12 Days of Teen Lit: Six Rotting Corpses

The 12 Days of Teen Lit takes a turn for the Macabre with

6 Rotting Corpses

The Body Finder. High school junior Violet uses her uncanny ability to sense murderers and their victims to try to stop a serial killer who is terrorizing her town, and although her best friend and would-be boyfriend Jay promises to keep her safe, she becomes a target.

Burried Thunder. Just after fourteen-year-old Maya's family acquires the Rowan Tree Hotel she is drawn into the nearby woods, where she finds three bodies that disappear before police arrive, and soon Maya feels hunted by both human and supernatural forces.

Jack: Secret Histories. Teenaged Jack, later to be known as Repairman Jack, begins to uncover some unsuspected talents in himself after he and his friends, the clever, imaginative Weezy and her brother Eddie, discover a corpse deep in the mysterious Pine Barrens near their New Jersey town.

Revolver. Finland, 1910: Fifteen-year-old Sig is shocked to see a hole in the frozen lake outside his family's cabin and to find his father's corpse nearby. Why did Einar steer his dog sled across the lake instead of taking the safer land route? Sig's sister and stepmother go for help, leaving Sig alone with Einar's body in the cabin. Soon after, an armed stranger barges in, demanding a share of Einar's stolen gold.

Rot and Ruin.  In a post-apocalyptic world where fences and border patrols guard the few people left from the zombies that have overtaken civilization, fifteen-year-old Benny Imura is finally convinced that he must follow in his older brother's footsteps and become a bounty hunter.

Soulless. The attempt of three powerful mediums to open up communication between the living and the dead has disastrous consequences when every corpse within a three-hundred-mile radius of New York City is animated and begins to prey on the living.



Darren Shan

So, I have a hard time reading series. I know, I know--most people love series and want to continue with the characters and all that. And bizarrely enough, I love manga series. But a novel series has to be really good for me to want to continue it. I think that's the reluctant reader in me. I'm just reluctant in a different way than other so-called "reluctant readers". So getting to the point, and yes, I have a point. Darren Shan's teen books (the Demonata series and the new book Zom-B) are exceptions for me. Pause now and re-read our posts on the first book in the Demonata series, Lord Loss.

You're back? Good! Shan's new series has the first book out now: Zom-B. Set in London, B watches on the news as reports of zombie outbreaks in Ireland hit. B laughs it because B's dad does. B's family follows his lead for everything--otherwise, you might get smacked around a bit. Following his lead means pretending to be a racist, but B struggles with the issue of when pretending becomes reality. Keeping focused on the day to day battles within the school and home, zombies are just a thing in the back of B's mind; that is until they invade the school. Then it becomes a fight for survival.

As I stated in my Goodreads review:
The ARC of book starts with a letter to the reader asking to please not give the twists away. I appreciated it. First, it prepared me to be shocked. Second, my anticipation grew as the ending got closer.


The novel starts off with a horrific bang. I'd put it on the level of Lord Loss in terms of gore. The prologue was so hardhitting and good zombie entertainment that I was disappointed that the middle section of the book was steeped in the horror of real life instead of zombies. But now I liked how Shan talked about racism and children being raised in a bigotry filled abusive life. It was uncomfortable in places and god knows you don't LIKE B the protagonist, but still it was well done in the endeavor. I wanted the action to get started though and Boy, when it got started; it really got started.

The only thing I will say about the twists is that they were great and shocking. I didn't see one coming at all. AT ALL. When it happened, I gasped and said "no way!" and promptly looked around since I read this at the car dealership waiting on the service department. When I finished the book, I also spoke aloud about wanting the next book NOW.

I can't wait to give this to my zombie lovin' teen who comes to the library. He'll love it. Kearsten--go pick it up. It's a great Shan horror novel--and it's got ZOMBIES!

Thanks to Victoria at Little Brown for my copy!!

