Library Loot: 3-24-2010

Library Loot is hosted by Eva at A Striped Armchair and Marg at Reading Adventures.





Title: Going Bovine

Author: Libba Bray

All sixteen-year-old Cameron wants is to get through high school -- and life in general -- with a minimum of effort. It's not a lot to ask. But that's before he's given some bad news: he's sick and he's going to die. Which totally sucks.

Hope arrives in the winged form of Dulcie, a loopy punk angel/possible hallucination with a bad sugar habit. She tells Cam there is a cure -- if he's willing to go in search of it. With the help of Gonzo, a death-obsessed, video-gaming dwarf, and a yard gnome who just might be the Viking god Balder, Cam sets off on the mother of all road trips through a twisted America of smoothie-drinking happiness cults, parallel-universe-hopping physicists, mythic New Orleans jazz musicians, whacked-out television game shows, snow-globe vigilantes, and disenfranchised, fame-hungry teens into the heart of what matters most.

From New York Times bestselling author Libba Bray comes a dark comedic journey that poses the questions: Why are we here? What is real? What makes microwave popcorn so good? Why must we die? And how do we really learn to live? (inside book jacket)






Title: Kitty and the Midnight Hour

Author: Carrie Vaughn

Vampires. Werewolves. Talk Radio.

Kitty Norville is a midnight-shift DJ for a Denver radio station -- and a werewolf in the closet. Sick of lame song requests, she accidentally starts "The Midnight Hour," a late-night advice show for the supernaturally disadvantaged.

After desperate vampires, werewolves, and witches across the country begin calling in to share their woes, her new show is a raging success. But it's Kitty who can use some help. With one sexy werewolf-hunter and a few homicidal undead on her tail, Kitty may have bitten off more than she can chew. . .(back cover)





Title: Home Safe

Author: Elizabeth Berg

In this new novel, beloved bestselling author Elizabeth Berg weaves a beautifully written and richly resonant story of a mother and daughter in emotional transit. Helen Ames -- recently widowed, coping with loss and grief, unable to do the work that has always sustained her -- is beginning to depend far too much on her twenty-seven-year-old daughter, Tessa, and is meddling in her life, offering unsolicited and unwelcome advice. Helen's problems are compounded by her shocking discovery that her mild-mannered and seemingly loyal husband was apparently leading a double life. The Ameses had painstakingly saved for a happy retirement, but that money disappeared in several large withdrawals made by Helen's husband before he died. In order to support herself and garner a measure of much needed independence, Helen takes an unusual job that ends up offering far more than she had anticipated. And then a phone call from a stranger sets Helen on a surprising path of discovery that causes both mother and daughter to reassess what they thought they knew about each other, themselves, and what really makes a home and family.

"Maybe Freud didn't know the answer to what women want, but Elizabeth Berg certainly does," said USA Today, and that special gift of understanding shines through in this remarkable new novel, Home Safe is an exquisitely rendered story about mothers, daughters, and finding new richness in the stages of life, in one's family, and in oneself. (inside book jacket)





Title: Joy School (audio version)

Author: Elizabeth Berg

Read by: Jen Taylor

Thirteen-year-old Katie is new to her Missouri town, living alone with a stern, inaccessible father following her mother's death. Unable to fit in at school, she forges alliances wherever she can: with her housekeeper, with a pimply fellow misfit named Cynthia, and with the gorgeous Taylor, who gets her kicks out of shoplifting. Most frustrating of all is Katie's imperfect friendship with the proprietor of a local gas station, a handsome 23-year-old who shares her love for checkers but doesn't return her crush. (back cover)




Title: Fade

Author: Lisa McMann

Some nightmares never end.

For Janie and Cabel, real life is getting tougher than the dreams. They're just trying to carve out a little (secret) time together, but no such luck.

Disturbing things are happening at Fieldridge High, yet nobody's talking. When Janie taps into a classmate's violent nightmares, the case finally breaks open -- but nothing goes as planned. Not even close. Janie's in way over her head, and Cabe's shocking behavior has grave consequences for them both.

Worse yet, Janie learns the truth about herself and her ability -- and it's bleak. Seriously, brutally bleak. Not only is her fate as a dream catcher sealed, but what's to come is way darker than she'd feared. . . (inside book cover)

Title: Meridian

Author: Amber Kizer

Half human, half angel, Meridian Sozu has a dark responsibility.

Meridian has always been an outcast. It seems that wherever she goes, death and grief follow. On her sixteenth birthday, a car crashes in front of her family's home -- and though she's untouched, Meridian's body explodes in pain.

Before she can fully recover, Meridian is told that she's a danger to her family and is hustled off to her great-aunt's house in Revelation, Colorado. There she learns the secret her parents have been hiding for her entire life: Meridian is a Fenestra, the half-angel, half-human link between the living and the dead.

It's crucial that Meridian learn how to transition human souls to the after life -- how to help people die. Only then can she help preserve the balance between good and evil on earth. But before she can do that, meridian must come to terms with her ability, outsmart the charismatic preacher who's taken over Revelation, and maybe -- if she can accept her sworn protector, Tens, for who he is -- fall in love. Meridian and Tens face great danger from the Aternocti, a band of dark forces who capture vulnerable souls on the brink of death and cause chaos. But together, they have the power to outsmart evil.

Dark, lovely, and lushly romantic, Meridian will entrance readers. (inside book jacket)