J. Jacobs

Once upon a time, long, long ago, bedtime stories had not yet become politically correct.  But there were "Fractured Fairy Tales," those subversive, delightfully twisted parables that were a beloved segment on Rocky and His Friends and The Bullwinkle Show.  Now, for the first time, these wacky and atrociously punny tales have been collected for everyone who loves a classic fairy tale with a twist.

$10.95

Jason's picks

Faith of the Fallen by Terry Goodkind

When a Sister of the Dark captures Richard, he makes a desperate sacrafice to ensure that his beloved Kahlan remains free.  Taken deep into the Old World and forced to labor for the tyrannical evil he’s sworn to defeat, he is determined to remain defiant even in the heart of darkness.  Kahlan, left behind and unwilling to abandon the cause of the Midlands, violates prophecy and breaks her last pledge to Richard.  Finally she will come face to face with architect of the terror sweeping her land – the mad dreamwalker Emperor Jagang.  While Kahlan faces Jagang’s vast horde, Richard discovers the truth of the Imperial Order’s rule.  Forced to endure his ordeal without magic, without the Sword of Truth, without his love, he stands against the despair and soul-numbing regime of the Old World, his hope kept alive only by the knowledge of the rightness of his cause.

$27.95 before 25% new release discount

Tailchaser’s Song by Tad Williams

Meet Fritti Tailchaser, a ginger tom cat of rare courage and curiosity, a born survivor in a world of heroes and villains, of powerful feline gods and whiskery legends about those strange, furless, erect creatures called M’an.  Join Tailchaser on his magical quest to rescue his catfriend Hushpad – a quest that will take him all the way to cat hell and beyond…

$6.99

The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia A. McKillip

Sixteen when a baby is brought to her to raise, Sybel has grown up on Eld Mountain with only the fantastic creatures called there by wizardry as playmates.  She has cared nothing for humans, until the baby awakens emotions previously unknown.  And when Coren-the man who brought this child-returns, Sybel’s serenity is again shattered.

$6.00

Megan's picks

The Search for the Green River Killer by Carlton Smith and Tomas Guillen

This is the story of a fiendishly clever killer and of the young women-some little more than children-who became his victims. It is a riveting account, too, of the Green River Task Force that spent $15million on botanists, anthropologists, seers, psychologists, lasers that could lift fingerprints, and computers that match a face to a sliver of jawbone-all to no avail as the death toll mounted to 49, and still counting.

$7.99

The Riverman: Ted Bundy and I Hunt for the Green River Killer by Robert D. Keppel, Ph.D.

Nine months later, the Green River Task Force received a letter almost too bizarre to believe. Ted Bundy, the most infamous serial killer of his time, then sitting on Florida’s death row, offered to help catch the Green River Killer. Bundy was ready to talk, but to only one man: Robert Keppel, the former King County homicide detective who had helped track Bundy’s savage cross-country killing spree.

$6.99

No Mercy by John Walsh

A true crime book like no other, John Walsh goes behind the scenes of the groundbreaking television show whose viewers have helped put more than 500 fugitives behind bars-including 12 of the FBI’s most wanted.

$7.50

Andrew's picks

Antarctica by Kim Stanley Robinson

Kim Stanley Robinson, author of the Hugo and Nebula award-winning Mars trilogy, is one of the most original and visionary writers of fiction today. Now, in his latest novel, he takes us to a harsh, alien landscape covered by a sheet of ice two miles deep. This is no distant planet—it is the last pure wilderness on Earth.

Antarctica—a stark and inhospitable place, its landscape poses a challenge to survival; yet its strange, silent beauty has long fascinated scientists and adventurers. Now Antarctica faces an uncertain future. The international treaty that protects the continent is about to dissolve, clearing the way for Antarctica’s resources and eerie beauty to be plundered. As politicians and corporations move to determine its fate from half a world away, radical environmentalists carry out a covert campaign of sabotage to reclaim the land. The winner of this critical battle will determine the future for this last great wilderness…

$6.99

Dreams of Terror and Death -- The Dream Cycle of H.P. Lovecraft

This volume collects, for the first time, the entire Dream Cycle created by H.P. Lovecraft, the master of twentieth-century horror, including some of his most fantastic tales:
The Doom that Came To Sarnath — Hate, genocide, and a deadly curse.
The Nameless City — Death lies beneath the shifting sands, in a story linking the Dream Cycle with the legendary Cthulhu Mythos.
The Cats of Ulthar — In Ulthar, no man may kill a cat… and woe unto any that tries.
The Dream - Quest of Unknown Kadath—The epic nightmare adventure with tendrils stretching throughout the entire Dream Cycle.
And twenty-one more tales of surreal terror.

$11.00

The Vintage Bradbury by Ray Bradbury

Once upon a time people described Ray Bradbury as a particularly gifted writer of science fiction. Today he seems more like a magical realist, a small-town American cousin to Borges and Garcia Marquez. A writer whose vision of the world is so intense that the objects in it sometimes levitate or glow with otherworldly auras.

Who but Bradbury could imagine the playroom in which children’s fantasies become real enough to kill? The beautiful white suit that turns six down-and-out Chicanos into their ideal selves? Only Bradbury could make us identify with a man who lives in terror of his own skeleton. And if a generic science fiction writer might describe a spaceship landing on Mars, only Bradbury can tell us how the Martians see it—and the strange and dreamlike visitors from Planet Earth.

$13.00