Weird and Wonderful Books
Oryx and Crake by Call Number: SCIENCE FICTION ATWOODThe narrator of Atwood's riveting novel calls himself Snowman. When the story opens, he is sleeping in a tree, wearing an old bedsheet, mourning the loss of his beloved Oryx and his best friend Crake, and slowly starving to death. As he tries to piece together what has taken place, the narrative shifts to decades earlier. How did everything fall apart so quickly? Why is he left with nothing but his haunting memories? Alone except for the green-eyed Children of Crake, who think of him as a kind of monster, he explores the answers to these questions in the double journey he takes - into his own past, and back to Crake's high-tech bubble-dome, where the Paradice Project unfolded and the world came to grief.
The Incarnations by Call Number: FICTION BARKERHailed as "China's Midnight's Children," a gripping new novel about a Beijing taxi driver whose past incarnations haunt him through searing letters sent by his mysterious soulmate.
The Illumination by Call Number: FICTION BROCKMEIIn the aftermath of a fatal car accident, a private journal of love notes written by a husband to his wife passes into the keeping of a hospital patient, and from there through the hands of five other suffering people, touching each of them uniquely.
A Clockwork Orange by Call Number: SCIENCE FICTION BURGESSAnthony Burgess's modern classic of youthful violence and social redemption, reissued to include the controversial last chapter not previously published in this country.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Call Number: FICTION CHABONThe beloved, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is a masterwork by Chabon. It is the American epic of two boy geniuses named Joe Kavalier and Sammy Clay and their quest to become American icons in the comic book world.
Duplex by Call Number: FANTASY DAVISMary and Eddie are meant for each other-- but love is no guarantee, not in these suburbs. Like all children, they exist in an eternal present; time is imminent, and the adults of the street live in their assorted houses like numbers on a clock. Meanwhile ominous rumors circulate, and the increasing agitation of the neighbors points to a future in which all will be lost. Soon, a sorcerer's car will speed down Mary's street, and as past and future fold into each other, the resonant parenthesis of her girlhood will close forever. Beyond is adulthood, a world of robots and sorcerers, slaves and masters, bodies without souls. Once you enter the duplex-- that magical hinge between past and future, human and robot, space and time-- there's no telling where you might come out.
The Burn Palace by Call Number: HORROR DOBYNSThe sleepy community of Brewster, Rhode Island, is just like any other small American town. But recently, something out of the ordinary--perhaps even supernatural--has been stirring in Brewster. While packs of coyotes gather on back roads and the news spreads that a baby has been stolen from Memorial Hospital (and replaced in its bassinet by a snake), a series of inexplicably violent acts begins to confound Detective Woody Potter and the local police--and inspire terror in the hearts and minds of the locals.
The Doll Collection by Call Number: HORROR DATLOWDolls, puppets, and other human simulacra are objects of fear and wonder in this eclectic anthology of 17 original stories that Ellen Datlow selected for their ability to "mine the uncanniness of dolls for all its worth." Accompanying photos of dolls and their parts intensify the eeriness of these works, which easily transcend their familiar theme.
Geek Love by Call Number: FICTION DUNNThe Binewskis, proprietors of a traveling carnival, attempt to reduce overhead by breeding their own freak show, with tragic results.
American Housewife by Call Number: FICTION ELLISMeet the women of American Housewife: they wear lipstick, pearls, and sunscreen, even when it's cloudy. They casserole. They pinwheel. They pump the salad spinner like it's a CPR dummy. And then they kill a party crasher, carefully stepping around the body to pull cookies out of the oven. These twelve irresistible stories take us from a haunted prewar Manhattan apartment building to the set of a rigged reality television show, from the unique initiation ritual of a book club to the getaway car of a pageant princess on the lam, from the gallery opening of a tinfoil artist to the fitting room of a legendary lingerie shop.
Sudden Death by Call Number: FICTION ENRIGUEA 1599 Roman tennis match between the Italian painter Caravaggio and the Spanish poet Quevedo represents the way the world changed in their times, in a novel that goes from the execution of Anne Boleyn to Mexico after the conquest.
The Big Over Easy by Call Number: FANTASY FFORDEUnconvinced that a former convict and millionaire philanthropist has been murdered by his suicide-victim ex-wife, detective inspector Jack Spratt and his assistant, Mary Mary, uncover a plot involving money laundering and asylum-seeking titans.
Welcome to Night Vale by Call Number: HORROR FINKLocated in a nameless desert somewhere in the great American Southwest, Night Vale is a small town where ghosts, angels, aliens, and government conspiracies are all commonplace parts of everyday life. It is here that the lives of two women, with two mysteries, will converge.
