Book Talk

Things that go bump…

True tales of haunted places sounds like an oxymoron, but that is what Joanne Austin reports on in Weird Encounters: True Tales of Haunted Places. When Marist freshman Shelley Sperling was killed by a spurned ex-boyfriend, she never left the college. She still wanders the third floor of her dormitory where, the current residents feel, she is insuring their safety. In Suffolk County, Long Island, the Ettl family built their dream house. They had no problem till they enclosed their porch and made it a den. It seems by doing that they trapped a long dead Shinnecock Indian spirit. Following consultation with paranormal specialists the family left a window open a few inches so the spirit could come and go. All ghostly activity ceased. You never know…

Dr. Worm Miller has written a shocking expose of the 300 year old cover-up of the importance of zombies in American history. 17,000 years ago the first humans colonized the continent by way of the Bering land bridge because…they were fleeing from Asian zombies! And pity the early settlers. The increase in population from immigration led to, you guessed it, an increase in the zombie population too. (A larger supply of food!) For more historical facts like these read A Zombie’s History of the United States.

We usually think of UFOs as a modern phenomenon, but Jacques Vallee and Chris Aubeck have compiled five hundred reports of sightings from ancient to modern times in Wonders in the Sky: Unexplained Aerial Objects from Antiquity to Modern Times. In every known culture and throughout history there are stories of humanoid visitations, in 80 AD a fast moving airship was reported over Scotland, in China 314 three suns flying east were seen, and in Jerusalem in 351 appeared a cross brighter than the sun which stayed for three days.

She-Wolves: the Women who Ruled England before Elizabeth, by Helen Castor is actually history (but given the preceding titles, maybe they WERE wolves???) Four hundred years before Elizabeth was Matilda, grand-daughter of William the Conqueror, and later Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella of France and Margaret of Anjou, all who ruled by avoiding a direct challenge to male rule.

Living in an upstate New York college town as Jane Fairfax, bookstore owner and vampire Jane Austen, complicates her placid life when she writes the bestselling book, Constance. Will her legion of new fans uncover her true identity? Jane Goes Batty by Michael Thomas Ford is the sequel to the popular, Jane Bites Back.

Thirteen years ago Jack Winter traded his soul with a demon, in exchange for his life. Having recently met the girl of his dreams, Pete, he is not going to Hell without a fight. Besides, he’s needed in Black London, the supernatural underworld where the old gods are stirring. Demon Bound is the second in the Black London series by Caitlin Kittredge.

In Dogsland, the rich lead sumptuous lives and the poor scrape by. Fugitive Rachel Nolander hides in her brother’s squalid apartment, terrified someone will discover her demon parentage. She is soon to meet another child of a demon in this first book in the Dogsland Trilogy, Never Knew Another by J.M. McDermott.

Native developer Jason Red Cloud has been sent down the Spirit Road with a war club in his skull. There are signs that a ritual may have been performed at the crime scene. With Red Cloud haunting his dreams, Sioux FBI agent Manny Tanno is assigned to find his killer. C.M. Wendelboe has written the first of a new series, Death Along the Spirit Road.

Virginia Cooper
Adult Services Librarian