This is a numbered event – numbers for the signing line are free with the purchase of Secondhand Souls from Mysterious Galaxy, available August 25, starting at 10 AM!
Please note all personalization requests must be placed by Saturday, August 29, at 5:00 PM. If you are planning to attend the event, please do not place your order through the web site as all such orders are processed after the event. Instead, please come by or call the store and purchase the book on or after the on-sale date.
From the prologue to Secondhand Souls: “(Selected from the Great Big Book of Death: First Edition) ‘Congratulations, you have been chosen to act as Death, it’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it. It is your duty to retrieve soul vessels from the dead and dying and see them on to their next body. If you fail, Darkness will cover the world and Chaos will reign.’” MG fave Christopher Moore continues the tale of reluctant incarnation of Death, Charlie Asher, introduced in A Dirty Job.
Readers can also pick-up Stripey F*@K Throx — package of 3 “fashion” socks with Chris Moore/Independent Bookstore Day messaging — while supplies last.
Something really strange is happening in the City by the Bay. People are dying, but their souls are not being collected. Someone or something is stealing them and no one knows where they are going, or why, but it has something to do with that big orange bridge. Death Merchant Charlie Asher is just as flummoxed as everyone else. He s trapped in the body of a fourteen-inch-tall meat puppet waiting for his Buddhist nun girlfriend, Audrey, to find him a suitable new body to play host.
To get to the bottom of this abomination, a motley crew of heroes will band together: the seven-foot-tall death merchant Minty Fresh; retired policeman turned bookseller Alphonse Rivera; the Emperor of San Francisco and his dogs, Bummer and Lazarus; and Lily, the former Goth girl. Now if only they can get little Sophie to stop babbling about the coming battle for the very soul of humankind . . .
Charlie Asher is a pretty normal guy with a normal life, married to a bright and pretty woman who actually loves him for his normalcy. They're even about to have their first child. Yes, Charlie's doing okay until people start dropping dead around him, and everywhere he goes a dark presence whispers to him from under the streets. Charlie Asher, it seems, has been recruited for a new position: as Death.
It's a dirty job. But, hey Somebody's gotta do it.
Venice, a long time ago. Three prominent Venetians await their most loathsome and foul dinner guest, the erstwhile envoy of Britain and France, and widower of the murdered Queen Cordelia: the rascal Fool Pocket.
This trio of cunning plotters--the merchant, Antonio; the senator, Montressor Brabantio; and the naval officer, Iago--have lured Pocket to a dark dungeon, promising an evening of spirits and debauchery with a rare Amontillado sherry and Brabantio's beautiful daughter, Portia.
But their invitation is, of course, bogus. The wine is drugged. The girl isn't even in the city limits. Desperate to rid themselves once and for all of the man who has consistently foiled their grand quest for power and wealth, they have lured him to his death. (How can such a small man, be such a huge obstacle?). But this Fool is no fool . . . and he's got more than a few tricks (and hand gestures) up his sleeve.
In July 1890, Vincent van Gogh went into a cornfield and shot himself. Or did he?
Vincent's friends, baker-turned-painter Lucien Lessard and bon vivant Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, have their doubts. Now they're determined to answer the questions surrounding van Gogh's untimely death--like who was the crooked little "color man" Vincent claimed was stalking him across France . . . and why had the painter recently become deathly afraid of a certain shade of blue? Ooh la la, quelle surprise, and zut alors, what follows is a surreal odyssey and brothel-crawl deep into the art world of late-nineteenth-century Paris, as the one, the only, Christopher Moore cooks up a delectable confection of intrigue, passion, and art history . . . with cancan girls, baguettes, and fine French cognac thrown in for good measure.
The city of San Francisco is being stalked by a huge shaved vampyre cat named Chet, and only I, Abby Normal, and my manga-haired love monkey stand between the ravenous monster and a bloody massacre of the general public.
Whoa. And this is a love story?
Yup. 'Cept there's no whining. But there is everybody's favorite undead couple, Tommy and Jody, who've just escaped from imprisonment in a bronze statue. And now that they're out they've joined forces with Abby, her boyfriend Steve, the frozen-turkey-bowling Safeway crew, the Emperor of San Francisco and his trusty dogs Lazarus and Bummer, gay Goth guy Jared, and SF's finest Cavuto and Rivera to hunt big cat and save the city. Really.
