The Graveyard Book

When Nobody Owens was a baby, a man came into his home and murdered his family.  It was only because of Nobody's tendency to wander that he survived.  Nobody wandered to the graveyard nearby and was adopted by its ghostly inhabitants and the mysterious Silas who volunteers to become his guardian.

The murderer still hunts Nobody, and it is only within the walls of the graveyard that he is hidden and protected.  Nobody is happy with his spirit companions and their knowledge spanning the centuries back to the time of the Romans.  He will encounter things that are even more ancient and find a ghoul gate.  He learns the tricks of the dead:  fading, haunting, and imperviousness to dark and cold.  But even with all he can learn from his friends and playmates, he eventually becomes curious about the world of the living, and an anger for the man who murdered his family grows in his heart.

The more Bod ventures out of the Graveyard, the more dangerous his life becomes.  Can a boy named Nobody raised by those who are long dead survive in the land of the living and overcome the evil that stalks him?

This is one of my favorite books by one of my favorite authors!  I just reread it in preparation for tomorrow's book club meeting, and it's just as good the second time around.

I met Neil Gaiman this summer and got my book signed in Dallas.  It was worth the drive and the hours of waiting!  If you haven't read this one yet, settle in for a wonderful and surprising experience!

The Westing Game

This month's book club selection is one of my favorite mysteries!  Ellen Raskin won the Newbery medal for it in 1979, and we are still reading it today.

When eccentric millionaire Sam Westing dies, he calls together his 16 heirs, a strange assortment of people who seem to have nothing in common except, of course, for the fact that they've all recently purchased apartments in the Sunset Towers luxury complex.

They are all summoned by Westing's lawyer to the will reading where they learn that Westing was murdered!  They are grouped into preassigned pairs, and each pair receives a set of clues and a check for $10,000.  The first pair to solve the mystery will inherit Mr. Westing's 200 million dollar estate!

The race is on, but with a murderer on the loose, no one is safe, and everyone is a suspect!