NBS recommends start-of-summer reads

The Sookie Stackhouse Novels Boxed Set

By Charlaine Harris

P2,355

MANILA, Philippines - In the small town of Bon Temps, Louisiana, cocktail waitress Sookie Stackhouse has the uncanny ability to read minds, an ability that leads her into frequent contact with vampires, werewolves, and other paranormal creatures that live among ordinary humans. Her world — and relationships — forever altered, she attempts to navigate her all-too-complicated love life, while solving strange mysteries along the way.

Boxed set includes: Dead Until Dark, Living Dead in Dallas, Club Dead, Dead to the World, Dead as a Doornail, Definitely Dead, All Together Dead, and From Dead to Worse.

The Road

By Cormac McCarthy

P335

A father and his son walk alone through a burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food — and each other.

The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, “each the other’s world entire,” are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.

Hanging Out With The Dream King

By Joseph McCabe

P495

Hanging Out With the Dream King: Conversations With Neil Gaiman and His Collaborators presents a thorough look at Gaiman’s work not only through his eyes, but through the eyes of his many collaborators. Artists, writers, editors, musicians — over two dozen creators share their thoughts on working with Gaiman and present a unique mosaic portrait of the writer whose name has become synonymous with modern fantasy.

Although the book’s scope is not limited to Gaiman’s best-selling comic book creation The Sandman, Hanging Out With the Dream King features comprehensive interviews with all of the major Sandman artists, including Charles Vess, P. Craig Russell, Bryan Talbot, and Jill Thompson, as well as well as rare and exclusive interviews with Sandman co-creators Sam Kieth and Mike Dringenberg.

And, much as Gaiman has done throughout his career, Hanging Out With the Dream King breaks down the walls of media and genre, presenting those who may have discovered the writer’s work through one storytelling medium with doors through which they may find his other prodigious creations.

Where The God Of Love Hangs Out

By Amy Bloom

P1,049

Love, in its many forms and complexities, weaves through this collection by Amy Bloom, the New York Times bestselling author of Away. Bloom’s astonishing and astute new work of connected stories illuminates the mysteries of passion, family and friendship.

Propelled by Bloom’s dazzling prose, unmistakable voice, and generous wit, Where the God of Love Hangs Out takes us to the margins and the centers of real people’s lives, exploring the changes that love and loss create. A young woman is haunted by her roommate’s murder; a man and his daughter-in-law confess their sins in the unlikeliest of places. In one quartet of interlocking stories, two middle-aged friends, married to others, find themselves surprisingly drawn to each other, risking all while never underestimating the cost. In another linked set of stories, we follow mother and son for 30 years as their small and uncertain family becomes an irresistible tribe.

I Am An Emotional Creature

By Eve Ensler

P839

In this daring, provocative and insightful book, bestselling author and internationally acclaimed playwright Eve Ensler writes fictional monologues and stories inspired by girls around the globe. Moving through a world of topics and emotions, these voices are fierce, alive, tender, complicated, imaginative and smart. Girls today often find themselves in a struggle between remaining strong and true to themselves and conforming to society’s expectations in an attempt to please. They are taught not to be too intense, too passionate, too smart, too caring, too open. They are encouraged to shut down their instincts, their outrage, their desires and their dreams, to be polite, to obey the rules. I Am an Emotional Creature is a celebration of the authentic voice inside every girl and an inspiring call to action for girls everywhere to speak up, follow their dreams, and become the women they were always meant to be.