Problem #3: Suicide. . . and Zombies

For the final installation of my posts featuring the problem novel, I come to the subject of suicide.  Teen books abound with characters considering suicide, recovering from suicide attempts, or facing the aftermath of a loved one's suicide.  In Courtney Summers's This Is Not a Test, our main character Sloane starts the novel prepared to commit suicide.  She can no longer abide her abusive father's violence or the fact that her beloved older sister ran away and left her behind.  Sloane's plan to overdose has been derailed because her stash of sleeping pills is missing, and she sits at the breakfast table with a suicide note in her pocket, wondering how she can continue her plan another way.

That's when the zombie apocalypse happens.

In an incredible, high-adrenaline opening zombies crash through her living room picture window, the world goes up in flames and chaos, the dead have risen.  And they're hungry.

Problem solved?  No, somehow despite that Sloane wants to die, she turns out to be one of a handful of survivors.  The irony is intense.  People desperate to live die and turn into monsters, but Sloane makes it to the high school with five other kids, alive when she should be dead, the suicide note written to her sister still in her pocket.  From here the novel turns into a psychological conflict between survivors.  Though the high school provides a safe, temporary haven (especially handy because there is a water tank that hasn't yet drained out) the tension between the survivors' leader, teenage Gary Chen, and two of the other survivors, twin sister and brother Grace and Trace Casper, threatens to destroy everyone.  Trace and Grace's parents were overwhelmed by zombies on the way to the school and the twins blame Chen.  Did he lead the Caspers into harm's way on purpose?  Everyone is starting to crack a little.  Sloane is especially near the edge, her instinct to die battling with her instinct to live.  How long can the kids stay at the school?  How long before the monsters outside make their way in?  Has anyone else survived?

This was an awesome zombie novel.  I was immediately in love with the premise but worried about how the author could possibly pull it off.  She did it.  This book is a perfect mix of action and psychology--physical and psychological conflict galore.   For all zombie tales the reader has to have a higher-than-average willing suspension of disbelief.  Summers manages to make the zombie apocalypse instantly believable.  The reader gets on board at once, accepting the fact of the hungry dead and the urgency of the conflict facing all the survivors.  The writing is fluid and forward-moving.  The book doesn't suffer from an instant of down time.  (Comparing it to The Forest of Hands and Teeth, for instance, where oodles of time is spent action-free.) I enjoyed though I didn't like all of the characters.  I pulled for Sloane and found her psychological situation unique and intriguing.

If you're a zombie fan and a YA-lit fan, this book was made for you. No problem.

Zombie Stories Edited by J.M. Lassen

This short story compilation offers up an eclectic mix of zombilicious tales featuring teen protagonists dealing with the world of the walking dead. Although I found most of the stories to be fairly entertaining, I was a bit disappointed that none of them scored high on my personal chill-factor rating scale…On a scale of 1 to 10 (1=slightly unsettling and 10=insanely horrifying), the creepiest story, The Barrow Maid - a Viking saga done zombie-style, just barely scores a 5.

In fact, a few of the stories actually made me pity rather than fear the zombies. This is a huge pet peeve of mine when it comes to reading horror or watching scary movies…I want to be scared of the monster not feel sorry for it! In the story The Days of Flaming Motorcycles, the zombies are sad and kiss each other! What the heck!!! In The Dead Kid, a defenseless little zombie boy that bleats like a goat is kept in a pit where he is tortured and harassed by a group of mean ol’ living teen bullies. Zombies are supposed to be soulless, fear-inducing reanimated corpses with just one thing on their minds…an intense, painful need for human flesh and brains! I still remember being annoyed by the pity that I felt after watching episode 1/season 1 of the Walking Dead when Rick comes across the poor zombie lady who has been cut or bit in half and is doing her best to pull her way through the park with her frail, mangled zombie lady arms.

That said, there are two stories that I did find to be particularly disturbing. The Third Dead Body is about a teen prostitute who rises from the grave with an intense desire to find the man who murdered her. Seven Brains, Ten Minutes is a stomach-churning tale about a live teen boy who is forced to pose as a zombie in a brain-eating contest in order to save the girl of his dreams. Both stories showcase how the cruelty of living human beings can be even more horrific than zombies.

