Sept. 8, 2008
"The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual Collection"
Edited by Gardner R. Dozois
Hardback: 704 pages
Published in 2008 by St. Martin's Press.
In the new millennium, what secrets lay beyond the far reaches of the universe? What mysteries belie the truths we once held to be self evident? The world of science fiction has long been a porthole into the realities of tomorrow blurring the line between life and art. Now, in The Year’s Best Science Fiction Twenty-Fifth Annual Collection the very best SF authors explore ideas of a new world.
August 31, 2008
"The Running Man"
By Richard Bachman, aka, Stephen King
Hardback: 336 pages
Published in 1999 by Signet.
The year is 2025. The Running Man is America's favorite television game show. Ben Richards is the program's latest contestant-and the Hunters' latest target in a rigged game of death... This is a very cool book, but if you're expecting the same story that you saw in the movie version, think again. The book and movie are very different.
August 17, 2008
"More Annotated H.P. Lovecraft"
By S.T. Joshi and Peter Cannon
Hardback: 312 pages
Published in 1999 by Bantam Books.
H. P. Lovecraft is one of America's giants of the horror genre. Now, in this second volume of annotated tales, Lovecraft scholars S. T. Joshi and Peter Cannon provide another rare opportunity to look into the mind of a genius. Their extensive notes lift the veil between real events in the writer's life and the words that spill out onto the page in magnificent grotesquerie.
August 10, 2008
"Thinner"
By Richard Bachman, aka, Stephen King
Hardback: 309 pages
Published in 1984 by Signet.
"Thinner" focuses on an obese lawyer named William Halleck, who has recently fought an agonizing court case in which he was charged with vehicular manslaughter after he ran over an old woman who was part of a group of traveling Gypsies. Halleck is acquitted and as he leaves the courthouse, the old woman's ancient father strokes his cheeks and whispers one word to him: "Thinner." It's all down hill from there for Halleck.
August 7, 2008
"Shadows and Dust: Volume II"
By Kevin McKinley
Paperback: 184 pages
Published in 2007 by Lulu Publishing.
"Shadows and Dust: Volume II" is the second installment of the author's weekly articles which have appeared in The Tri-City Ledger, a Flomaton, Alabama newspaper since 2005. This installment contains articles from April 2006 until 2007. The 180-page book contains a review of antebellum and Civil War era history on a local level. It's a must-read for all Civil War buffs in Southwest Alabama.
July 26, 2008
"The Regulators"
By Richard Bachman, aka, Stephen King
Hardback: 500 pages
Published in January 1997 by Signet.
It's a summer afternoon in Ohio, and on Poplar Street everything's normal. The paper boy is making his rounds; the Carver kids are bickering at the corner convenience store; a Frisbee is flying on the Reeds' lawn. The only thing that doesn't quite fit is the red van idling just up the hill. Soon it will begin to roll, and the killing will begin. 
July 20, 2008
"Fahrenheit 451"
By Ray Bradbury
Paperback: 179 pages
Published by Random House Publishing.
First published in 1953, "Fahrenheit 451" is a classic novel set in the future when books forbidden by a totalitarian regime are burned. The hero, a book burner, suddenly discovers that books are flesh and blood ideas that cry out silently when put to the torch. Reminded me of "1984," "A Clockwork Orange" and "Brave New World."
June 28, 2008
"Duma Key"
By Stephen King
Hardback: 624 pages
Published in January 2008 by Simon and Schuster Trade.
A terrible accident takes Edgar Freemantle's right arm and scrambles his memory and his mind, leaving him with little but rage as he begins the ordeal of rehabilitation. When his marriage suddenly ends, Edgar begins to wish he hadn't survived his injuries. He wants out. He ends up in Florida, and that's when things get a little weird.
June 22, 2008
"No Country For Old Men"
By Cormac McCarthy
Paperback: 320 pages
Published in July 2006 by Knopf Publishing Group.
In "No Country for Old Men," McCarthy strips down the American crime novel and broadens its concerns to encompass themes as ancient as the Bible and as contemporary as this morning’s headlines. McCarthy is one of America’s most honored writers. He has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
June 20, 2008
"The Colorado Kid"
By Stephen King
Paperback: 184 pages
Published in Oct. 2005 by Dorchester Publishing Company, Inc.
On an island off the coast of Maine, a man is found dead. There’s no identification on the body. Only the dogged work of a pair of local newspapermen and a graduate student in forensics turns up any clues, and it’s more than a year before the man is identified. And that’s just the beginning of the mystery. 
