See what Lahaska bookseller Zoe is reading...

Not every dog can open doors, or lead the blind, or rescue trapped survivors... but every dog IS a Wonder Dog! This charmingly illustrated picture book celebrates our bestest furriest friends of every shape, size. and temperament. (Who's YOUR Wonder Dog?)

Though it doesn't pack quite the same punch as Geek Love, TOAD - a bracingly honest, darkly comic tragimystery with a haunting tenderness for its unconventional characters - deserves just as much attention for its style and the clear-cut, unflinching gaze of its unusual narrator.

Lovecraft wishes he were Mariana Enriquez.
Seriously - this is the meaty, unrelenting cosmic horror I've wanted forever. All the tiny, endless indignities of the human condition, and then the unthinkable acts that might relieve their sting; the lifelong, unremarkable slide into cruelty, quickened by nameless beings whose unfathomable appetites sharpen with every drop of blood in the water; the inevitable descent. The abyss gazes also into you; the abyss is hungry, the abyss has a tongue...

As the weary residents of a disease-ridden, storm-battered Philadelphia kick off the new year with a glitzy bacchanal masquerade, secret society dropout Nina is drawn into a frenetic chase by the city's underground alchemical elites. The clock is ticking - will she (and the city) survive the night?

Darling Poopsie is lured out on an adventure - but the narrator doesn't have her best wishes in mind. This is a simple, crowd-pleasing story: kitten goes on journey, grows stronger as a, uh, person - and it has positively enchanting illustrations.