4-2-READ

Arriving in September is LOVE BITES (Thomas Dunne Books) by Adrienne Barbeau, which glimpses into the life of Ovsanna Moore, a renowned horror film legend and Hollywood producer who’s out for blood—literally. Barbeau’s own notoriously seasoned film career as a scream queen no doubt provides some insight and fuels this sharp satire on the bloodsucking nature of Hollywood. Plus we get werewolves as paparazzi and other sleazy film biz “monsters.” LOVE BITES marks volume II in the actress’ VAMPYRES OF HOLLYWOOD series.

THE REPLACEMENT (Razorbill/Penguin Group) by Brenna Yovanoff dares to mix a little bit of both. The book hits shelves September 21 and focuses on Mackie Doyle, an undead “Replacement” left in the crib of a human baby. With 16 years past, some fatal allergies to iron, blood and consecrated ground render him out of place and struggling for belonging in the human world. Yovanoff’s first novel is being described as a potent, bloody cocktail of “EDWARD SCISSORHANDS meets THE CATCHER IN THE RYE.”

Set for an October launch is JOHNNY HALLOWEEN: TALES OF THE DARK SEASON (Cemetery Dance) by Norman Partridge, a collection of several stories that revisit Halloween frights both past and present. Paranoia pervades a small town where no one is beyond suspicion and residents sleep with one eye open. Kind of hard blaming them for feeling at least slightly outnumbered with one story titled “Satan’s Army.”

Newly conjured from the mind of former children’s book author Susan Heyboer O’Keefe is FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER (Three Rivers Press), due in October. With this mad revenge tale, O’Keefe gives us a continuation of the creation whose fate we never knew in Mary Shelley’s original classic, when the monster kidnaps the persecuting Robert Walton’s niece as the ultimate ransom.