The Vegetarian by Call Number: FICTION HANBefore the nightmares began, Yeong-hye and her husband lived an ordinary, controlled life. But the dreams--invasive images of blood and brutality--torture her, driving Yeong-hye to purge her mind and renounce eating meat altogether. It's a small act of independence, but it interrupts her marriage and sets into motion an increasingly grotesque chain of events at home. As her husband, her brother-in-law, and her sister each fight to reassert their control, Yeong-hye obsessively defends the choice that's become sacred to her.
Delicious Foods by Call Number: FICTION HANNAHAMDelicious Foods tells the gripping story of three unforgettable characters: a mother, her son, and the drug that threatens to destroy them. Darlene, a young widow and mother devastated by the death of her husband, turns to drugs to erase the trauma. In this fog of grief, she is lured with the promise of a great job to a mysterious farm run by a shady company, with disastrous consequences for both her and her eleven-year-old son, Eddie--left behind in a panic-stricken search for her.
The Gone-Away World by Call Number: SCIENCE FICTION HARKAWAYA wildly entertaining debut novel, introducing a bold new voice that combines antic humor (think Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut) with a stunning futuristic vision (a la A Clockwork Orange and 1984, with a little Mad Max thrown in) to give us an electrifyingly original tale of love, friendship, and the apocalypse.
The Library at Mount Char by Call Number: HORROR HAWKINSAfter she and a dozen other children found them being raised by "Father," a cruel man with mysterious powers, Carolyn and her "siblings" begin to think he might be God; so when he dies, they square off against each other to determine who will inherit his library, which they believe holds the power to all Creation.
Mr. Splitfoot by Call Number: FICTION HUNTMr. Splitfoot tracks two women in two times as they march toward a mysterious reckoning. Ruth and Nat are orphans, packed into a house full of abandoned children run by a religious fanatic. To entertain their siblings, they channel the dead. Decades later, Ruth's niece, Cora, finds herself accidentally pregnant. After years of absence, Aunt Ruth appears, mute and full of intention. She is on a mysterious mission, leading Cora on an odyssey across the entire state of New York on foot. Where is Ruth taking them? Where has she been? And who -- or what -- has she hidden in the woods at the end of the road?
As She Climbed Across the Table by Call Number: FICTION LETPhilip is in love with Alice. As the novel opens, he is beginning to lose her. Not to another man, as he fears, but to, literally, nothing. Alice is a physicist, and a team at the University where both she and Philip work has created a hole, a vacuum, a doorway of nothingness inside the laboratory. They call it "Lack." Alice becomes obsessed with Lack, as Philip is obsessed by Alice. The novel is at the same time an astute and wise portrait of unrequited love (albeit of a very unusual kind) a hilarious academic parody, a novel of ideas and a social satire.
The Gracekeepers by Call Number: FANTASY LOGANA shoreside burial coordinator who lives in self-enforced exile as penance for a long-ago mistake and a performer with a floating circus face unexpected life changes and new opportunities in the wake of an offshore storm.
The Hike by Call Number: FANTASY MAGARYWhen Ben, a suburban family man, takes a business trip to rural Pennsylvania, he decides to spend the afternoon before his dinner meeting on a short hike. Once he sets out into the woods behind his hotel, he quickly comes to realize that the path he has chosen cannot be given up easily. With no choice but to move forward, Ben finds himself falling deeper and deeper into a world of man-eating giants, bizarre demons, and colossal insects.
The Story of My Teeth by Call Number: FICTION LUISELLIHighway is a late-in-life world traveler, yarn spinner, collector, and legendary auctioneer. His most precious possessions are the teeth of the "notorious infamous" like Plato, Petrarch, and Virginia Woolf. Written in collaboration with the workers at a Jumex juice factory, Teeth is an elegant, witty, exhilarating romp through the industrial suburbs of Mexico City and Luiselli's own literary influences
The Portable Veblen by Call Number: FICTION MCKENZIEA young couple on the brink of marriage--the charming Veblen and her fiancé Paul, a brilliant neurologist--find their engagement in danger of collapse. Along the way they weather everything from each other's dysfunctional families, to the attentions of a seductive pharmaceutical heiress, to an intimate tête-à-tête with a very charismatic squirrel.
Perdido Street Station by Call Number: FANTASY MIEVILLEIn squallid and brutal New Crobuzon, a Garuda requests eccentric crisis theorist Isaac to work with lab specimens, particularly a caterpillar that feeds on a hallucinatory drug until its evolution, when it will invoke malignant terror.
