Customer Picks
January/February 2006 Picks
Inheritance #2: Eldest by Christopher Paolini
"Darkness falls...despair abounds...evil reigns...
Eragon and his dragon, Saphira, have just saved the rebel state from destruction by the mighty forces of King Galbatorix, cruel ruler of the Empire. Now Eragon must travel to Ellesmera, land of the elves, for further training in the skills of the Dragon Rider: magic and swordsmanship. Soon he is on the journey of a lifetime, his eyes open to awe-inspring new places and people, his days filled with fresh adventure. But chaos and betrayal plague him at every turn, and nothing is what it seems. Before long, Eragon doesn't know whom he can trust. Meanwhile, his cousin Roran must fight a new battle-one that might put Eragon in even graver danger.
Will the king's dark hand strangle all resistance? Eragon may not escape with even his life. . . ."
Recommended by Drew Taylor
$21.00
Deep Midnight by Shannon Drake
"A Carnivale ball in Venice takes a terrifying turn for book critic Jordan Riley. As festivity turns into frenzy, she is rescued by a man disguised as a wolf. But did she witness the evening's entertainment--or was it something far more sinister? Jordan is led on a nightmare journey in this continuation of the saga begun in "Beneath a Blood Red Moon" and "When Darkness Falls"."
Recommended by Pam Kinney
$6.99
The Raphael Affair by Iain Pears
"This is the first of a series of highly knowledgeable detective novels by an art historian about the art world. Set in Rome, it features the perpetually beset General Bottando of the Italian National Art Theft Squad; his glamorous assistant, Flavia di Stefano; and Jonathan Argyll, a British art historian. When Jonathan is arrested for breaking into an obscure church in Rome, he claims that it contains a long-lost Raphael hidden under a painting by Mantini. Further investigation reveals that the painting has disappeared. Then it miraculously reappears in the hands of the top British art dealer, Edward Byrnes. How has Byrnes found out about the hidden masterpiece, and whom is he acting for? There is also the curious matter of the safety-deposit box full of sketches closely resembling certain features of the newly discovered painting. A hideous act of vandalism occurs, then murder. Bottando faces the most critical challenge of his career, and Jonathan and Flavia find themselves in unexpected physical danger."
Recommended by Maggie King
$6.50
The Second Summoning by Tanya Huff
"After closing the portal to hell, Claire and her talking cat, Austin, acquired a new companion--Dean, who was a Bystander and should not have remembered Keepers existed. But with Dean around, and a little of her sister Diana's meddling--the world is heading for Chaos, and Claire is about to face a challenge beyond her wildest imagination."
Recommended by Allison Herndon
$6.99
The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde
"In this delicious sequel to The Eyre Affair and Lost in a Good Book, Fforde's redoubtable (and now throwing-up-pregnant) heroine Thursday Next once again does battle with philistine bibliophobes, taking a furlough from her duties as a SpecOps Literary Detective to vacation in the Well of Lost Plots, the 26 noisome sub-basements of the Great Library. Pursued by her memory-modifying nemesis Aornis Hades, Thursday joins Jurisfiction's Character Exchange Program, filling in for "Mary," sidekick to the world-weary detective hero of Caversham Heights, a hilariously awful police procedural. At the imminent launch of UltraWord, the vaunted "Last Word" in Story Operating Systems, Thursday's friend and mentor Miss Havisham is gruesomely killed, and Thursday gamely sets out to restore order to her underground world, where technophiles ruthlessly recycle unpublished books and sell plot devices and stock characters on the black market. Meanwhile, Aornis is doing her fiendish worst to make Thursday forget Landen, her missing husband and father of her child. If this all sounds a bit confusing, it is-until the reader gets the hang of Fforde's intricate mix of parody, social satire and sheer gut-busting fantasy. Marvelous creations like syntax-slaughtering grammasites and the murderous Minotaur roam this unusual novel's pages, and Fforde's fictional epigraphs, like his minihistory of "book operating systems," are worth the cover price in themselves. Fforde's sidesplitting sendup of an increasingly antibookish society is a sheer joy."
---Publishers Weekly
Recommended by Katharine Herndon
$14.00