The stories in this book do feature some nice first lines. I’ll end this entry by offering my favorites…

Benny Imura couldn’t hold a job, so he took to killing. – Family Business by Jonathan Maberry

All of this happened because a boy I once knew named Miles Sperry decided to go into the resurrectionist business and dig up the grave of his girlfriend, Bethany Baldwin, who had been dead for not quite a year. – The Wrong Grave by Kelly Link

Daddy said them that eat human flesh will suffer under Hell. – You’ll Never Walk Alone by Scott Nicholson

The brain was in front of me, pink-gray and pulsing in the sun. – Seven Brains, Ten Minutes by Marie Atkins

Kearsten's Book Club: Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, The Graphic Novel by Jane Austen & Seth Grahame-Smith, adapted by Tony Lee, illustrated by Cliff Richards

Despite the fact that only 5 book club members finished the book (yes, we readers threw metaphorical shame stones at 'em), Kearsten's Book Club still managed to have a lively discussion about Pride & Prejudice & Zombies: The Graphic Novel!


Our moderator, Michelle, kicked off Monday's discussion of P & P & Z: the GN with a 'Pride & Prejudice in 2 Minutes' clip (PG-13-ish), to aid those of the group who hadn't read Jane Austen's classic.  As Michelle began asking questions, we found that many of us struggled with the same concerns: 

• Why were all the women drawn to look exactly the same? All the women of a certain age were so similar that we all had difficulty following the story, wondering which sister was talking/fighting/ripping out ninja hearts.(One book clubber: "Actually, they all annoyed me, so I didn't care which was which.")
• On the subject of ninja hearts: several teens were troubled by Lizzie Bennet's eagerness to do violence. She wants to cut Darcy's throat for insulting her, she rips out a ninja's heart and eats it (poor guy was just following orders!), and constantly reminds EVERYONE that she trained with Shaolin monks this one time at warrior camp. It got annoying.
• What's with all the innuendo?! The Bennet girls love country dances hosted by well-off neighbors, and properly refer to those dances as 'balls.' Repeatedly. And the graphic novel's letterer bolded the word. Every. Time. Not gonna lie - some book club time was spent reading aloud some of those passages, to many, many giggles.

For the most part, the book club wasn't crazy about this selection, though we had a lot of fun discussing it. I did hear one clubber, who hadn't finished it, say during our discussion, "Wow. I really missed a lot!"


If you enjoyed P & P & Z: the GN for the zombie violence, try out some of these Kearsten-approved titles! (Okay, yeah, so maybe other librarians would recommend these titles, too. Stop trying to pretend that I'm not the only librarian that matters to you. Please.)

Intense Zombie Reads for Teens


Ashes by Ilsa Bick.  Alex, a resourceful seventeen-year-old running from her incurable brain tumor, Tom, who has left the war in Afghanistan, and Ellie, an angry eight-year-old, join forces after an electromagnetic pulse sweeps through the sky and kills most of the world's population, turning some of those who remain into zombies and giving the others superhuman senses.


The Enemy (and sequel The Dead) by Charlie Higson.  After a disease turns everyone over sixteen into brainless, decomposing, flesh-eating creatures, a group of teenagers leave their shelter and set out of a harrowing journey across London to the safe haven of Buckingham Palace.


The Forest of Hands and Teeth (1st in a trilogy) by Carrie Ryan.  Through twists and turns of fate, orphaned Mary seeks knowledge of life, love, and especially what lies beyond her walled village and the surrounding forest, where dwell the unconsecrated, aggressive flesh-eating people who were once dead.


Monster Island (Monster trilogy) by David Wellington.  It's one month after a global disaster. Manhattan has become Monster Island after a plague has turned all its denizens into shambling, rotting animated corpses, except for a couple who have kept their intelligence and also acquired psychic powers. When an expedition from Africa arrives, composed of teenage girl-soldiers and a former U.N. weapons inspector, the zombie masters mobilize their forces to kill or eat the living humans.


The Reapers are the Angels by Alden Bell.  Zombies have infested a fallen America. A young girl named Temple is on the run. Haunted by her past and pursued by a killer, Temple is surrounded by death and danger, hoping to be set free...She can't remember a time before the zombies, but she does remember an old man who took her in and the younger brother she cared for until the tragedy that set her on a personal journey toward redemption.


