Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter / Seth Grahame-Smith

If you want a different spin on Honest Abe, try this novel on for size. Before Abe Lincoln got to the White House he swung his ax for quite a different reason than what you might remember learning in elementary school. Apparently there was a thriving community of vampires in 1800s America, and due to a certain family tragedy Abe vowed as a young boy to do something about it. He swung that ax quite mightily, felling a goodly number of vampires before his political successes brought him to the White House. Abe’s presidency gets a new spin in this book too, what with the Civil War being recast as a conflict in which vampires figure largely in the motivations of the Southern succession, and John Wilkes Booth is revealed as—what else? -- a vampire. I liked this until about two thirds of the way through and then wearied of the premise. It’s pretty clever though, I must admit, and there’s sure to be a lot of interest in this title when the movie appears on June 22, 2012. The author boasts about using Wikipedia and Google as major research guides, but accuracy wasn’t the point exactly, was it? By the same author as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Click here for the trailer for the movie "Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter".

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Here we are / Graham Swift

This short novel offers a nostalgic look at England in the 1940s and 1950s. Evie, having just lost her husband after a long marriage, looks back at the fateful summer when they met up at the pleasure palace at the end of the Brighton pier. Evie was meant to marry someone else, Ronnie Doane, aka “The Great Pablo,” a magician whose talents really pull in the crowds in the days before television kept people in their front rooms (and to whom she serves as the feather-plumed magician’s assistant). The novel tells of Ronnie’s back story as a London child war evacuee, whose second family in Oxford is so nurturing and loving that he is conflicted about going back to his real home when the war is over. But Evie marries Jack instead and is ghosted (quite literally) by Ronnie even in her final years of life. A wonderful story about people and relationships.

Addie Pray / Joe David Brown (more recently published as Paper Moon ) Click here to check for availability at AFPLS This 1971 novel was the inspiration for the Peter Bogdanovich movie Paper Moon . Eleven-year-old Addie and her maybe-father “Long Boy” Moses Pray crisscross the Deep South “ramifying” (scamming) people during the Great Depression. Addie’s street smarts and perceived girlish innocence, along with Long Boy’s cleverness and shrewd business acumen build their operation until they are dealing in millions. The movie remained pretty true to the first half of the book (though it moved the location from Alabama to Kansas), but the adventures continue far beyond where the movie left off. The decades haven’t dimmed the magic of this rollicking adventure, either in the film or the book. ©Ken Vesey, 17 June 2010

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie / Alan Bradley

Pippi Longstocking meets Miss Marple in the character of precocious 11-year-old Flavia de Luce, the youngest of three daughters in a once well-to-do family in early 1950s rural England. This first mystery in an intended series finds Flavia beating the local police inspector at his own game in solving the mystery surrounding the murder of an old school mate of her father's in their back garden (in the cucumber patch no less). Clues include a bird indigenous to Norway, a rare stamp, and a bit of flaky pie crust. This nostalgic and innocent whodunnit will have you at the edge of your seat by its suspenseful climax. I can see BBC/PBS picking up on the popularity of this charming mystery. The second in the series has already been published and the third is soon to follow. And by the way, here's a great library quote from Flavia on page 50: "... it occurred to me that Heaven must be a place where the library is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. No

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