Mermaids in Paradise by Call Number: FICTION MILLETDeb and Chip, a couple honeymooning at a Caribbean resort, meet a marine biologist who claims to have sighted mermaids at a nearby coral reef, and join with other adventurers to protect the mermaids when the resort reveals plans to build a theme park on the reef.
Slade House by Call Number: SCIENCE FICTION MITCHELLEvery nine years, someone is lured into Slade House, the mysterious lair of vicious twins who never die—although their guests do.
Cloud Atlas by Call Number: SCIENCE FICTION MITCHELLRecounts the connected stories of people from the past and the distant future, from a nineteenth-century notary and an investigative journalist in the 1970s to a young man who searches for meaning in a post-apocalayptic world.
Shine Shine Shine by Call Number: FICTION NETZERWhen fabricated aspects of their picture-perfect world are embarrassingly exposed by a car accident, Sunny Mann, a woman longing for an ideal life, and Maxon, her savant astronaut husband, struggle through blame and fear before confronting realities about their deep bond.
Lagoon by Call Number: FICTION OKORAFORA biologist, a famous rapper, and a rogue soldier become the honor guard and interpreter of humanity's first contact with an alien ambassador in this thriller that combines magician realism and seemingly end-of-the-world high tension.
Fight Club by Call Number: FICTION PALAHNIUThe rise of a terrorist organization, led by a waiter who enjoys spitting in people's soup. He starts a fighting club, where men bash each other, and the club quickly gains in popularity. It becomes the springboard for a movement devoted to destruction for destruction's sake.
Version Control by Call Number: SCIENCE FICTION PALMERA woman deals with a strange and persistent sense of everything being slightly off, which may or may not be related to her scientist husband's pet project, a "causality violation device" that might actually be working.
The Bees by Call Number: SCIENCE FICTION PAULLA member of the lowest caste in her orchard hive, Flora 717, due to her courage and strength, finds her way into the Queen's inner sanctum where she discovers secrets about the hive that cause her to challenge authority and perform unthinkable acts.
Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Call Number: FICTION SEMPLEThrough a series of emails, letters, and FBI files, Bee follows the trail of her missing mother to the ends of the earth in this quirky, laugh-out-loud tale.
The Unfinished World: And Other Stories by Call Number: FICTION SPARKSIn the weird and wonderful tradition of Kelly Link and Karen Russell, Amber Sparks’s dazzling new collection bursts forth with stories that render the apocalyptic and otherworldly hauntingly familiar.
Annihilation by Call Number: SCIENCE FICTION VANDERMEThe twelfth expedition is crossing the border into Area-X. Will they successfully navigate this strange territory, or fail like their predecessors?
Look Who's Back by Call Number: FICTION VERMESHe's back. Berlin, Summer 2011. Adolf Hitler wakes up on a patch of ground, alive and well. Things have changed - no Eva Braun, no Nazi party, no war. Hitler barely recognizes his beloved Fatherland, filled with immigrants and run by a woman. And he's führious. People certainly recognize him, albeit as a flawless impersonator who refuses to break character. The unthinkable, the inevitable happens, and the ranting Hitler goes viral, becomes a Youtube star, gets his own T.V. show, and people begin to listen. But the Führer has another programme with even greater ambition - to set the country he finds a shambles back to rights.
The Age of Miracles by Call Number: SCIENCE FICTION WALKEROn a seemingly ordinary Saturday in a California suburb, 11-year-old Julia and her family awake to discover, along with the rest of the world, that the rotation of the earth has suddenly begun to slow. The days and nights grow longer and longer, gravity is affected, the environment is thrown into disarray. Yet as she struggles to navigate an ever-shifting landscape, Julia is also coping with the normal disasters of everyday life. As Julia adjusts to the new normal, the slowing inexorably continues.
Damnificados by Call Number: FICTION WILSONDamnificados is loosely based on the real-life occupation of a half-completed skyscraper in Caracas, Venezuela: the Tower of David. In this fictional version, six hundred damnificados--vagabonds and misfits--take over an abandoned urban tower and set up a community complete with schools, stores, beauty salons, bakeries, and a ragtag defensive militia. And so begins an epic siege...
John Dies at the End by Call Number: HORROR WONGThis may be the story of John and David, a drug called soy sauce, and other-worldly beings invading the planet. Or, it may be the story of two beer-drinking friends who live in an unnamed Midwestern town and only think something horrific is going on. But the important thing is, according to the narrator, "None of this is my fault."
