Headless Body Found in Topless Bar!

Okay, I'm weird--I love true crime but I don't like gory fiction. I like my true crime psychologically twisted--that is to say, not your sadistic serial killer traveling the country, but your eccentric socialite who convinces her child to murder his grandparent. Usually truth is stranger, more twisted and more bizarre, and so, more interesting, than fiction.

A true crime story is often written by an investigative newspaper reporter who covered the original story/trial as it unfolded. Seduced by Madness: the True Story of the Susan Polk Murder Case was written by Carol Pogash, a journalist who attended the trial--you have to read the book to see how what a long, strange trip that was. Unethical professional behavior, recovered memory, satanic ritual abuse, wealthy people behaving badly--this one's got it all.

I love you, Laurie Notaro

Who would you rather hang out with, the perfect perky blonde in the spotless twin-set, or her chubby wise-cracking brunette sidekick? Read Laurie Notaro, it's like having that brunette over for lunch (with margaritas).

Laurie Notaro is a humor columnist from Arizona. She been trying to sell a book of her columns for seven years without success. One of her fans offered to help, and sold two books worth of columns. Shortly afterward, Notaro lost her weekly newspaper column. Since then she has published three more essay collections. Her latest book, There's a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell: a Novel of Sewer Piper, Pageant Queens and Big Trouble, is her first novel. I am listening to the audio version, which is read by Susan Denaker. She's not my favorite audiobook narrator--she has a little too much sneer in her voice--but either she grew on me, or she's got better as the book went on.

The main character will be familiar to Notaro fans as a fellow member of The Idiot Girls Action-Adventure Club. After moving to a new, fiercely politcally correct town, she has trouble making new friends, and embarks on an interesting new project to remedy this. In the end, she discovers the meaning of true friendship, solves a mystery, and learns the ins and outs of styrofoam recycling.

AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

Do you like to be scared? I loved horror films when I was younger but most of the newer stuff is a bit too gory and sexually-sadistic for me. Even some books are too intense. Still, when a patron returned Heart-Shaped Box and said it was too scary for him, I decided to check it out. Yikes!

This debut novel by Joe Hill, offers plenty of chills, but is easy on the gore. Plot summary: a ghost is purchased by the protagonist via an online auction website. (Someone did try to sell a "Ghost in a Jar" on eBay a few years ago--learn more about that here.) I don't want to give details away--read it yourself. I'm not saying it's great literature, but it's great summer reading.