The Graveyard Book

by Neil Gaiman

The Man Jack has a job to do, but he fails on one small point. That small point is an infant boy who manages to escape Jack’s murderous intentions by crawling his way into a local graveyard. The inhabitants of the graveyard, being dead and all, aren’t sure what to do with the little tyke. Mr. and Mrs. Owens, a couple who never had children when they were alive, decide that they want to raise the child as their own. Some graveyard residents think it would be wonderful to have a living boy amongst them. Others do not. After all, how could they acquire the things like food and clothing that a living boy would need? That’s where Silas comes in. Silas straddles the world between the living and the dead and agrees to be the boy’s guardian. Silas can come and go and make sure that the boy has everything he needs. The first thing he needs, though, is a name. The residents debate who among them the child is most like, but then decide that he is like nobody but himself, so they call him Nobody, or Bod for short.

The story follows Bod as he spends his childhood growing up in the graveyard, learning all of the little graveyard tricks and making friends with all of the ghost children who live there. Those children stay the same age, but Bod continues to get older. As he ages he makes friends with some of the teenage ghosts, including the ghost of the witch who lives in the forgotten part of the cemetery. He’s going to need all the friends he can get because The Man Jack is still out there, waiting to finish the job he started years before.

The Graveyard Book is a very charming story that is a little dark, but not too scary. It’s part ghost story, part mystery and Gaiman puts enough twists in the tale to keep you guessing until the end. Come in to the library and check it out!

Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story

by Christopher Moore

What do you do when you’re a freshly made vampire with no guidance? You find yourself a roommate/boyfriend who can do things during the day like pick up your last paycheck and get your car out of the impound lot. The living situation isn’t so simple, though, because the roommate/boyfriend is also the night manager at the local grocery store. That kind of defeats the point of the arrangement. He, Tommy, is simultaneously fascinated and terrified by your condition and borrows every vampire book he can find from the library because he wants to test which of the myths are real and which are just made up.

These are some of the day to day (or night to night, rather) trials and tribulations for newly undead Jody. Most of these things are manageable, but she does run into a few problems here and there. First, there’s a creepy homeless guy who keeps following her around and second, the police start noticing a pattern with Jody and Tommy and a few dead bodies that are a little short on blood. The police don’t believe in vampires, though, and Tommy’s going to have some difficulty explaining why he stuffed his lifeless girlfriend in a freezer along with another dead homeless guy.

Not all of their problems revolve around avoiding the cops or creepy dudes who lurk in the shadows. Tommy and Jody also have everyday relationship issues as well. Maybe Tommy would rather date the new checkout girl at the supermarket. She does have the distinct advantage of being alive and having a less restrictive sleep schedule. And maybe Jody would prefer to find somebody who isn’t going to get all old and wrinkly in a few short decades. They’ll get around to sorting that stuff out, I’m sure, but in the mean time there’s work to be done. One of Tommy’s crew at the supermarket just smashed up the meat display case while skiing behind the floor waxer.

Gil's All Fright Diner

A vampire, a werewolf, and a rusty pickup truck make for an unlikely trio of heroes in A. Lee Martinez’s Gil’s All Fright Diner. On their way to nowhere in particular, Earl, a vampire, and Duke, a werewolf, stop for a sandwich at an off-the-beaten-path diner that may be serving up more than grilled cheese and fries. Their first clue that things might not be as quiet as they appear in dusty Rockwood is the minor zombie nuisance that interrupts their meal. Well, Duke’s meal, that is. Earl had a bite earlier. Loretta, the diner’s proprietor, doesn’t seem to be too upset by the zombies except for the fact that she’s counted 181 of them so far and the local cemetery only has about 100 plots. Duke and Earl decide they had better stick around to see what’s going on.

Meanwhile, Tammy, or Mistress Lilith as Chad (her lone minion in her sadly underpopulated cult) calls her, wants little more than to unleash a few thousand ancient and evil gods upon an unsuspecting world. Can Duke and Earl figure out who is behind all of the strange happenings in Rockwood before Tammy, er… Mistress Lilith, brings about the end of the world? Will Earl fall for the cute ghost who hangs out at the cemetery behind the diner? If the local general store doesn’t carry blue candles for your ritual, will white candles and some blue spray paint do the trick? And just what happened to ol’ Gil anyway? To find out, check it out from the library!

A Little Note About October

To get into the "spirit" of the month, we're going to be taking a look at a few books with supernatural themes. The LFHS library has quite a large collection of books about vampires, ghosts, and other creatures for you to check out and read.

Not all monsters are scary. Werewolves can be caring, vampires can be charming, and ghosts can be like family. But if you want to be scared, we certainly have those kinds of books, too.

So pull the covers up over your head and turn on the flashlight and get yourself ready for some spooky good times. And that noise coming from outside your door is probably just the cat. Probably.