June 8, 2008
"The Somnambulist"
By Jonathan Barnes
Hardback: 353 pages
Published in Feb. 2008 HarperCollins Publisher
Remember the name Jonathan Barnes, for, with The Somnambulist, he has burst upon the literary scene with a breathtaking and brilliant, frightening and hilarious, dark invention that recalls Neil Gaiman, Susanna Clarke, and Clive Barker at their grimly fantastical best . . . with more than a pinch of Carl Hiaasen–esque outrageousness stirred into the demonically delicious brew.
May 25, 2008
"Black House"
By Stephen King and Peter Straub
Paperback: 680 pages
Published in 2003 by Random House
Twenty years ago, a boy named Jack Sawyer travelled to a parallel universe called The Territories to save his mother and her Territories "twinner" from a premature and agonizing death that would have brought cataclysm to the other world. Now Jack is a retired Los Angeles homicide detective living in the nearly nonexistent hamlet of Tamarack, Wis.
May 12, 2008
"The Annotated H.P. Lovecraft"
By H. P. Lovecraft and S. T. Joshi (Editor)
Paperback: 360 pages
Published in July 1997 by Signet
Now readers have an opportunity to further appreciate the greatness of Lovecraft's strange genius as Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi annotates, for the first time, some of Lovecraft's best tales. Joshi's text illuminates the more obscure references throughout Lovecraft's writing, and readers will also discover which story details are wholly fabricated by Lovecraft and which are taken from real life, such as the "Moodus Noises" and "Garden of the Gods." 
April 30, 2008
"Rose Madder"
By Stephen King
Paperback: 480 pages
Published in May 1996 by Signet
King's "Rose Madder" is the haunting story of a housewife who flees her abusive husband. She runs, thinking she is free. She's wrong--dead wrong. This is the story of Rose Daniels, "the most richly portrayed female King's ever created."* Escaping from her macabre marriage is not as easy as fleeing to a new city, picking a new name, finding a new job, and lucking out with a new man. Not with a husband like Norman...
April 27, 2008
"Raven"
By Charles Grant
Paperback: 256 pages
Published in February 1993 by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
Maclaren's tiny motel and restaurant is an oasis in the frigid silence of a deep-winter blizzard. When the night begins, there are nine souls trapped behind the snowdrifts--an ex-cop, a lady bartender, a cook, a pair of star-crossed lovers, an old guy and the host of a talk-radio show and his two female companions. Before long, they will be eight. Then seven. Then six.
April 20, 2008
"Storm of the Century: An Original Screenplay"
By Stephen King
Paperback: 400 pages
Published in February 1999 by Simon and Schuster Adult Publishing Group
For the first time in Stephen King's remarkable publishing history, the master storyteller presents an all-new, original tale written expressly for the television screen. While the residents of Little Tall Island have seen their share of nasty Maine Nor'easters, this one is different. Not only is it packing hurricane-force winds and up to five feet of snow, it's bringing something worse. 
April 6, 2008
"The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories"
By H.P. Lovecraft
Paperback: 448 pages
Published in October 1999 by Penguin Group (USA)
Lovecraft's biographer and preeminent interpreter, S. T. Joshi, has prepared this volume of 18 stories--from the early classics like "The Outsider" and "Rats in the Wall" to his mature masterworks, "The Call of Cthulhu" and "The Shadow Over Innsmouth." The first paperback to include the definitive corrected texts, "The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories" reveals the development of Lovecraft's mesmerizing narrative style, and establishes him as a canonical--and visionary--American writer. 
March 30, 2008
"The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon"
By Stephen King
Hardcover: 224 pages
Published in April 1999 by Simon & Schuster
Eager to escape the bickering of her recently-divorced mother and her brother, Pete, 9-year-old Trisha McFarland wanders off the main path of the Appalachian Trail, where they have embarked on a weekend outing. As she tries to take a short-cut to catch up to her family, she strays further from the trail and deeper into the second-growth, untrodden woods, where she has no means of navigation and little defense against the elements. 
March 23, 2008
"The Hungry Moon"
By Ramsey Campbell
Softcover: 360 pages
Published in 1986 by Tor Books
Ramsey Campbell has won more awards than any other living author of horror or fantasy, including four World Fantasy Awards, nine British Fantasy Awards, three Bram Stoker Awards, and two International Horror Guild Awards. Critically acclaimed both in the US and in England, Campbell is widely regarded as one of the genre's literary lights for both his short fiction and his novels. 
