November Featured Author
Lemony Snicket
Staff Picks for November 2001
Lelia's November Picks
The Long Good Boy by Carol Lea Benjamin
Rachel Alexander was having one of those sleepless nights when every city sound, even in a quiet neighborhood, grates. The ringing of her cell phone was no exception. The request to meet the next evening held promise; the caller sounded just mysterious enough to make it interesting. Rachel had no idea where it was going to lead. But she found out soon enough: Her caller was a transvestite hooker, one of the many who work New York's meat packing district on the lower West Side. Someone was killing the girls and they knew, through experience, that the cops wouldn't be there to help them. And so Rachel finds herself transformed and on the stroll during bitter nights that hold a threat in every whisper. She also discovers that she has to turn a dachsund into a burglar to get the answers she needs, answers she couldn't even begin to imagine in the unimaginable world she's entered.
$23.95
prior to 25% new hardcover release discount
In A Strange City by Laura Lippman
As a PI, Tess Monaghan has done some unusual things. But nothing tops this latest request from a very strange man. On January 19, Edgar Allan Poe's birthday, he wants her to stake out the writer's grave to catch the anonymous visitor who leaves three red roses and a bottle of brandy in tribute each year. Though no true Baltimorean would unmask Poe's admirer and destroy a cherished tradition, Tess finds herself too curious to resist.
But to Tess's surprise two "visitors" appear, and a struggle soon ensues, leaving one dead as the other vanishes. In a case as macabre as anything conceived by Poe himself, the PI turned unlikely eyewitness will delve into the murky depths of the city's most notorious past crimes to find answers...and a black-hearted killer.
$24.00
prior to 25% new hardcover release discount
Foggy Mountain Breakdown by Sharyn McCrumb
The first-ever collection of Sharyn McCrumb's short fiction...is a literary quilting ...Chilling tales of suspense alternate with evocative character portraits and compelling narratives that embrace the southern Appalachian locales and themes of McCrumb's acclaimed Ballad Novels. The author's perfect pitch ear for dialogue and ability to illuminate the dark side of human nature merge with her brilliant artistry to make this volume a virtuoso collection for devotees of Sharyn McCrumb---and for the legion of new readers who will find themselves caught under her spell.
$6.99
The Blue Nowhere by Jeffery Deaver
"The Blue Nowhere will forever change the way you feel about your computer." So begins the jacket blurb on Deaver's latest thriller and how true it is! This is a tale of a hacker genius gone mad and the police who are trying to find him. To assist them, they release a convicted hacker from prison, probably the only person who has a chance of tracking the serial murderer through his diabolical computer activities.
This novel of intense suspense will make you think twice about what someone out there might be doing with his computer---and will keep you up late at night to finish the book.
$26.00
Heartlight by T. A. Barron
One of three adventures featuring a young girl named Kate, this is a young adult fantasy that appeals to all ages. Kate and her astronomer grandfather, Dr. Miles Prancer, are carried off on the wings of giant butterflies into the far reaches of space and encounter wonderful beings and places as they search for the amazing element that can save our Sun from imminent destruction. In their quest, they are confronted with an evil of enormous proportions and the wonders of the universe's largest and most beautiful sun and must make a terrible choice.
$5.99
Andrew's November Picks
Pest Control by Bill Fitzhugh
In this fast-paced, hilarious mystery, Bill Fitzhugh introduces us to Bob Dillon-no, not THAT Bob Dylan-a freshly unemployed exterminator who unwittingly answers a help-wanted ad that's looking for a decidedly different kind of exterminator. In fact, his flyer convinces the contract murder underground that Bob Dillon is himself a contract killer, and through a series of unlikely coincidences, that he has actually killed several people. Soon, contract killers from all over the world are after him in order to maintain their job security, and meanwhile all Bob Dillon wants to do is perfect a new, more environmentally sound pest control method. Before you know it, you'll find yourself crossing your fingers as he dodges bullets he never realizes are there… and you may even find yourself developing an interest in extermination.
$5.99
Signed copies available
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
Richard Mayhew is an ordinary man living an ordinary life, and he can't ever imagine wanting more. But then one night he stops to help an injured girl, and the next day he discovers that no one can seem to notice or remember him. In order to get his life back, he's forced to plunge into a surreal world that exists, and has always existed, right around the one he has been in his whole life. Before, he would never have believed in magic, or people that communicated with animals. Now, he's forced to rely upon these things and many others just as improbable if he wants to survive. Neverwhere is an unconventional fantasy that at the same time is rooted in a rich tradition of tales of other lands, from Tolkien and C.S. Lewis up until the present day. Do not let this one pass you by.
$6.99
Practical Demonkeeping by Christopher Moore
In Christopher Moore's ingenious debut novel, we meet one of the most memorably mismatched pairs in the annals of literature. The good-looking one is one hundred year old ex-seminarian and "road" scholar Travis O'Hearn. The green one is Catch, a demon with a nasty habit of eating most of the people he meets. Behind the fake Tudor faÇade of Pine Cove, California, Catch sees a four-star buffet. Travis, on the other hand, thinks he sees a way of ridding himself of his toothy traveling companion. The winos, Neo-pagains, and deadbeat Lotharios of Pine Cove, meanwhile, have other ideas. And none of them is quite prepared when all hell breaks loose.
$13.00
Everybody Smokes in Hell by John Ridley
With all the dark humor of Carl Hiaasen or Elmore Leonard, but also with the overpowering dystopic outlook of the best James Ellroy, John Ridley explodes into my world with a novel that turns out to be his third (tracking down the others is next on my list), about a 7-11 store worker who might've stumbled into a lucky break. Paris Scott happens to be in the right place at the right time to end up with the only copy of a famous and recently dead rock star's last music. Of course, being the rather amoral slacker that he is, he's always looking to turn a quick buck, and this is no exception. However, when his roommate runs afoul of a tough drug dealer and sets hired killers on Paris' trail, he starts to think that maybe taking the tape wasn't such a good idea after all. Little does he know of the amazing number of coincidences that have delivered him to this point, nor of the even more amazing number that are yet to come before the wild ride that is this book comes to a too-quick halt. This is the sleeper hit of the year, a solid whack straight out of the park by John Ridley. Buy this book.
$14.00
Lost by Gregory Maguire
Winifred Rudge, a bemused wrter struggling to get beyond the runaway success of her mass-market astrology book, travels to London to jump-start her new novel about a woman who is being haunted by the ghost of Jack the Ripper. Upon her arrival, she finds that her stepcousin and old friend John Comestor has disappeared, and a ghostly presence seems to have taken over his apartment in the nineteenth century rowhouse once owned by Winnie's great-great-grandfather. Is it the spirit of this ancestor, who, family legend claims, was Charles Dickens's childhood inspiration for Ebenezer Scrooge? Could it be the ghostly remains of Jack the Ripper? Or a phantasm derived from more arcane and insidious origin?
Winnie begins to investigate, but John's erstwhile girlfriend, Allegra, is aggressively unhelpful, and his downstairs neighbor, the cat-obsessed Mrs. Maddingly, is growing stranger by the day. Gripped by inspiration and desperation alike, Winnie finds herself the unwilling audience for a drama of specters and shades, some from her family's peculiar history and some from her own vanquished past.
$26.00
prior to 25% new hardcover release discount
