1 2007 Summer Reading Program (juniors & seniors) Su

Martinez, A. Lee. Gil's All Fright Diner (2006 Alex Award winner) Something Evil (that'swith a capital E) is stalking Gil's All Night Diner in Martinez's terrific debut, a comic horrorfantasynovel. Heading the delightfully eccentric cast are buddies Earl (aka the Earl ofVampires) and Duke (aka the Duke of Werewolves), who are looking for a place to eat asthey drive through Rockwood, a small desert community besieged by cosmically weird stuff.Soon after stopping at Gil's Diner, the pair help Loretta, the formidable owner-operator,fend off a zombie attack. Determined to do the right thing, the two supernatural misfits takeon further challenges, such as trying to prevent Tammy (aka Mistress Lilith, Queen of theNight) and her loyal but dumb boyfriend, Chad, from ending the world. Fans of DouglasAdams and Joe R. Lansdale, who supplies a blurb, will happily sink their teeth into thiscombo platter of raunchy laughs and ectoplasmic ecstasy. (Publishers Weekly)McCarthy, Cormac. The Road (2007 Pulitzer Prize) Violence, in McCarthy'spostapocalyptic tour de force, has been visited worldwide in the form of a "long shear oflight and then a series of low concussions" that leaves cities and forests burned, birds andfish dead and the earth shrouded in gray clouds of ash. In this landscape, an unnamed manand his young son journey down a road to get to the sea. (The man's wife, who gave birthto the boy after calamity struck, has killed herself.) They carry blankets and scavenged foodin a shopping cart, and the man is armed with a revolver loaded with his last two bullets.Beyond the ever-present possibility of starvation lies the threat of roving bands ofcannibalistic thugs. The man assures the boy that the two of them are "good guys," butfrom the way his father treats other stray survivors the boy sees that his father has turnedinto an amoral survivalist, tenuously attached to the morality of the past by his fierce lovefor his son. (Publisher’s Weekly)Niffenegger, Audrey. The Time Traveler’s Wife Henry De Tamble is a Chicago librarianwith "Chrono Displacement" disorder; at random times, he suddenly disappears withoutwarning and finds himself in the past or future, usually at a time or place of importance inhis life. This leads to some wonderful paradoxes. From his point of view, he first met hiswife, Clare, when he was 28 and she was 20. She ran up to him exclaiming that she'dknown him all her life. He, however, had never seen her before. But when he reaches his40s, already married to Clare, he suddenly finds himself time traveling to Clare's childhoodand meeting her as a six-year-old. The book alternates between Henry and Clare's points ofview, and so does the narration. Reed ably expresses the longing of the one always leftbehind, the frustrations of their unusual lifestyle, and above all, her overriding love forHenry. (Publishers Weekly)Palwick, Susan. The Necessary Beggar (2006 Alex Award winner) In Gandiffri, a worldof peace and abundance, no one goes homeless or hungry. Idyllic existence is ensured bythe people's spiritual beliefs and practices and by the Judges, whose justice is prompt,efficient, and, in one family's case, extreme. Twentysomething Darroti and a devout youngnoblewoman, Gallicina, fall in love. She is serving a year as the Mendicant, a holy beggarwhose blessing at a marriage brings peace and forgiveness to all. Darroti comes to beaccused of murdering her and is sentenced to exile in another dimension. Gandiffri's Law ofthe Heart states that family members may not abandon one another, so Darroti's father,brothers, and the latter's wives and children accompany him. Taking only what they cancarry, they walk through a strange blue door and into a refugee camp in Nevada. ThereDarroti inexplicably commits suicide, which marks each remaining family member differentlyand becomes the shadow under which they struggle to build a life together in the harsh landof America. (Booklist)Sawyer, Robert J. Hominids (Neanderthal Parallax) (Winner 2003 Hugo Award) PonterBoddit, a physicist in a world in which Neanderthals are the dominant primates, isperforming a quantum computing experiment in a Canadian mine, where cosmic rays won'tdisturb the test's delicate parameters. Suddenly, he is transferred into a heavy water tank12