It was just supposed to be a game. A chance for people to recreate one of their favorite horror movies. Charity never thought she’d be in real danger, or that she’d find out there’s so much more to the camp at Mirror Lake than the movie said. Grabs you and doesn’t let go until the final twist of the very last page.
A family can be an old lady with a tea shop, an apathetic hacker, a new widow, her downtrodden toddler, a badly blocked artist, and a would-be author (possibly an evil twin). Especially when the tea shop lady is determined to bring them all together. It might be easier to make this happy family happen if everyone involved wasn’t a murder suspect, but Vera’ll burn that bridge when she gets to it.
Different to anything I’ve read both in its system of magic and its characters. A long time alliance of demons and humans is being broken up by an incursion of paladins set on taking over the world. Slips back and forth in time, shaping and coloring one of the richest worlds I’ve ever read.
Snappy dialog and humor keep this otherwise dark story alive. Revolves around someone that doesn’t fight so much as resist the ugly forces in her world- the rise of fascism as a child and the increasing pressure of censorship in 1940’s Hollywood as an adult.
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I knew Signor Speranza in about two paragraphs and loved the little weirdo by the end of the first chapter. When Speranza can’t come up with any reasonable plans to save his miniscule Italian town, he moves onto hare-brained scheming. Chock full of charming characters and fun subplots. Pick it up for the laughs, stay for the incredible amount of heart.
A fascinating and timely set of essays on the ways that food production has shifted, and the ways we need to course-correct. For all that our diets may seem varied compared to days past, the world's food sources are rapidly narrowing to a handful of species. Meanwhile region-specific crops that may hold the keys to food security are dying out. Each essay examines a different type of food, how they're being crowded out and why they need to be preserved.
Julia Lee came of age during the 90’s riots in LA. Now, she shares a deeply personal history, backing it up and filling out the context with a ton of great sources. She doesn’t shy away from or gloss over the ugliness she has experienced and occasionally put into the world. I came away from this one with a lot to think about and many more books to read.
A memoir that is both laugh-out-loud and cry-till-you-can't-breathe. Seamus O'Reilly is the ninth of eleven children, and came of age in Derry during the peak of Ireland's Troubles under the care of a 'crisply demented' father and a community that remembered Seamus's mother better than he did. The funeral fruitcake monologue lives rent free in my head.
Jamie's been a sci-fi obsessed grad student, a director of customer development at an internet startup, and was then punted downto being a food deliverator. He figures it can't be too much of a step down from there to become 'the guy who lifts things' for some kind of large animal preserve. A fun, quick read for fans of the later Jurassic Park movies.
Charming, informative descriptions of various plants and animals. The real draw are the endlessly fascinating x-ray photographs expertly retouched and lightly colored to put life back into them. The animals are posed in dynamic ways, and set into scenes with accurate plants, showing elements that are easily missed.
The narrator is your typical LA devotee- he’s thinking about getting a therapist, he hates the people from out of the city encroaching on where he lives, misses his mom and hates his dad. He’s also a starving mountain lion that’s thinking about eating the next jerk to cross his path. Quick, fascinating read.
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Chillingly familiar rhetoric stretched just a little further to a terrifyingly possible future where mothers deemed unfit by the government are required to attend a reform school in order to have any chance at regaining custody. One bad day can end in losing your child, your agency and any privacy. Make this your next read if you're a fan of The Handmaid's Tale.
Molly wants nothing more than to go to work and spend her days returning hotel rooms to a state of perfection. She's invisible to most and doesn't mind that in the least. But with discovering a freshly murdered real estate tycoon, the police sniffing around the not-so-clean employees that Molly's befriended and every amateur sleuth in the area coming around to investigate the hotel for themselves, Molly won't remain invisible for long.
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Gless delivers punchline after punchline without ever shying away from or diminishing her struggles with self-image and alcoholism. Whether you know her from 'Cagney and Lacey', 'Queer as Folk' or not at all, prepare to be more in love with her than ever. Took twice as long to read this as it should have because I had to stop and read the funny parts to whoever I was with. Definitely recommend the audio!
