Staff Picks for October 2000

Annie's Picks

Deep Secret by Diana Wynne Jones

Rupert Venable is the Junior Magid of Earth. All over the Multiverse the Magids, powerful magicians, are at work to maintain the balance between positive and negative magic for the good of all. They use their powers to push people into doing the right thing at the right time. But Rupert's senior has died and Rupert, aided by the ghost of the deceased, must search the Earth for a new Junior, while preventing civilization from descending into chaos. It seemed like a good idea to cause all five candidates to attend one SF convention in England. But then all magic breaks loose.

$6.99

Dawn by Octavia Butler

Lilith Iyapo is in the remote Andes, mourning the death of her husband and son, when nuclear war destroys the world. Centuries later, she revives, held captive aboard a starship. Miraculously powerful and hideously grotesque galatic beings, the Oankali have rescued the planet and the war's victims out of an irresistible need to heal and a greater need to change all they touch. For the Oankali survive by merging genetically with primitive peoples -- without their permission. Lilith's children will inherit the earth and stars. But they will be more -- and other -- than human.

$6.50

The Star Wars Cookbook by Robin Davis

Now Star Wars fans of any age can cook food that is truly out of this world! From C-3PO Pancakes to Jedi Juice Pops, this intergalatic cookbook features healthy snacks, delicious dishes, sweet treats, and easy-to-use recipes that will entice even the pickiest eaters.

$15.95

Lelia's picks

Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder by Joanne Fluke

Take one amateur sleuth. Mix in some eccentric Minnesota locals. Add a generous dollop of crackling suspense, and you've got a recipe for this delicious new mystery series featuring Hannah Swensen, the red-haired, cookie-baking heroine whose gingersnaps are almost as tart as her mouth and whose penchant for solving crime is definitely stirring things up.

Includes 7 Delicious Cookie Recipes For You to Try!

$20.00

Swan Song by Robert R. McCammon

An ancient evil roams the blasted, nightmare country, an evil as old as time. He is the Man with the Scarlet Eye, the Man of Many Faces, gathering under his power the forces of human greed and madness. He is seeking to destroy a child, the one called Swan...a stunning tale of sheer fright and power where the end of the world is just the beginning of mankind's ultimate struggle.

$7.99

A Dash of Death by Claudia Bishop

Hemlock Falls is a pretty little town in upstate New York. Sarah Quilliam, with her talent for business, runs the Inn at Hemlock Falls. Her sister, Meg, keeps the guests happy with her culinary abilities. But when it comes to murder, the Quilliam sisters have to rely on other skills---spotting clues, solving crimes, and catching culprits...

Helena Houndswood is the epitome of class... at least when the camera's rolling. Behind the scenes, the celebrated expert on stylish living is just a garden-variety snob with a heart of stone... but just how far would Helena go to avoid mixing with the unwashed? After all, murder is so tacky...

$5.99

Jason's picks

Daughter of the Blood, by Anne Bishop

Seven hundred years ago, a Black Widow witch sees an ancient prophecy come to life in her dazzling web of dreams and visions. Now the Dark Kingdom readies itself for the arrival of its Queen, a Witch who will wield more power than even the High Lord of Hell himself, But she is still young, still open to influence -- and corruption.

Whoever controls the Queen controls the Darkness. Three men -- sworn enemies -- know that. And they know the power that hides behind the blue eyes of an innocent young girl. And so begins a ruthless game of politics and intrigue, magic and betrayal, where the weapons are hate and love...and the prize could be terrible beyond imagining...

Into the Forge, by Dennis L. McKiernan

A fell and ancient sorcery has thrust the kingdoms surrounding the mighty Grimwall mountains into battle with forces of great evil. When Tip and Beau, two Warrows from the village of Twoforks, try to save a mortally wounded soldier, they inherit a vital mission. The dying swordsman gives them a simple copper coin and a cryptic message: "Take the coin east to Agron, and warn all."

But the East holds terrors beyond anything Tip and Beau have ever known. Modru, the Black Mage, has begun his violent reign over the Free Folk -- and unleashed his army of deadly emissaries on the young Warrows. Now Tip and Beau's mysterious quest has become a matter of life and death. For their momentous arrival in jAgron will signal a war that threatens to destroy worlds far beyond their beloved Mithgar...

Mercheston: The Wolf's Tale, by David Holland

Shrouded in the dark corners of imagination, the werewolf holds a supreme place in fable and folklore -- the night -- beast, stalking its prey under the light of a full moon. Such is the popular conception. But what of the beast himself? In Murcheston: The Wolf's Tale, a werewolf documents his own case of lycanthropy.

Amid the gothic backdrop of Victorian London, the author presents three gentlemen and one woman as they share the telling of this tale: the tale of Edgar Lenoir, Duke of Darnley, aristocrat and werewolf.

The centerpiece of the novel is Darnley's journal chronicling his months as a werewolf. The duke views his condition not with horror, but with a fascination he believes to be thoroughly modern. Unfortunately, he is also narcissistic, ruthless, and ultimately seduced by his own misguided self-interest to justify as natural and healthy the bestial desires that eventually consume him.

Andrew's picks

Zodiac, by Neal Stephenson (Bantam)

In his critically acclaimed Snow Crash and The Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson created wild visions of the distant future. But in Zodiac, he takes us to his strangest landscape yet-right here, right now…

Two centuries after the Boston Tea Party, harbor dumping is still a favorite local sport, only this time it's major corporations piping toxic wastes into the water. Environmentalist and professional pain in the ass Sangamon Taylor is Boston's modern-day Paul Revere, spreading the word from a 40-horsepower Zodiac raft. Embarrassing powerful corporations in highly telegenic ways is the perfect method of making enemies, and Taylor has a collection that would do any rabble-rouser proud.

After his latest exploit, he's wanted by the FBI, possibly by the Mafia, and definitely by a group of Satanist angel-dust heads who think he's looking for a PCP factory, not PCB contamination. Pretty soon dodging bullets is the least of Taylor's problems-because somewhere out there are an unhinged genetic engineer and a lab-concocted bacterium that could destroy all ocean life… and that's just for appetizers.

Frightening, funny, fast, and furious, Zodiac is thrilling speculative fiction torn straight from today's headlines.

$6.99

Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, by Philip K. Dick (Vintage)

On October 11 the television star Jason Taverner is so famous that 30 million viewers eagerly watch his prime-time show. On October 12 Jason Taverner is not a has-been but a never-was-a man who has lost not only his audience but all proof of his existence. And in the claustrophobic betrayal state of Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, loss of proof is synonymous with loss of life.

As Taverner races to solve the riddle of his "disappearance," Philip K. Dick immerses us in a horribly plausible United States in which everyone -- from a waiflike forger of identity cards to a surgically altered pleasure queen -- informs on everyone else, a world in which even the omniscient police have something to hide. His bleakly beautiful novel bores into the deepest bedrock of the self and plants a stick of dynamite at the center.

$11.00

The Black Dahlia, by James Ellroy (Mysterious Press)

On January 15, 1947, the torture-ravished body of a beautiful young woman is found in a vacant lot. The victim makes headlines as the Black Dahlia -- and so begins the greatest manhunt in California history.

Caught up in the investigation are Bucky Bleichert and Lee Blanchard: Warrants squad cops, friends, and rivals in love with the same woman. But both are obsessed with the Dahlia-driven by dark needs to know everything about her past, to capture her killer, to possess the woman even in death. Their quest will take them on a hellish journey through the underbelly of postwar Hollywood, to the core of the dead girl's twisted life, past the extremes of their own psyches - into a region of total madness.

$13.99