Horror Books

The author also gives the reader pleasurable glimpses into how other moral vampires (and not vampires) have managed to carve out a "normal" life for themselves despite the the disease which forces them to embarace the mystery of the night while shunning the warmth of the day.

Great read. Maybe this one will end up on the screen because of all the action.

I think the worst part was when wanda the ghost met cecil the ghost and they got into a big argument. The only reason i dident like it was because it really dident go along with the moral of the story because Wanda liked to be messy and cecil was very neat and at the end they ended up living together in a haunted house.

I think that the most vivid parts to me were the the setting and the plot .The setting was easy to visualize and see .For an example when wanda messed up the appartment and put suran wrap under the tolite seat ,and the the food falling out of the refrigorator .The plot of the characters was easy to see also like Zach a en year old boy with dark brown hair and blue eyes was easy to see because i think the author Dan Grennburg did an excellent job explaning!!!

Our small band of 3rd graders is presented with one of their newest run-ins with the strange and supernatural. Out on a trip to the Burger Doodle, they run into a new counter worker, Scout. In addition to having an odd name, Scout is an odd character! First off, her skin is ashen white, she wears a hooded black sweatshirt, and her eyes are blood red!! Speaking of blood red, what's that weird, thick red syrup she's always putting on her own ice cream? It looks a lot like... like blood!

It doesn't take long for the Bailey Kids to begin to wonder about her and her strange way of almost GLIDING over the tiles. Besides, she doesn't ever laugh or even crack a smile. It's not long before someone suggests that she might be a ghoul: an undead creature in the service of a vampire who is in search of new places for their vampire masters to live. When the Kids find out that Ms. Jeepers, their vampire teacher, is thinking of having her family move to Bailey City, they decide that action must be taken or else the city will be overrun by vampires!! One for a teacher is bad enough!

This is the 31st installment in the Bailey School Kids series and is a bit creepier than some of the others in the series. It's still got all the elements of the other books, a wisecracking Eddie who refuses to believe that any of these weird folk are anything but that-- just weird, not supernatural, a fast pace and fun plot.

I've reviewed a number of the books in the series and am finding them quite addicting. They're fast reads for beginning-to-intermediate readers (though an adult will likely finish them in less than half an hour), and the language is simple and fun. I often recommend this series for students & children who are not very interested in reading because the pace is fast, the plot is simple, and they're generally a lot of fun to read. So, scoop yourself out some vanilla and settle in with the Bailey Kids in this installment!

The Goblin Reservation is Clifford D. Simak's synthesis of science fiction and European faerie lore within a murder mystery, with a little historical revisionism on the side. It stands safely within both the SF and fantasy categories, and will be well-liked by readers fond of either genre. Although a serious and coherent storyline runs the length of the book, the focus is on the way in which the characters relate to each other, which is often amusing even though the characters are not trying to be comical.

Peter Maxwell was a professor at the College of Supernatural Phenomena, a unit within the planetary university that had become Earth's largest industry in a multi-species galactic civilization. He was, that is, until he was killed. Maxwell had gone to a faraway planet in the Coonskin star system to investigate the report that a dragon had been sighted there. The rumor turned out to be false, however, and Maxwell came back to Earth, only to turn up suspiciously dead a few days later.

Imagine the surprise that Earth's security agency felt when Peter Maxwell showed up again, very much alive, at a matter transmission station in Wisconsin. Upon being questioned, this Peter Maxwell said that he had never arrived at the Coonskin system. His "pattern" had been copied enroute and diverted to a Crystal Planet containing information about a technology far surpassing that of any planet in the entire galaxy. The shadowy alien residents of that planet originated in a previous incarnation of the universe, before the latest Big Bang, and they were looking for a worthy species to receive the inheritance of their accumulated learning. Peter Maxwell was to be the one to arrange the transfer of that knowledge to Earth.

But there was a problem. Not only did Peter Maxwell have to be alert for the murderers who caused the demise of his other self, he also had to contend with unemployment. After his death, the university had filled his position at Supernatural, leaving him without a job.

Maxwell teams up with Carol Hampton, a member of the faculty at Time College (which, among other things, had brought William Shakespeare forward through time to explain why he did not write the plays), Alley Oop (a Neanderthal who had been headed for the cannibalistic stewpot when rescued by Time), and a Ghost who can't remember whom he is the ghost of, in order to unravel the mystery of the forces seeking to prevent Earth from inheriting the knowledge of the Crystal Planet.

The answer to the mystery will involve a dragon, and the dragon's relationship to the Little Folk (goblins, fairies, banshees, and trolls) who live on reservations on the campus of the College of Supernatural Phenomena, as well as a mysterious alien race of "Wheelers" who, it turns out, have been the enemies of the Little Folk races for millions of years.

The Goblin Reservation is written with rare wit, and perhaps the best scene is the bar fight at the Pig & Whistle Tavern, where Peter Maxwell, Alley Oop, Ghost, Carol Hampton, and Carol Hampton's sabertooth tiger get mixed up in a violent dispute between groups of students who were politically polarized over "the William Shakespeare issue."

Just one regret lingers in the reader's mind after finishing The Goblin Reservation. Simak did not see fit to include the recipe for making sweet October ale (the favorite drink of goblins and trolls, and much favored by humans who can rarely get a tankard of it). What a pity.

There is also so much more that is pure Simak here- drinking moonshine with an educated neanderthal, a domesticated ghost, and a cloned saber-tooth tiger, for instance. Of course there is also the idea of reservations for the Little Folk (fairies, goblins, trolls, banshees, etc.) Then combine it all with commonplace instersteller travel by matter transmitter throughout a vast galactic community of intelligent aliens. All this is just the incidental setting for the main plot, which just happens to be very well crafted mystery story.

I believe that I have read just about everything that Clifford Simak ever published, and I would have to say that this little novel is probably my all time favorite. I just wish that he would have written a sequel or two.

Good for all ages; I'd say it's rated 'G.'