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.