Rot and Ruin (and sequel Dust and Decay) by Jonathan Maberry.  In a post-apocalyptic world where fences and border patrols guard the few people left from the zombies that have overtaken civilization, fifteen-year-old Benny Imura is finally convinced that he must follow in his older brother's footsteps and become a bounty hunter.


World War Z by Max Brooks. World War Z  imagines a Studs Terkel-like character traveling the world to assess the impact of a war between humans and zombies. Though humans have survived "World War Z", many are still haunted by those terrible years. Max Brooks sets out to reveal the people's stories, to tell the true history of what happened.

Zombies, zombies, zombies

They are a big deal in teen literature this year. It's crazy how many zombie books there are right now! I wanted to share the one that grabbed me as soon as it came in the new book cart this past week: Zombie High Yearbook '64.


How can you not want to flip through this "yearbook" just based on its front cover? A traditional yearbook--sort of. Everyone just happens to be zombies! These black and white photos are filled with detail and a few blood splatters thrown in for good measure. Add in the student's comments like:

"Roses are Red
Violet are blue,
Your brains are pink,
and your sweet guts stink." You get the picture.



Obviously, this is not for everybody. It's a great book to flip through and catch how many zombie in-jokes you can find. If you're a zombie fan, you've got to see this book!

The Dark & Hollow Places

In March the third and final (?) book in The Forest of Hands & Teeth trilogy came out. I finally carved out the time read it, and I’m glad I did. I believe this is the strongest book in the series, probably because the narrator is the strongest in the series. Also, this book was action, action, action. Zombie action, which is, of course, the best kind. Yet the author still finds time to bring a love triangle into the mix, and this time she outdid herself—not only is there a love triangle, there is a double love triangle. Kudos on that, Carrie Ryan.

As usual, the narrator engages in a lot of inner, angsty thought, but Annah’s main concern is survival. As the Dark City (which I finally found out for sure was New York City) implodes beneath the barrage of a zombie horde (you don’t want to encounter one), survival becomes more and more impossible. Annah, terribly scarred from a fall into a nest of barbed wire, rises to the challenge. She is determined to live, especially when she finds her long lost twin sister (not as cheesy as it sounds) and her childhood friend/love, who, unfortunately, has the hots for the non-scarred twin. Fear not, though! Remember infected-but-immune Catcher from Book Two? Well, even if you don’t remember him, it doesn’t matter; the author gets you up to speed. He is available and hot (literally as well as figuratively, due to the infection in his blood) and despite herself, Annah is drawn to him. But curse it all, if he isn’t still carrying a torch for Gabry, a.k.a Annah’s twin, a.k.a., the much less-compelling narrator of Book Two. Can’t a scrappy, scarred survivor girl catch a break? No, she cannot because not only is she running from a zombie horde, but now she’s got an even scarier human nemesis to face. Scarier because humans, unlike zombies, are capable of calculated, cold-blooded thought. And these humans have lots of firepower available to them.The Recruiters, who used to be a kind of army fighting the zombies, have become corrupt thugs who care only for their own interests and bully the ever-dwindling human population. They want Catcher because his immunity is valuable and they've figured out the best way to control Catcher is by controlling the people he cares about, one of whom is Annah. Either Annah will kick survivor mode into high gear or she won’t survive at all.

A satisfying end to a series, full of action and conflict, narrated by a strong female character. You can read this without reading the first two books if you want to, though some things won't be as interesting. I enjoyed the first two books too, but they both indulged in a more than a bit of plodding pace. I didn't find that to be the case with Book Three. Not every question the series raised for me was answered, but I finished feeling like I'd gotten a satisfying end and a good story.

Two New Books

One of the advantages of working in a library is knowing what new books are coming out soon and putting them on hold. The drawback is that those books tend to arrive all at the same time. Case in point: the eight new teen books that materialized on my desk yesterday afternoon. I have to read fast (not a problem) and prioritize which titles I want to start with (a little harder).