March 15, 2008
"Christine"
By Stephen King
Hardcover: 526 pages
Publisher: The Viking Press
It was love at first sight. From the moment seventeen-year-old Arnie Cunningham saw Christine, he knew he would do anything to possess her. But Christine is no lady. She is Stephen King's ultimate vehicle of terror. Published in 1983, this novel was one of King's early best-sellers. It was also made into a movie in 1983, directed by John Carpenter and staring Keith Gordon as Archie Cunningham.
March 8, 2008
"The Best American Short Stories 2007"
Edited By Stephen King
Softcover: 448 pages
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company
America's best-selling story anthology, featuring guest editor Stephen King and new series editor Heidi Pitlor. Edited by the best-selling author and pop culture icon Stephen King, this year's collection is an eclectic and exciting mix of diverse voices. Contributors include Richard Russo, John Barth, Jim Shepard, Alice Munro, William Gay, T.C. Boyle, Mary Gordon, Kate Walbert, Ann Beattie, and Louis Auchincloss. 
March 1, 2008
"Everything's Eventual"
By Stephen King
Softcover: 464 pages
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
From the stunningly fertile imagination of perhaps the greatest storyteller of our time, here are fourteen intense, eerie, and compelling stories, including one O. Henry Prize winner, stories from The New Yorker, and "Riding the Bullet" which, when published as an eBook, attracted over half a million online readers. Contains the short story "1408," now a major motion picture starring John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson.
Feb. 24, 2008
"Blaze"
By Stephen King
Softcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Blaze is the story of Clayton Blaisdell Jr. and the kidnapping of a baby heir worth millions. Blaze has been a slow thinker since childhood, when his father threw him down the stairs. After escaping an institution for boys when he was a teenager, Blaze hooks up with George, a criminal who thinks he has all the answers. But then George is killed, and Blaze, though haunted by his partner, is on his own. 
Feb. 17, 2008
"Lost Souls"
By Poppy Z. Brite
Softcover: 355 pages
Publisher: Dell Publishing
Published in Oct. 1993, "Lost Souls" is the first book listed on the Horror Writers Association's Recommended Reading List. This horror novel, the first written by Poppy Z. Brite, is the first and only novel-length adventure of Brite's Steve and Ghost characters, popularized in her numerous short stories. The novel is an extended version of the short story "The Seed of Lost Souls".
Jan. 25, 2008
"Secret Windows"
By Stephen King
Hardcover: 433 pages
Publisher: Book-of-the-Month Club
"Secret Windows: Essays and Fiction on the Craft of Writing" is a collection of short stories, essays, speeches, and book excerpts by Stephen King, published in 2000. It was marketed by Book-of-the-Month Club as a companion to King's On Writing. Although its title is derived from a King novella (Secret Window, Secret Garden), it is not otherwise related to that novella or the film adaptation, Secret Window.
Jan. 19, 2008
"The Hill of Dreams"
By Arthur Machen
Softcover: 159 pages
Publisher: Bibliobazzar
Arthur Machen (1863-1947) was a leading Welsh author. He is best known for his influential supernatural, fantasy, and horror fiction. Arthur Machen's classic tale, The Hill of Dreams. This is the book many consider the masterpiece of one of the most influential writers of fantasy and horror, a story echoed in the works of H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Peter Straub, Ramsey Campbell, and T. E. D. Klein, among many others.
Jan. 9, 2008
"Firestarter"
By Stephen King
Softcover: 416 pages
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
In this "terrifying and gripping" (Miami Herald) thriller, a young girl exhibits some rather explosive psychic powers. Now the government wants her for their own insane ends. Few authors have tapped into our secret fears as adeptly as Stephen King, Master of the Macabre and one of the most widely read novelists writing today. With his trademark blend of fantasy, horror, and psychological suspense, this prolific and immensely popular contemporary writer continues to remind us that evil is still a potent force in the world.
Jan. 1, 2008
"The Between"
By Tananarive Due
Hardcover: 289 pages
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
When Hilton was just a boy, his grandmother sacrificed her life to save him from drowning. Thirty years later, he begins to suspect that he was never meant to survive that accident, and that dark forces are working to rectify that mistake. Tananarive Due is a Miami Herald columnist. A finalist for the Bram Stoker Award for a first novel, she is also included in Naked Came the Manatee, a collaborative mystery novel featuring Miami writers. She lives in Miami, Fla.
One of MonroeCountyToday.com's goals is to promote reading and writing among the people of Monroe County. For that reason, MonroeCountyToday.com periodically recommends books to the general public. The Recommended Reading List is an on-going project, and MonroeCountyToday.com does accept nominations from the general public. Send your nominations to: leepeacock2002@hotmail.com