The Caretaker of Lorne Field by Call Number: HORROR ZELTSERMJack Durkin is the ninth generation of Durkins who have for nearly 300 years weeded Lorne Field. It's an important job, though no one else seems to realize it. For, if the field is left untended, a horrific monster called an Aukowie will grow---a monster capable of taking over the entirety of America in just two weeks. Or so it is said ....
Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Call Number: 129 ROACHWhat happens when we die? Does the light just go out and that's thatthe million-year nap? Or will some part of my personality, my me-ness persist? What will that feel like? What will I do all day? Is there a place to plug in my lap-top?" In an attempt to find out, Mary Roach brings her tireless curiosity to bear on an array of contemporary and historical soul-searchers, all trying to prove (or disprove) that life goes on after we die. Along the way, she enrolls in an English medium school, gets electromagnetically haunted at a university in Ontario, and visits a Duke University professor with a plan to weigh the consciousness of a leech. Her historical wanderings unearth soul-seeking philosophers who rummaged through cadavers and calves' heads, a North Carolina lawsuit that established legal precedence for ghosts, and the last surviving sample of "ectoplasm" in a Cambridge University archive.
Cod: The Biography of the Fish That Changed the World by Call Number: 333.956633 KURCod spans a thousand years and four continents. From the Vikings, who pursued the codfish across the Atlantic, and the enigmatic Basques, who first commercialized it in medieval times, to Bartholomew Gosnold, who named Cape Cod in 1602, and Clarence Birdseye, who founded an industry on frozen cod in the 1930s, Mark Kurlansky introduces the explorers, merchants, writers, chefs, and of course the fishermen, whose lives have interwoven with this prolific fish.
Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War by Call Number: 355.0709 ROACHExplores the science of keeping humans healthy and focused in the extreme environments of war, drawing on interviews with doctors, trainers, and weapons testers to illuminate how soldiers are conditioned to survive traumas.
From Here to Eternity: Travelling the World to Find the Good Death by Call Number: 363.75 DOUGHTYFascinated by our pervasive terror of dead bodies, mortician Caitlin Doughty set out to discover how other cultures care for their dead. In rural Indonesia, she observes a man clean and dress his grandfather’s mummified body. Grandpa’s mummy has lived in the family home for two years, where the family has maintained a warm and respectful relationship. She meets Bolivian natitas (cigarette- smoking, wish- granting human skulls), and introduces us to a Japanese kotsuage, in which relatives use chopsticks to pluck their loved- ones’ bones from cremation ashes. With curiosity and morbid humor, Doughty encounters vividly decomposed bodies and participates in compelling, powerful death practices almost entirely unknown in America.
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons From the Crematorium by Call Number: 363.7509 DOUGHTYAlways interested in the end of life, Doughty found her job in a crematory made her consider questions about death, corpses, and life itself.
Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History by Call Number: 394.909 SCHUTTEating one’s own kind is completely natural behavior in thousands of species, including humans. Throughout history we have engaged in cannibalism for reasons relating to famine, burial rites, and medicinal remedies. Cannibalism has been used as a form of terrorism but also as the ultimate expression of filial piety. With unexpected wit and a wealth of knowledge, Bill Schutt, a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History, takes us on a tour of the field, exploring exciting new avenues of research and investigating questions like why so many fish eat their offspring and some amphibians consume their mother’s skin; why sexual cannibalism is an evolutionary advantage for certain spiders; and why, until the end of the eighteenth century, British royalty regularly ate human body parts.
The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World From the Periodic Table of the Elements by Call Number: 546 KEANThe periodic table of the elements is a crowning scientific achievement, but it's also a treasure trove of passion, adventure, obsession, and betrayal. These tales follow carbon, neon, silicon, gold, and all the elements in the table as they play out their parts in human history.
Packing for Mars by Call Number: 571.0919 ROACHSpace exploration is in some ways an exploration of what it means to be human. How much can a person give up? How much weirdness can they take? What happens to you when you can’t walk for a year? have sex? smell flowers? What happens if you vomit in your helmet during a space walk? Is it possible for the human body to survive a bailout at 17,000 miles per hour? To answer these questions, space agencies set up all manner of quizzical and startlingly bizarre space simulations. As Mary Roach discovers, it’s possible to preview space without ever leaving Earth. From the space shuttle training toilet to a crash test of NASA’s new space capsule (cadaver filling in for astronaut), Roach takes us on a surreally entertaining trip into the science of life in space and space on Earth.
The Violinist's Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written By Our Genetic Code by Call Number: 599.935 KEANSam Kean explores the wonders of the magical building block of life: DNA. There are genes to explain crazy cat ladies, why other people have no fingerprints, and why some people survive nuclear bombs. Genes illuminate everything from JFK's bronze skin (it wasn't a tan) to Einstein's genius. Kean's vibrant storytelling once again makes science entertaining, explaining human history and whimsy while showing how DNA will influence our species' future.
Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Call Number: 611 ROACHA look inside the world of forensics examines the use of human cadavers in a wide range of endeavors, including research into new surgical procedures, space exploration, and a Tennessee human decay research facility.
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Call Number: 612.6 ROACHRoach shows how and why sexual arousal and orgasm can be so hard to achieve and what science is doing to make the bedroom a more satisfying place.
One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw by Call Number: 621.972 RYBOne Good Turn tells the tale of the screwdriver and the screw. Leonardo da Vinci sketched a machine for carving wood screws and the rest is delightfully compelling history. Rybczynski demonstrates exactly how, without screws, there would be no telescope, no microscope -- in short, no enlightenment science -- and why the Industrial Revolution would still be waiting in the wings. The screwdriver, perhaps the last hand-tool in a world gone cyber, represents nothing less than the triumph of precision and mass production.
Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Call Number: 686.224 GARFIELDA romp through the history of fonts and the lives of the great typographers, revealing the extent to which fonts are not only shaped by but also define the world in which we live.
Atlas Obscura by Call Number: 910.202 FOERIt's time to get off the beaten path. Inspiring equal parts wonder and wanderlust, Atlas Obscura celebrates over 700 of the strangest and most curious places in the world. Here are places like the dazzling glowworm caves in New Zealand, and the M.C. Escher-like stepwells in India; and events like the Baby Jumping Festival in Spain, where men dressed as devils literally vault over rows of squirming infants.
The Stranger in the Woods by Call Number: B KNIFor readers of Jon Krakauer and The Lost City of Z, a remarkable tale of survival and solitude--the true story of a man who lived alone in a tent in the Maine woods, never talking to another person and surviving by stealing supplies from nearby cabins for twenty-seven years.
Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things by Call Number: B LAWLawson is beloved around the world for her inimitable humor and honesty, and in Furiously Happy, she is at her snort-inducing funniest. This is a book about embracing everything that makes us who we are - the beautiful and the flawed - and then using it to find joy in fantastic and outrageous ways. Because as Jenny's mom says, "Maybe 'crazy' isn't so bad after all." Sometimes crazy is just right.
Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened by Call Number: GRAPHIC NOVEL HYPERBOLCollects autobiographical, illustrated essays and cartoons from the author's popular blog and related new material that humorously and candidly deals with her own idiosyncrasies and battles with depression.
Locke and Key by Call Number: GRAPHIC NOVEL LOCKELocke & Key tells of Keyhouse, an unlikely New England mansion, with fantastic doors that transform all who dare to walk through them... and home to a hate-filled and relentless creature that will not rest until it forces open the most terrible door of them all...
Lumberjanes, Vol. 1: Beware the Kitten Holy by Call Number: J GN LUMBERJAJo, April, Mal, Molly and Ripley are five best pals determined to have an awesome summer together...and they're not gonna let any insane quest or an array of supernatural critters get in their way!
Beauty Queens by Call Number: YA FICTION BRAYWhen a plane crash strands thirteen teen beauty contestants on a mysterious island, they struggle to survive, to get along with one another, to combat the island's other diabolical occupants, and to learn their dance numbers in case they are rescued in time for the competition.
Going Bovine by Call Number: YA FICTION BRAYIn an attempt to find a cure after being diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob's (aka mad cow) disease, Cameron Smith, a disaffected sixteen-year-old boy, sets off on a road trip with a death-obsessed video gaming dwarf he meets in the hospital.
Glory O'Brien's History of the Future by Call Number: YA FICTION KINGAs her high school graduation draws near, Glory O'Brien begins having powerful and terrifying visions of the future as she struggles with her long-buried grief over her mother's suicide.
Archivist Wasp by Call Number: YA FICTION KORNHERA postapocalyptic ghosthunter escapes her dire fate by joining the ghost of a supersoldier on his quest to the underworld.
Spontaneous by Call Number: YA FICTION STARMERWith all the perfectly lovely young adult novels out there, you decided to check this one out? It’s got spontaneously combusting teenagers in it, dude. Not the slow burning type either. We’re talking the randomly exploding variety. Seniors in high school just walking along, heading to class, whistling Beyonce, when–WA-BAM!– they’re suddenly dripping off the lockers. Is that really something you’re into? Confession: I’m actually kinda into that too. So, now that we’ve established we’re both thoroughly weird and, I assume, thoroughly open-minded, we can give it shot, right?