The first book on my list is The Dust of 100 Dogs by A.S. King. Today I'm 50 pages in and hooked. The premise is a fabulous one---female pirate, Emer, buries a great treasure right before she dies. However she is also cursed right before she dies. Emer must live 100 lives as a dog before being reincarnated as a human. Through each of these lives she retains her memory and knowledge of her first life as a pirate. Which means that when Emer is finally housed in the body of Saffron, a twentieth century teenage girl, her whole focus is on getting out of suburbia and back to the Carribbean to dig up her treasure. So far I am loving this. Even if the prose is sometimes a little clunky, the humor is great. This is the most original premise I've encountered for some time. Plus, I quite like the cover, which you might remember is something that's probably more important to me that it ought to be. Call me shallow.

Second on the list, The Zombie Queen of Newbury High by Amanda Asbhy. I've got to say it's the cover that draws me to this book. That cover gets an A+. In fact I was so distracted by the cover that I had to look up a book review to remember what the book is about. In short, a teenage girl, attempting to cast a love spell, accidentally turns her entire high school into a bunch of flesh-eating zombies. Man, do I like zombies. Haven't read this yet so I can't give a review, but it's next on my to-be-read list and I have high hopes for it.

The Forest of Hands and Teeth

In the Forest of Hands and Teeth Carrie Ryan creates a post-apocalyptic world you wouldn't want to live in. Imagine a world in which the Unconsecrated (we know them as zombies) outnumber the living and only a series of metal fences keep the reanimated dead from feasting on the flesh of the last surviving humans. Naturally the bite of an Unconsecrated infects the living, killing them and turning them. So those dead folk milling around bear the faces of people you once loved, and if you stumble too close to the links in the fence, you could shortly be joining the rank of the monsters . Good times!

Teenaged Mary loses first her father, then her mother to the Forest of Hands and Teeth. Then her brother turns her out of the house. No man will speak for Mary, so she winds up at the Cathedral, destined to join the religious Sisterhood. The reader immediately gets the heebie-jeebies about these Sisters, who clearly know more about the zombie situation than they're letting on. The Sisters insist that nothing exists beyond the forest, that once the fences run out there are only more Unconsecrated and certain doom. But Mary's mother told her tales of an ocean and Mary's obsession with finding a life beyond the limits of her village begins to overshadow everything, even her budding love for her childhood companion,Travis. This love is already complicated by the fact that Travis is bethrothed to her best friend and then complicated further still when Travis's brother finally asks for Mary to be his wife. Luckily at this point the zombies attack.

I loved this, though the first few chapters went a little slowly at first. Perhaps it was just my mood but I found some of the information repeated more times than neccesary. Luckily the story quickly picks up. It's gripping, exciting and eerie, just as a zombie tale is meant to be. I liked that Mary was torn between love for a man and her obsessive goal of finding life beyond the confined village. The constant backdrop of moaning zombies was a nice touch---the reader can practically hear the constant caterwauling and it's easy to imagine how unnerving that would be. I also got the willies every time the author described how close the main characters would get to the fences, close enough for the zombies to run their ragged fingers through the humans' hair.

I really only have two complaints about the book: 1) Exactly how much did the Sisters know? I never felt like this was adequately answered. Perhaps it was a subtlety I missed entirely; and 2) Couldn't we have gotten a better cover? This cover does not scream ZOMBIE NOVEL! Portrait of a contemplative teenage girl is fine for mainstream contemporary, but let's up the ante for post-apocalyptic zombie love triangle. Honestly! That said, this book is well worth reading. Settle in for a creepy ride, and hope and pray you never find yourself face to face with the Unconsecrated.

Soulless by Christopher Golden

The tragic event that comes to be known as “the uprising” begins on the set of the Sunrise morning show in New York City. Three world renowned mediums have been invited to conduct a televised mass séance to give the dead an opportunity to communicate with the ones they have left behind. Unfortunately, the dead have something else in mind…

Soulless brings up an interesting theory believed by some to explain the existence of ghosts. The theory is that a person’s soul and spirit actually separate at death. The soul, which is the pure and divine part of who we are, moves on to whatever eternal afterlife one believes in. The spirit, which is energy generated by who we are in terms of our personality, thoughts, memories, etc., sometimes sticks around after death to haunt a house or something. In Soulless, the spirits of the dead actually repossess their bodies (or what is left of them).