The land of Huaxia has long kept monsters at bay by repurposing their bodies as battle suits, piloted by two people at a time. If the pilots are well matched, they can fight and emerge unharmed. If not, the female pilot dies at the end of the battle, drained of life. Zetian turns down a chance at love and peace to get revenge for her sister- a pilot that died in training. Once she achieves her goal, Zetian expects to die, but things take a startling turn. Gory, turn-on-a-dime, with a gloriously ruthless protagonist.
A detailed look into the creation of one of the most beloved movies of all time: the Princess Bride. Cary Elwes draws together interviews with other cast members as well as the crew to supplement his own humorous recollections of filming. Check out the audio book too- primarily narrated by Elwes, with interviews from Robin Wright, Wallace Shawn and many others.
Hogswatch on the Disc isn't so very different from Christmas on Earth. There's a feast, festive cards, and more decorations than you can shake a candy cane at. Little children write letters to a jolly fat man in the hopes that he'll bring gifts. But things have gone awry for Old Saint Whosit. The Hogfather is missing, and belief across the whole Disc is faltering.
A choose-your-own-adventure that confronts the many absurdities of Shakespeare’s most famous rom-com/murder-fest. Richly illustrated by a host of talented artists, you can finally learn what would have happened if Juliet hadn’t trusted the oddly poison-happy friar and taken matters into her own hands. Or if Benvolio had used an ounce of chill instead of starting fights at every opportunity. More than a hundred possible endings and at least twice as many laughs.
This book is 1984 meets Douglas Adams, with enough satire to keep you laughing as you read, even as you eye your electronic devices suspiciously. Follows a scrap metal collector that refuses to scrap any of the neurotic AI’s that come his way, an android running for president, and a family struggling to follow the usual rhythms of life in a world where everything- even maintaining relationships- can be left to machines.
Return to the world of Ella Enchanted in this incredible retelling of Sleeping Beauty. Aza has the most beautiful singing voice in the entire kingdom, but she struggles with accepting her appearance. An unexpected friendship with the new queen of the propels her from the safety of her family’s inn to the alluring but dangerous court. Will she learn to speak for herself when she finds out that even allies want to use her voice for their own ends?
Told with a distinct and amusing voice, this physicist, teacher and incorrigible prankster explains the unusual path he took through life. He worked at Los Alamos during World War II, and bounced around between academic institutions, always with an eye out for interesting phenoms and good stories. It became both a punch line and a get-out-of-jail-free card: no one ever took his stories seriously. A very enjoyable read.
So your time machine has broken down! You won't be returning to your own time because you don't have the materials to do so, but that's alright! The past has a lot of interesting stuff going on! And with this handy manual, you'll be able to make the most of things, with clear, easy steps on (re)developing technologies that'll improve your life and make the people of that time think you're pretty smart too. The world is what you make of it -Lawrence Kasdan (or You, if you take credit for it)
Possibly my favorite narrator ever, the dear, bumbling Bertie Wooster recounts his misadventures with equally bumbling friends, aunts determined to see him married, and his butler- the only person with a brain among them. If you need something light, step into a London in the 1920's where the biggest problem the protagonist has is a nosy family.
(the Wooster stories have been published in a lot of different sets, and I've read most of them in an omnibus that's waaaaaay out of print. I went through ipage and this one has a good selection)
An exciting new story from the author of Cinderella is Dead. Eurydice wants to quietly get control of her ability to make plants grow. So of course shes going to have to spend the summer in a poison garden, in close proximity to some of the most deadly species on earth. Elements of Greek mythology.
A collection of essays on the importance of slime- in science, in media, art and nearly every other corner of our lives. Humans have developed a dislike for the substance despite being naturally slimy themselves. But as Wedlich demonstrates, slime is both fascinating and useful. For fans of Mary Roach and Tim Blackburn.
