November Author: Stephen King

Staff Picks for November

Laura's Staff Picks

Five Little Pigs by Agatha Christie

"Amyas Crale was a celebrated painter. . . and an even more celebrated lover. His wife Caroline was as jealous as she was devoted. So naturally, she was convicted of Amyas' murder. Now, 16 years later, their daughter presents Poirot with a challenge: find the fatal flaw in the case that will clear her mother's name. Also published as Murder in Retrospect."

$3.99

Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

"An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Now, one of mankind's most thrilling fantasies has come true. Creatures extinct for eons now roam Jurassic Park with their awesome presence and profound mystery and all the world can visit them -- for a price. Until something goes wrong...."

$7.99

Salem's Lot by Stephen King

"The town knew darkness...and the awful, heavy silence of terrifying images grotesquely dancing in and out of the shadows...and stark white faces, huge empty eyes and long gnarled hands that reached out with lustful insistence...and the paralyzing fear of a diabolical corruption and a hideous peril more dreadful than death."

$32.50 prior to 50% Bargain Basement discount

Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell

"Karana, an Indian girl left behind on the Island of the Blue Dolphins, watches year after year for a rescue ship while she keeps herself alive in this unusual adventure of survival and personal discovery. A Newbery Medal winner."

$6.50

The Laws of Our Fathers by Scott Turow

"The Laws of Our Fathers opens with a spectacular drive-by shooting in one of Kindle County's most notorious drug-plagued housing projects. The victim is an aging white woman who has never been seen there before; within days her son, Nile Eddgar, a probation officer, is charged in connection with the crime. Nile's trial is presided over - and narrated by - Judge Sonia "Sonny" Klonsky, whom Turow's fans will remember from his second novel, The Burden of Proof. It brings together a vivid cast of characters from Sonny's student years during the turbulent sixties, among them Nile's father, Loyell Eddgar, once a leading campus revolutionary, and Sonny's old boyfriend Seth Weissman, who is now a renowned journalist. All have been permanently marked by the heady iconoclasm of their youth; some carry terrible secrets that come to bear on the case at hand in unforeseeable and explosive ways."

$7.99

Andrew's Staff Picks

In the Dark by Richard Laymon

Nothing much happens in Donnerville. At least not to the young librarian, Jane Kerry. Then one day Jane finds an envelope containing a fifty-dollar bill and a note instructing her to "Look homeward, angel." Jane pulls a copy of the Thomas Wolfe novel of that title off the shelf and finds a second envelope. This one contains a hundred-dollar bill and another clue. Like the first, it's signed, "MOG (Master of Games)." The game has begun…

But this is no ordinary game. As it goes on, it requires more and more of Jane's strength and ingenuity. It pushes her into actions that she knows are crazy, immoral or criminal-and it becomes continually more dangerous. More than once, Jane has to fight for her life. But she soon learns that she can't quit this game. MOG won't let her. She'll have to play to the bitter end.

$5.99

The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling

1855: the Industrial Revolution is in full and inexorable swing, powered by steam-driven cybernetic Engines. Charles Babbage perfects his Analytical Engine and the computer age arrives a century ahead of its time. And three extraordinary characters race towards a rendezvous with history-and the future: Sybil Gerard-fallen woman, politician's tart, daughter of a Luddite agitator; Edward "Leviathan" Mallory-explorer and paleontologist; Laurence Oliphant-diplomat, mystic, and spy. Their adventure begins with the discovery of a box of punched Engine cards of unknown origin and purpose. Cards someone wants badly enough to kill for…

Part detective story, part historical thriller, "The Difference Engine" is the first collaborative novel by two of the most brilliant and controversial science fiction authors of our time. Provocative, compelling, intensely imagined, it is a startling extension of Gibson's and Sterling's unique visions-in a new and totally unexpected direction.

$6.99

Five Novels by Daniel Pinkwater

"Five Novels" contains five classic novels-Alan Mendelsohn, "The Boy From Mars", "Slaves of Spiegel", "The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death", "The Last Guru", and "Young Adult Novel" by Daniel Pinkwater, who has been quietly, subversively producing books for the most intelligent and creative children and young people in America for more than 25 years. (Adults may know him as a frequent commentator on National Public Radio, essayist, book reviewer, and the author of "The Afterlife Diet.")

$11.95

Lullaby by Chuck Palahniuk

"Carl Streator is a solitary widower and a forty-ish newspaper reporter who is assigned to do a series of articles on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. In the course of this investigation, he discovers an ominous thread: the presence on the scene of these deaths of the anthology Poems and Rhymes Around the World, all opened to the page where an African chant or "culling song" appears. This song turns out to be lethal when spoken or even thought in anyone's direction -- and once it lodges in Streator's brain, he finds himself becoming an involuntary serial killer. So he teams up with a real estate broker, one Helen Hoover Boyle, who specializes in selling haunted or "distressed" houses (wonderfully high turnover), and who lost a child to the culling song years before, for a cross-country odyssey. Their goal is to remove all copies of the book from libraries, lest this deadly verbal virus spread and wipe out human life. Accompanying them on this road trip are Helen's assistant, Mona Sabbat, an exquisitely earnest Wiccan, and her sardonic ecoterrorist boyfriend, Oyster, who is running a scam involving fake liability claims and business blackmail. Welcome to the new nuclear family.