Soon after the séance begins, things begin to go terribly wrong. The mediums become catatonic and their linked hands become inseparable. In cemeteries along the East Coast, the dead begin to rise up from their graves. Some of them just want to go home again to see their loved ones, but most are hungry for the only thing that can ease their “emptiness”…human flesh!

Soulless follows the stories of various teens dealing with the uprising including the daughter of one of the mediums. There’s blood and guts galore and plenty of “edge of your seat”-type action…These zombies are of the fast-moving variety, as opposed to the slow shuffling variety featured in older classic zombie movies like Night of the Living Dead. Fans of raw, fast-paced, zombielicious horror will not want to miss reading this one.

Zombies Gonna Eat Yer BRAIN!

It’s The Stepford Wives meets Mean Girls in Brian James's Zombie Blondes, a new book about the high price of popularity. Hannah, a newcomer to tiny Maplecrest, feels drawn to the perfect posse of blonde, blue-eyed cheerleaders who rule her local high school. But Lukas, the only boy in town who will talk to Hannah, warns her that the cheerleaders aren’t what they seem. In fact, Lukas claims, those It Girls are zombies. Flesh-eaters. The reanimated walking dead. Hannah finds this hard to believe (as one would expect) and decides to try out for the cheerleading squad anyway. Amusingly, the teacher who holds the tryouts is named Mrs. Donner. (Nod to cannibalistic pioneers noted and appreciated!) So, what’s the deal? Are the cheerleaders really flesh-eating monsters? I certainly won’t spoil Zombie Blondes by telling. I will say I liked the book although I got pretty impatient with the main character—she shows little backbone, turns on the one, albeit weird, guy who befriends her, and embraces the pettiness and cruelty of the local popular girls because she's riding high on the idea of finally fitting in somewhere. I really liked the Lukas character much better than the Hannah character and found it a little hard to be sympathetic to Hannah. Still, a fun read.

Zombie teenagers seems to be a popular subject these days. Case in point: Generation Dead by Dan Waters. In this book, dead teens start coming back to life, and Phoebe, a goth girl, falls in love with one of the "living challenged" guys. I haven't read this one yet, but it sounds amusing, plus I love the cover. One of my teenage co-workers recently read this one and liked it very much. I have it on my to-be-read list, but I think I need a small break from zombies. Ironically, the next book I plan to blog is entitled Living Dead Girl, but that's actually a metaphor and has absolutely nothing to do with brain-chomping zombies.

Zombies Calling by Faith Erin Hicks

Calling all zombie movie fans…this action-packed graphic novel might be worth a read.

Joss is a college student with a lot on her mind at the moment. She’s concerned about upcoming college exams, paying off her student loans and escaping from the flesh-eating zombies waiting just outside her dormitory window. Together with her roommates Sonnet and Robyn, she must call upon the tried and true rules of the zombie movie genre (i.e., When surrounded by zombies, never leave the mall.) in order to stay alive.

This book is definitely loads of fun to read, but if you’re looking for a zombie book that offers a truly frightening reading experience, you might want to consider other options like Stephen King’s Cell or William Sleator’s The Boy Who Couldn’t Die. The fright-factor of Zombies Calling is much closer to Shawn of the Dead than say, Dawn of the Dead. The fact that our heroine is shown wielding a spork on the cover makes this clear from the outset. Also, the zombies look sort of dumb (Imagine how a zombie might look in an Archie’s comic book.) and Joss and Sonnet seem way more disturbed by the revelation that their roommate Robyn is a virgin than by the fact that they are being stalked by the walking dead.

Do You Prefer Your Zombies Smothered in Technology, With a Side of Magic or Just a Dash of Reality?

Cell by Stephen King.

