A cassocked monk stands on a mountaintop. Arms outstretched, he forms a tau, the 19th letter of the Greek alphabet. Having escaped from within a cloistered Vatican-like chuch city compound called the Citadel, carved out of a mountain near the fictional Turkish city of Ruin, the escaped monk attracts media attention as he deliberately throws himself off the mountain. Brother Samuel, the escaped monk, knew a secret…a secret the monks of the Citadel have been protecting for thousands of years.

Now Liv Adamsen, an American journalist, learns that her phone number, carved into a small leather strap, has been found inside Samuel's stomach.  It turns out Brother Samuel was her long-missing and presumed dead twin brother. When she travels to Turkey to claim his remains, she finds herself the focus of three separate groups...the monks of the Citadel, who wish to cleanse the outside world of any hint of their secret; members of an equally ancient group known as the Mala, who believe Liv and her brother are the ones prophesied to break the Citadel's reign; and the police, who simply want to solve the strange mystery of her brother's very public suicide.  Enmeshed in intrigue, it isn’t long before she discovers that the monks of the Citadel will go to any length to protect their mysterious secret, known as the Sacrament, from the world...and the Mala will go to any lengths to expose that secret.

Though it draws the inevitable comparisons to Dan Brown, “Sanctus” is nevertheless a well-developed, entirely unique, and exciting debut with well-rounded characters and a plot that remains grounded despite the potential for hyperbole.  I couldn't put it down!

A lot of popular authors have books coming out this fall and winter! If you want to get a head-start on writing up your "to-read" lists, look no further!

Coming in November:

Evanovich, Janet.  Explosive Eighteen

Grafton, Sue.  V is for Vengeance

King, Stephen.  11/22/63

Patterson, James. Kill Alex Cross

Sanderson, Brandon.  The Alloy of Law

Coming in December:

Connelly, Michael.  The Drop

Cornwell, Patricia.  Red Mist

Koontz, Dean. 77 Shadow Street

McCall Smith, Alexander.  The Forgotten Affairs of Youth

Woods, Stuart.  D.C. Dead

Written in a series of short stories and vignettes, We the Animals is not what you would expect from a coming-of-age story. It delves deeply into the lives of a family continually balancing on the edge. Set in an unknown town in upstate New York, the unnamed seven year-old narrator and his two older brothers, Joel and Manny, experience a freedom foreign to most children their age, roaming the streets day and night while their mother works the graveyard shift and their father disappears for days at a time. What the boys fail to see is the dark reality of their situation; that their freedom is really neglect, their mother’s deep love for her children is also a form of her desperation, and their parent’s relationship, while passionate, is also volatile and dangerous.

Through glimpses we see the boys experience seemingly traumatic events: learning to swim by being abandoned in deep water, watching their father dig a grave in the backyard for no one in particular, packing up and leaving with their mother only to return after not knowing where to go, and understanding them as nothing extraordinary, as every-day life. As the boys grow they come to learn what it means to be an adult. While the narrator’s older brothers fall into their family’s vicious cycle of failure, aggression and indifference, he is desperate to separate himself from them, but at what price?

Even though the novel is slim, it packs an emotional punch. If you’re a fan of poetry, you will appreciate how Torres structures his novel and delicately navigates the story with a sensitivity that will stay with you long after you have finished it.

Angel Crawford, a high-school dropout on probation for possession of a stolen car, is going nowhere with her life. Stuck in a dead-end relationship with a dead-beat boyfriend, taking care of and hiding from her alcoholic father by turns, drinking to excess and taking illegal drugs, she is a mess. A white trash mess.  So she’s not too terribly surprised when she wakes up in the hospital one day and is told she was found by the side of the road, naked, having overdosed on drugs after leaving the bar with a man other than her boyfriend. What DOES surprise Angel is that there’s not a scratch on her when she clearly remembers being flung through the windshield after a terrible car accident. A mysterious benefactor has left her a cooler full of some kind of coffee drink with strict instructions to drink one every day and has arranged a job at the local morgue for Angel. Uncertain as to what’s going on, Angel nevertheless follows instructions and shows up for the job as a morgue van driver and autopsy assistant. It isn’t long before she realizes that she has a strange, insatiable craving for brains…a craving she resists as long as possible. But when she gives in, she realizes that she’s stronger, better, and more alive after eating them. When a horribly decaying man ambushes her van one evening looking for brains, it’s a short mental  hop from there to the fact that Angel herself is now one of the living dead.  Now she must figure out how to “live” in her current state, who her mysterious benefactor might be, and, more alarmingly, who is out there killing other zombies before falling victim herself.

Funny, intriguing, and surprisingly touching, My Life as a White Trash Zombie is hopefully only the first installment in the undead adventures of Angel Crawford.