On one level, "Lullaby" is a chillingly pertinent parable about the dangers of psychic infection and control in an era of wildly overproliferated information: "Imagine a plague you catch through your ears . . . imagine an idea that occupies your mind like a city." But it is also a tightly wound thriller with an intriguing premise and a suspenseful plot full of surprising twists and turns. Finally, because it is a Chuck Palahniuk novel, it is a blackly comic tour de force that reinforces his stature as our funniest nihilist and a contemporary seer."

$24.95 prior to 25% new hardcover discount

Dangerous Visions-35th Anniversary Edition edited by Harlan Ellison

"The legendary collection that changed the literature of science fiction for all time! Unavailable for over fifteen years, it returns with new introduction and annotations by Harlan Ellison, plus the original foreword by his friend and mentor, the late Isaac Asimov. This massive anthology contains 34 short stories, including Nebula Award-winning stories by Samuel R. Delany and Fritz Leiber, and Hugo Award-winning stories by Fritz Leiber and Philip Jose Farmer. Also includes stories by some of the best science-fiction writers who ever lived, writing at the height of their storytelling powers-Philip K. Dick, Robert Bloch, Damon Knight, J.G. Ballard, Roger Zelazny, and many more. All stories were commissioned originally by Ellison."

$14.95

Lelia's Staff Picks

Hold the Cream Cheese, Kill the Lox by Sharon Kahn

"Ruby the Rabbi's Wife is back in Eternal, Texas -- and this time, she's caught between two wild twelve-year-old twins and a killer.

With fast-paced plots, a host of quirky characters, humor, wit -- not to mention one of the genre's most enchanting sleuths -- Sharon Kahn's mysteries have enthralled readers and kept them coming back for more. Now Kahn obliges with a riotous fourth installment in her "kosher kosy" series."

$24.00 prior to 25% new hardcover discount

To Visit the Queen by Diane Duane

"Traveling back in time to 1874 London to prevent an assassination plot against Queen Victoria, the feline wizards of Grand Central Station -- leader Rhiow and her able partners Urrah and Arhu -- must summon their powers to avert disaster in Victorian England, or else their archenemy, the evil Lone One, will warp time and trigger Armageddon. Teamed with a young Arthur Conan Doyle, Queen Victoria herself, and other historical figures, the feline wizards set out to find the forgotten magic that will rewrite history -- or the cats who can save mankind will never have existed."

$6.50

Safe Beginnings by Christine Duncan

See Lelia's review.

$11.99

Skeleton Crew by Beverly Connor

"Archaeologist Lindsay Chamberlain excavates the 1558 wreck of a Spanish galleon and finds evidence of a murder at sea. As she discovers clues to the identity of the murderer, her own situation becomes less tenable because of the presence of modern-day pirates and two killings possibly related to the excavation. This is the fourth book in the Lindsay Chamberlain series." $7.99

The Dead Shall Inherit the Earth by Vince Churchill

"In deep space, a colony is devastated by a horrific plague, unleashing a nightmare beyond imagination. A team of mercenaries battle against an army of living dead to save the Earth from a hellish fate where death is just the beginning." $14.95

Annie's Staff Picks

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

"Michael Foreman lavishly illustrates this unabridged edition of a childhood classic.

When shy Mole climbs out of his hole and into the fresh spring air, he meets Ratty. The two set off for a day on the river, and thus begins this classic tale of deep friendship and adventure. Even before the publication of the first edition in 1908, Kenneth Grahame's beloved characters appeared in gentle letters from the author to his young son. Those letters and the charming story itself inspired internationally acclaimed artist Michael Foreman to create the luminous illustrations for this unabridged edition. Perfect for gift giving, this exquisite volume features several reproductions of Grahame's letters, along with photographs of father and son, a note about the author, an illustrator's note, and a sewn-in ribbon bookmark."

$24.00

Boy's Life by Robert R. McCammon

"Zephyr, Alabama, has been an idyllic home for eleven-year-old Cory Mackenson...a place where monsters swim in the belly of the river, and friends are forever. Then, on a cold spring morning in 1964, as Cory accompanies his father on his milk route, they see a car plunge into a lake some say is bottomless.

A desperate rescue attempt brings Cory's father face-to-face with a vision that will haunt him: a murdered man, naked and beaten, handcuffed to the steering wheel, a copper wire knotted around his neck. As Cory struggles to understand the forces of good and evil at work in his hometown, from an ancient woman called the Lady who conjures snakes and hears the voices of the dead, to a violent clan of moonshiners, he realizes that not only his life but his father may hang in the balance...."

$7.99

Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt

"Ten-year-old Winifred Foster's accidental encounter with the uncommon Tuck family, their hidden spring, and their extraordinary secret transforms her life and leads her to make a noteworthy decision."

$5.95

The Frog Princess by E. D. Baker

"Princess Emeralda isn't exactly an ideal princess. Her laugh is like a donkey's bray rather than tinkling bells, she trips over her own feet and she does Not like Prince Jorge, whom her mother hopes she will marry. But if Emma ever thought to escape her life, she never expected it to happen by turning into a frog! When convinced to kiss a frog so he might return to being a Prince, somehow the spell is reversed and Emma turns into a frog herself! Thus begins the adventure -- a quest to return to human form.

Fascinating and hilarious characters ranging from a self-conscious but friendly bat to a surprisingly loyal snake and a wise old green witch confirm that readers won't soon forget this madcap story!"

$15.95 prior to 25% new hardcover discount