24. Bonk, Mary Roach

I guess sex just isn't as taboo as corpses. Or maybe it's not quite as funny to write about. Don't get me wrong--I really enjoyed this book and I adore Mary Roach. I just didn't like this book quite as much as Stiff or Spook. I am, afraid, though, that I'm doomed to remember that there is a clown fetish group on Yahoo and that at the time of writing it had 642 members. Or I think it did. Oooo, maybe that tidbit of horror is fading!

This isn't so much a book about sex as about sex researchers, which is more interesting. There are plenty of books about sex out there (though honestly, I would buy one by Mary Roach) but not a lot about sex research. It's really not easy to find anything about say, penile implants, should you want to. Hell, it's not easy to find anything about any sex researchers other than Kinsey or Masters and Johnson. Although there really aren't a whole lot of them--it's pretty hard to get funding, especially if you want to research people sex. Because you're obviously a pervert.

And so Mary Roach takes us through the history of sex research with her usual hilarious attitude (and even occasionally with her really supportive husband).

25. Arthurian Omen, G. G. Vandagriff

This was a LibraryThing early reviewer book. The author had started writing it during an illness and forgotten about it for ten years. I think it shows. The beginning held promise, with a long-lost manuscript that could prove the identity of King Arthur and that he was Gallic (why this would be so important to someone enamored of Welsh history as Rachel or the man who thinks he's Owen Glendower never made sense to me). Ultimately, though, the Arthurian puzzle turns into a mere backdrop, which I found very disappointing. That was the hook that had me interested in this mystery to begin with.

Maren was off to help her sister to find the manuscript, arriving in England only to find her murdered. She's left her daughter with her brother-in-law (well, former brother-in-law as her former husband had been murdered) as she doesn't trust her current husband--she knew he'd been listening in on her phone call with Rachel.

Things start to go wrong. Very coincidentally. The way everything that happens is tied to absolutely everything else is unbelievable. It feels as if the author tried too hard to wrap things up in a nice little package.

I'd have rather seen how things went with the Arthurian angle and I wish that had been the main storyline. It would have been far more original.

26. Deep Ancestry, Spencer Wells

Another Library Thing early reviewer win.

I found this book absolutely fascinating. I have a family member participating in the National Genographic Program and I really enjoyed reading about the genesis of the program and its goals for the future. The one gripe I had was the difficulty in reading the charts, but as someone who works in publishing, I know that advanced readers' copies always have low-resolution art, so I wasn't surprised by this as it's always the case. I'll just go the Web site of the project and see what's there in terms of charts and maps and such.

The case studies were also interesting in providing meaty stories of specific haplogroups. And the specifics in the back of each haplogroup were great, especially the lists of each marker leading up to the current one.

I'd wanted to become part of the project before, but now I'm definitely going to take part. I have a fairly good idea, based on what's prevalent in what areas, what haplogroup I'll fall into, but I always could be one of those very odd cases. One never knows.

27. Winterwood, Patrick McCabe

One (professional) reviewer said he felt like he needed to take a bath after reading this book. I really have to agree with him. This was a wonderfully written book, the words just rolled off the page with the lyricism of a poet. But dear god it creeped me out, and not in a good way. Mind you, I *like* being creeped out. I love ghost stories. But the ghost of Ned Strange just inhabits the book the way he inhabits Redmond and it might leave you up at night.

So while I give this book high marks for the writing and for getting inside the head of someone possessed by the horrors of a dead man and driven to, well, things, I'm not entirely sure I can actually recommend this book to many people. It depends on what the reader can take.

28. Witch High, Denise Little (freelance)

An anthology of stories that all take place at Salem Public High School #4. Denise Little is one of the better anthologists out there, so this was better than the average anthology. (Pub date: Oct. 2008)

29. The Flaxen Femme Fatale, John Zakour (freelance)

If you happen to be Zachary Nixon Johnson and you wake up with a beautiful woman sitting on the side of your bed, that's pretty normal. If, however, that woman is not your fiancee Electra, you're probably in a heap of trouble.

And so begins Zach's latest adventure. Once again he is called on to save the Earth from inevitable destruction, though this time the people doing the asking happens to be Earth Force. Not good. And naturally, the whole thing has to do with the woman sitting on Zach's bed. It's not his fault he never has ugly clients.

I liked this latest installment in the series better than the last two. If you've enjoyed the earlier ones, I definitely recommend this one. (Pub date: Dec. 2008)

30. The Magician and the Fool, Barth Anderson

My first thought on this book is that it's very Powers-ian. A secret world operating off to the side of this one that most people don't know about. And it all has to do with the Tarot. We learn about this world as Jeremiah Rosemont, once a scholar of the Tarot, learns about the other, secret world that swirls around the cards. A world that's obviously full of magic, that sprung from the fight between Romulus and Remus, that may be infinitely older than that.

Alternately, we learn of the Boy King, a transient who knows to much about this world and tries to keep himself hidden from it.

I found this book really intriguing. I'm familiar with the Tarot, and have been for somewhere around twenty or twenty-five years. But these ideas never would have occurred to me (which is why I'm not a writer). I just love reading books that have that anchor in our world and a plausible reason to go off into a dimension just a hair away--the one you see out of the corner of your eye.

I really really wanted to know much more about the magic and the world and different types of people involved with the Tarot, but as a publishing professional (and production editor), I realize that it would have just been an info dump--there really wouldn't have been a good graceful way to work it into the story without bogging down the narrative. So I'll just hope that Barth Anderson will set more works in this world.

31. The Seance, John Harwood

The story of the terrible and mysterious Wraxford Hall, inherited by Constance Langton. The story is told by three people: Constance herself, John Montague, who is the executor of Wraxford and friend of Magnus, who inherits the hall, and Eleanor Unwin, who, well, that's best left unsaid.

Like all good haunted houses, Wraxford is surrounded by a dark, forboding wood, Monk's Wood, where even schoolchildren are afraid to play.

The novel is dark and atmospheric in the same way as The Ghost Writer and while the idea of a haunted building is similar, the two novels are quite different. This one is also excellent though.

Sadly, though, it's only available as an import until next year. Still, it's worth it if you can get your hands on it. Very much so. Perfect for those dark thunderstorms of summer.

32. Firebirds Soaring, Sharyn November (freelance)

An excellent anthology. The stories aren't really classifiable, which is why the subtitle on this third anthology edited by Firebird editorial director Sharyn November reads Speculative Fiction. And I'd even hesitate to classify the book as YA. The stories are well beyond what most people expect of that genre. The art is amazing as well.

This anthology weighs in at nearly 600 pages, which is quite the hefty tome, but I wasn't bored with a single story. I normally find anthologies to be toss-offs to be honest. One or two good stories and the rest pretty bland. Not in this case. Go get it. (Pub date: Dec. 2008)

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