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Staff Picks for May

Lelia's Staff Picks

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

"Great Britain, circa 1985: time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously. Based on an imaginary world where time and reality bend in the most convincing and original way since Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Eyre Affair is a delightful rabbit hole of a read: once you fall in you may never come back.

England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in a Wordsworth poem, militant Baconians heckle performances of Hamlet, and forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense. This is all business as usual for Thursday Next, Fforde's resourceful (and lovelorn) heroine and a renowned Special Operative in literary detection -- until someone begins kidnapping characters from works of literature. First this madman plays havoc with Dickens' Martin Chuzzlewit, but when Jane Eyre is plucked from the pages of Bronte's novel, Thursday faces the challenge of her career. She must track down the world's Third Most Wanted criminal and enter the novel herself to avert a heinous act of literary homicide.

Suspenseful and outlandish, absorbing and fun, The Eyre Affair is a caper unlike any other, and an introduction to the imagination of a most distinctive writer and his singular fictional universe."

$14.00

A Lady Never Trifles with Thieves by Suzanne Ledbetter

"'The simple truth is, I was born clever....' So says spirited young Denver City detective Joby (Josephine Beckworth) Sawyer -- and she isn't bragging. With a whip-sharp mind, self-taught expertise in biology, herbology, chemistry, criminality, and legal action, Joby can pretty much get her man. But there's one still hanging on the line: her devoted policeman beau, Jack O'Shaughnessy. In Joby's line of work, murder and mayhem come before matrimony. And with two new cases to crack, her wedding gown can wait.

For now Joby has to get the goods on a no-good abusive husband so a wealthy wife can get out with her fortune and her features intact. Then, a high-class jewel thief goes from larceny to murder as a woman is found strangled with her pearl necklace. Against Jack's wishes, Joby takes a crack at the case with the help of her mentor, Won Li. Determined to prove she's as good an investigator as any man, Joby must use both her brains and her beauty to catch a thief -- before he kills again."

$5.99

Murder of a Snake in the Grass by Denise Swanson

"Skye Denison and the rest of Scumble River is celebrating it's bicentennial in style -- with reenactments, a bingo tent, and a coal-tossing contest. Best of all, the guest of honor is the town founder's great-great-grandnephew, Gabriel Scumble. But his visit turns out to be short-lived when he is found dead. The murder weapon: a pickax.

Meanwhile, Skye's ex-fiancee is back in town. But is he here simply to create turmoil in her love life...or does he have a connection to Gabriel's death?"

$5.99

Armageddon: The Cosmic Battle of the Ages (Left Behind) by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins

"The scattered Tribulation Force is drawn inexorably toward the Middle East, as are all the armies of the world, when history homes in on the battle of the ages. Who will be left standing when the battle leaves the Tribulation Force on the brink of the end of time and the Glorious Appearing?"

$24.99 prior to 25% new hardcover discount

Desperation by Stephen King

"There's a place along Interstate 50 that some call the loneliest place on Earth. It's not a very nice place to live. It's an even worse place to die. It's known as Desperation, Nevada...

In the desolate mining town of Desperation, Nevada, there is something very wrong. The local lawman is besieged by delusions of murderous grandeur, dead animals decorate the landscape, and visitors are few and far between. But when an unlucky group of travelers is waylaid in the desert anti-oasis, the battle lines are drawn against an ancient and unholy evil, determined to be born again!"

$7.99

Andrew's Staff Picks

Cuba Libre by Elmore Leonard

"War in Cuba isn't Ben Tyler's concern. Still, sailing mares and guns into Havana harbor in 1898--right past the submerged wreckage of the U.S. battleship "Maine--may not be the smartest thing the recently prison-sprung horse wrangler ever did. Neither is shooting one of the local Guardia, though the pompous peacock deserved it. Now Tyler's sitting tight in a vermin-infested Cuban stockade waiting to face a firing squad. But he's not dying until he gets the money he's owed from a two-timing American sugar baron. And there's one smart, pistol-hot lady at the rich man's side who could help Ben get everything he's got rightfully coming...even when the whole damn island's going straight to hell."

$7.50

The Subtle Knife By Philip Pullman

"Having slipped through a newly formed astral portal, the intrepid Lyra finds herself in the beautiful, haunted world of Cittagazze -- a city where soul-eating Specters stalk the streets and the wingbeats of distant angels sound against the sky. But she is not without allies. For young Will Parry, in search of his father, has also stumbled into this strange new realm via a magic gateway. Together the enlightened pair forge ahead on a perilous journey between worlds teeming with witches, angels, and sorcery -- and uncover a deadly secret: an object of extraordinary and devastating power. But with every step, they move closer to an even greater threat -- and the shattering truth of their own destiny..."

