My Library

You may be tempted to put down Tom Reynold's Blood, Sweat, and Tea: Real-Life Adventures in an Inner-City Ambulanceafter reading the tragic story in the prologue. Don't. This book based on a compilation of posts from his popular blog Random Acts of Reality, does have its share of tear jerker stories, but balanced by enough humour to help the reader maintain sanity and see how Reynold's maintains his as a member of the London Ambulance Service.

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Harold Schechter is a professor of American literature and culture and an acclaimed true crime author. In Depraved: The Definitive True Story of H.H. Holmes, Whose Grotesque Crimes Shattered Turn-of-the-Century Chicago, Schechter brings readers the tale of one of America's first serial killers. H.H. Holmes, or Herman Mudgett as he was more prosaically named by his parents, operated from a base in Chicago in the time of Jack the Ripper, but his crimes spread from Texas to Toronto and east to Philadelphia.

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In The Devil Inside, Jenna Black invites the reader into the world of exorcist Morgan Kingsley, a world where demons operate openly, so openly they're regulated and controlled by law. Kingsley's job is to exorcise the demons that break the law and possess the unwilling and she is one of the best at it. These are and aren't the demons we know. The premise is that these supernatural beings are the basis for the demon mythology, but they aren't simply fallen angels. In fact, Black never makes it entirely clear just what a demon is - of course not, this is the first novel in a series.

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Vampire Academy, Richelle Mead's second novel and her first effort in the Young Adult market, opens with Rose, our heroine, and Lissa, her best friend, under attack by what they think are Strigoi, the evil immortal vampires of human legend. Rose is a Dhampir, a human/vampire hybrid, and Lissa is a Moroi, a mortal but pureblooded vampire with powerful magic, and a Princess at that. They've run away from St. Vladimir's Academy, a vampire boarding school in Montana of all places, and the Academy wants them back. [Spoiler of sorts, but nothing you won't find on the book's cover or deduce from the title - they get taken back.] The book manages to combine typical school age gossip and rivalries with royal intrigue and the complexities of Mead's own vampire society. The entire story is set against the related mysteries of why Rose and Lissa ran away from the Academy in the first place and the unusual telepathic bond between the two.

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The Renaissance Soul: Life Design for People with Too Many Passions to Pick Just One by Margaret Lobenstine is aimed at people who might be described as multiply interested, the cliched «jack of all trades and master of none.» She calls them «Renaissance Souls» (the modern, PC version of «Renaissance Man».)

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Succubus Blues is Richelle Mead's debut novel and the first in her Georgina Kincaid series. The novels center around a neurotic, conflicted, possibly even moral succubus living in Seattle, Georgina Kincaid. From the cover to the storyline to Miss Kincaid's job, at a bookstore, Mead writes a story in the tradition of the best rock and roll songs - the best rock songs are about being a rock star; this book is about being a book freak. (I think it should be obvious that I mean that in the nicest possible way, being a book freak myself. The politically correct term is bibliophile, but I hate political correctness almost as much as I hate pretentious words. Ironic.)

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Esquire editor A.J. Jacobs used to be smart. «in high school and college, [he] was actually quite cerebral.» Covering pop culture at Entertainment Weekly, then highbrow pop culture at Esquire drained his brain. He wanted to feel smart again. So, he decided to read the Encyclopedia Britannica all the way from a-ak to zywiec. Actually, he stole the idea from his father, an attorney and prolific author of law books, who tried the same feat but only made it to the mid-Bs. The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World is the story of his year long quest.

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Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey is the latest offering from Chuck Palahniuk, the author of cult classic Fight Club: A Novel - now a major motion picture starring Brad Pitt, Ed Norton, Meat Loaf and Helena Bonham Carter - own it today on DVD! - and all the major fight club themes are back with a vengeance...and a twist. Male relations with God as a proxy for relations with fathers, people finding themselves through an underground movement of controlled violence but with a hint of something more sinister beneath the surface, a day world and night world existing side by side and a mostly younger, hip underclass ready to pee in your soup or maybe give you rabies