The Moscoviad

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Anne Rice

Set in 1840's New Orleans, this historical novel traces the journey of the community of free people of color who were feared and ignored by whites. Suspended between worlds of black and white, finding stability only int their own community, they live in tension and ambiguity that form their greatest strength and their greatest weakness. The protagonist is a 14 year old boy named Marcel with one white and one free black parent. Together with his sister and two close friends they deal with the transition of adolescence and its mirror in the ambiguity of their social position. Marcel awakens when his idol, a famous novelist and free man of color comes to New Orleans to open a school. Marcel has been promised an education by his rich white father and Marcel intends to make it at Christophe's school. Meanwhile, his sister Marie is being courted by a prosperous and respected friend of Marcel's, but her vulnerability and the plans of other jeopardize her happiness. Marcel is making his own journey to adulthood through relationships with Christophe and his family. When it is announced that Marcel is to learn a trade to support himself instead of finish academic study, Marcel rebels, is removed from school, and wanders seeking the truth about who he is and what he was meant to do.

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A.A. Carr

Lurking in the caves of eastern New Mexico, Falke, a thousand-year-old vampire, chooses his next bride: Melissa Roanhorse, an Albuquerque teenager. To regain his granddaughter's life, Michael Roanhorse, an old Navajo sheepherder wise to the power of myth, must outwit the vampire and his loyal coven. So begins A. A. Carr's Eye Killers, a novel that combines the Eastern European legend of the vampire with the Navajo tale of the monster slayer. The songs of Michael Roanhorse's childhood include potent chants passed down through his grandmother, who sang to him of Changing Woman and her Warrior Twins, Monster Slayer and Child of the Water. But Michael's spiritual strength and his memory have waned with the years. Who is left to help reunite him with his family and his family with their heritage? Michael enlists Diana Logan, Melissa's young English teacher, to wrestle Melissa from the vampire. But to conquer Falke they must also overpower his coven: Elizabeth, captured by Falke in the 1850s during her family's journey along the Santa Fe Trail, and Hanna, once a prostitute in Old Albuquerque, who aspires to supplant Falke's vampire reign. Michael must invoke ancient traditions to bring Melissa home. The elders undertake to teach Diana, but her Irish-American heritage has not prepared her for a fight against shape-shifting vampires who have lived - and murdered - for centuries. In Eye Killers, Carr delivers an imaginative clash of cultures - both a suspenseful thriller and a valid rendering of navajo and Pueblo tribal life in contemporary New Mexico. His inventiveness, expressed through melodic prose and layers of fine storytelling, weaves new legends of the American Southwest.

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Juliet Marillier

Longing to become a Wolfskin warrior in the service of the god Thor, young Eyving sets out with his older brother to a fabled land, where he finds the seer Nessa and is bound by a childhood oath to kill the only thing he has ever loved.

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Grady Hendrix

Something strange is happening at the Orsk furniture superstore in Cleveland, Ohio. Every morning, employees arrive to find broken Kjerring bookshelves, shattered Glans water goblets, and smashed Liripip wardrobes. Sales are down, security cameras reveal nothing, and store managers are panicking. To unravel the mystery, three employees volunteer to work a nine-hour dusk-till-dawn shift. In the dead of the night, they’ll patrol the empty showroom floor, investigate strange sights and sounds, and encounter horrors that defy the imagination. A traditional haunted house story in a thoroughly contemporary setting, Horrorstör comes packaged in the form of a glossy mail order catalog, complete with product illustrations, a home delivery order form, and a map of Orsk’s labyrinthine showroom. It’s “a treat for fans of The Evil Dead or Zombieland, complete with affordable solutions for better living.”—Kirkus Reviews.