$6.99

Indigo Slam by Robert Crais

"When fifteen-year-old Teri Hewitt pleads with Elvis Cole to find the father who abandoned her and her two younger siblings, his first reaction is to turn the case over to California social services; but because Teri is so capable and the kids so eager to stay together, Elvis decides to take the job, asking his partner, Joe Pike, to keep an eye on the kids. The missing dad, Clark Hewitt, is an unemployed printer whose speciality, Elvis discovers, is counterfeiting and whose problems are complicated by drug addiction. Soon Elvis, Joe, Hewitt, and the children are in the midst of a shooting war between Russian gangsters, Vietnamese patriots, and U.S. Federal Marshals. The climax, involving a breathtaking chase, is staged at Disneyland."

$7.99

Gun Monkeys by Victor Gischler

"Charlie Swift is an old school kind of guy. Runs a tight ship. Respects his boss. Takes care of his mom and kid brother. And he's a stone cold killer. When a fancy new-wave hood, hungry for the primo Orlando territory Charlie enforces, offs most of Charlie's boys in a bloody mob takeover, our man steps in to make things right. But when word gets out that his boss has gone missing and there's a traitor among his crew of gun monkeys, Charlie knows payback ain't gonna be easy. Shot up, boozed up, and beaten up, Charlie finds the toughest challenge he's ever had to face isn't snuffing out life, but preserving it."

$15.00

The Haunted Air by F. Paul Wilson

"In Astoria, Queens, the lively ethnic neighborhood just across the river from Manhattan, a house is being haunted by the ghost of a nine-year-old girl in riding clothes. More than two decades before, she'd been abducted from stables in Brooklyn. Now it's up to Jack to uncover the truth of her story and liberate the pretty, blond spirit. Perhaps the answer is in the odd little store called the Shurio Coppe? Ah, but that would be telling.

Jack does things no human being should be able to do, but we watch, in horrified fascination, as the forces of evil seem about to triumph and fill the world with eternal darkness. And then-- but you must read the book."

$24.95

Annie's Staff Picks

I, Lucifer by Glen Duncan

"The End is nigh, and the Prince of Darkness has been given one last shot at redemption, if he can manage to live out a reasonably blameless life on earth. As a trial run, he negotiates a month of "trying without buying" in the body of struggling writer Declan Gunn. ("Incarnation, the angelic drug of choice. Unlike cocaine, not to be sniffed at.") Luce seizes the opportunity to binge on earthly delights, to straighten the biblical record (Adam, it's hinted, was a misguided variation on the Eve design), to celebrate his favorite achievements (Elton John, for one), and to try to get his screenplay sold, but the exp erience of walking among us isn't what His Majesty expected: instead of teaching us what it's like to be him, Lucifer finds himself understanding what it's like to be human."

$13.00

Kushiel's Avatar by Jacqueline Carey

"The land of Terre d'Ange is a place of unsurpassed beauty and grace. Citizen Phedre no Delaunay was sold into indentured servitude as a child. Phedre's path has been strange and dangerous, and through it all, the devoted swordsman Joscelin has been at her side, following the central precept of the angel Cassiel: Protect and serve."

$27.95 prior to 25% new hardcover discount

Transformation by Carol Berg

"...an exotic world where a crusader struggles to rise above the demons who enslave him. Seyonne, whose people were once guardians of the magic, is sold to the cold and cruel heir of the Derzhi Empire. In this unlikely place, Seyonne will triumph. For within his new master lie the seeds of greatness."

$6.99

Bag of Bones by Stephen King

"Still devastated by the loss of his wife four years ago, bestselling novelist Mike Noonan returns to Sara Laughs, the beloved summer home he and his wife shared. Plagued by nightmares and visitations, he finds himself falling in love with a young widow and her daughter--and confronting the grief that has haunted Sara Laughs for nearly a century."

$7.99

Someplace to be Flying by Charles de Lint

"Lily is a photojournalist, stealing away from the music scene she usually covers to pursue bizarre rumors of "animal people" living in the ruins of the Tombs - the city's darkest slums. Hank, on the other hand, knows the crumbling Tombs all too well. This is the part of the city he calls home, creating a life and a ragtag family on streets where many fear to tread. One night, in a brutal incident, their lives collide - uptown Lily and downtown Hank, each with a quest and a role to play in the secret drama of the city's oldest inhabitants: the animal people. For the animal people walk among us. Native Americans call them the First People, but they have never left, and they live disguised among us. And they claim the city for their own. Coyote the Trickster, wily, dangerous, and utterly compelling. Jackdaw the storyteller, nursing the secret wounds of tragedy. Raven, guarding the pot that holds the birth and destruction of life itself. The unpredictable Fox, the deadly Cuckoos, the Wolves that prowl city streets. And the Crow Girls, two charming young punks who delight in mischief, gossip, thievery...and who are much, much more than they seem. Not only have Hank and Lily stumbled onto a secret, they've stumbled into a war. But in this battle for the city's mythic soul, nothing is quite as it appears."

$6.99