Random Books from the Bookshelf

Black Rain by Graham Brown

The first page reads:

The darkness of the jungle loomed above, its dense, tangled layers spreading like a circus tent from the towering pillars of massive trees. Gorged on the rain, it grew impenetrable and unyielding, a home to thousands of species, most of which never left the confines of its elevated embrace. Life was lived up there, high in the canopy; the ground was for shadows and crawling things and for that which had died.

Jack Dixon allowed his gaze to fall from the lush world above him to the soil beneath his feet. He crouched, examining a set of tracks. The tread of the heavy boots was easy to discern, but subtly different from those he’d found earlier. These were deeper at the toe, pressed down into the earth and spaced farther apart.

So the targets were running now. But why?

The Accidental Werewolf by Dakota Cassidy

The first page reads:

Well, it was official.

Lavender was soooooo not in her color wheel anymore. Not looking like this, anyway.

It clashed with her hair and made her skin look sallow.

Marty Andrews was now an autumn. Thus, fall colors would best suit her new pallor. Greens, gold, and a couple of shades of yellow were presently her complexion’s new friends.

But the color lavender?

No so much.

That was the color she’d once been so suited to. A spring color. Or was it winter?

Spring, winter, spring winter?

Sweet mother, she couldn’t even remember her seasons of color. Where were her color-wheel-of-life skills? Each season had colors it represented. Any woman worth her salt new that. Didn’t they?

Deadworld by J.N. Duncan

The first page reads:

A misty rain swirled down into the darkness between the two brick buildings. Flattened against a stack of sagging cardboard boxes, peering out of the narrow alley at the sliver of sidewalk illuminated by a nearby streetlight. This was not how he had envisioned running away. There had been no envisioning to speak of, really. All he had wanted was to escape the smack down going on in his parents’ living room, where Dad had the leg up on the cursing scorecard and Mom was on pace to set a new “thrown objects” record. Now the midnight sounds of Chicago’s suburbs were frightening him even more.

They were not the strange sounds. Archie recognized most of them, from the sounds of tires on wet pavement to the screeching yowls of two cats duking it out, but in darkness, all things magnified in the wrong direction. Every shadow contained lurking doom. Body parts lay rotting in every container. Every passing car was his dad hunting for him.