A little like The Stand, with quite a lot of zombie-movie thrown in (which is to be expected, considering one of the dedicatees is George Romero, the granddaddy of zombie movies), Cell, by Stephen King, follows Clay, a regular kind of guy. Ecstatic about having just sold his first two graphic novels, Clay stops for ice cream in downtown Boston, and ends up witnessing the fallout of what he and other survivors begin to call the Pulse: every person who uses their cell phone suddenly has his/her brain wiped clean of everything except the urge to kill. Realizing what’s happening, Clay joins with a couple other survivors and tries to get home to his ex-wife and son, desperately hoping that he can find to them before the Pulse does.

Cell is not for the faint-hearted, as there’s tons of gore (in the beginning, Clay watches a victim of the Pulse tearing off a dog’s ear with his teeth). However, if you don’t mind the gore, Cell is a great read. It’s suspenseful, fast-paced, and, even better, I was delightfully reluctant to use my cell phone the whole time I was reading it. I also caught myself crafting my own “In-Case-of-Zombie” plan… (for more about Cell, see Greg's excellent posting from Feb. 15th)

Dead Beat by Jim Butcher.

If, instead, you prefer your zombies created by magic, try the seventh entry in the fantastic Harry Dresden series, Dead Beat, by Jim Butcher. Dead Beat finds Harry, a wizard whose main line of work is as a private investigator in modern-day Chicago, faced with trying to save the world from power-hungry necromancers who – you guessed it – use zombies for their dirty work.

Now, one of the things I love about the Dresden series is that Harry’s world is very similar to that of, say, the TV series, Buffy, the Vampire Slayer: while it looks normal to most people (us, for example), Harry and his friends/cohorts (and Buffy and the “Scoobies”) know that there’s a very seamy and scary world that we normals don’t see, full of magic, faeries, werewolves, vampires and everything else that goes bump in the night. Harry’s also my favorite kind of hero: a reluctant badass with a dark, sarcastic and sometimes silly sense of humor.

No, you don’t absolutely have to read the whole series in order to get what’s going on in Dead Beat (though I definitely recommend the series, ‘cause it’s a blast), this seventh installment is my favorite. Harry’s especially reluctant lately, seeing as he’s got a new roommate, he’s not in the best shape he’s ever been, and he’s forced to dodge numerous bad guys, most more powerful than he. The big payoff is the when the, er… poo hits the fan: a more rollicking – yet tense and terrifying – good time I’ve not had in a long while.

The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living
Dead, by Max Brooks.

And finally, if, like me, zombie books and movies get you wondering what you would do, try The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead, by Max Brooks. Chock full of great advice for surviving any zombie attack, this tongue–in-cheek guide is a must-read for fans of the horror book/movie genre. My favorite advice? From the “Top Ten Lessons for Surviving a Zombie Attack: 3. Use your head – cut off theirs.”

What makes The Zombie Survival Guide even better are the ‘factual’ accounts of zombie attacks throughout history. Some are written so matter-of-factly (and are so creepy) you’ll be half-tempted to believe them. I know I was…

Cell by Stephen King

For anyone who has ever been annoyed by a loud-mouthed person chatting noisily on a cell phone in the library or at a table next to yours in a restaurant, this book is for you…

Beginning on page 6 of King’s latest bestseller, “The Pulse”---as it later comes to be known---is delivered through cell phones everywhere. Those who are unlucky enough to be using a cell at that moment are instantly transformed into vicious zombie-like killing machines ( phone-crazies ). Clay Riddell, a comic book illustrator, is in Boston selling his work when The Pulse hits. As he waits in-line for ice-cream, Clay becomes aware that something ominous has occurred when the woman standing in front of him suddenly closes her cell phone and tries to climb through the window of the Mister Softee truck to tear out the ice cream vendor's throat. At this point, things go bad very quickly as Boston falls under attack by thousands of mindless, bloodthirsty phone-crazies .

Clay joins forces with a small band of “normies”---as you might have guessed…those who have not been changed into phone-crazies ---and sets off on a chaotic and horrifying journey back to his home state of Maine where he hopes to find his wife and son still alive, and unaffected by The Pulse.

Cell’s intriguing, fast-paced storyline makes the book difficult to put down once you start reading. King does offer up a bit of a gore-fest, so if you have a difficult time tolerating things like decaying flesh, missing body parts, and “blood-O'-plenty” in your reads…you might want to steer clear of this one.