Recommendations based on "Broken Hearts"

"Wacky and reminiscent of Roald Dahl with a twist, middle grade readers who enjoy stories with both laughs and chills will get a kick out of this one." - Seira Wilson, Amazon EditorThis New York Times bestseller from David Walliams, the UK’s #1 bestselling children’s author and “the heir to Roald Dahl” (The Spectator), launched his books stateside in a big way!Walliams makes going to the dentist a wacky adventure with his signature humor—this is one dentist appointment you don’t want to miss.Something strange is happening in Alfie's town. Instead of shiny coins from the Tooth Fairy, kids are waking up to dead slugs, live spiders, and other dreadfully icky things under their pillows.Who would do something so horrific? Alfie is sure that Miss Root, the creepy new dentist in town, is behind it all. There's nothing Alfie hates more than going to the dentist, but to solve this mystery, he may have to book a dreaded appointment….

What do horror films reveal about social difference in the everyday world? Criticism of the genre often relies on a dichotomy between monstrosity and normality, in which unearthly creatures and deranged killers are metaphors for society’s fear of the “others” that threaten the “normal.” The monstrous other might represent women, Jews, or Blacks, as well as Indigenous, queer, poor, elderly, or disabled people. The horror film’s depiction of such minorities can be sympathetic to their exclusion or complicit in their oppression, but ultimately, these images are understood to stand in for the others that the majority dreads and marginalizes.Adam Lowenstein offers a new account of horror and why it matters for understanding social otherness. He argues that horror films reveal how the category of the other is not fixed. Instead, the genre captures ongoing metamorphoses across “normal” self and “monstrous” other. This “transformative otherness” confronts viewers with the other’s experience―and challenges us to recognize that we are all vulnerable to becoming or being seen as the other. Instead of settling into comforting certainties regarding monstrosity and normality, horror exposes the ongoing struggle to acknowledge self and other as fundamentally intertwined.Horror Film and Otherness features new interpretations of landmark films by directors including Tobe Hooper, George A. Romero, John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, Stephanie Rothman, Jennifer Kent, Marina de Van, and Jordan Peele. Through close analysis of their engagement with different forms of otherness, this book provides new perspectives on horror’s significance for culture, politics, and art.

American Monsters

Following the massive success of the Demonata series, Darren Shan is back where it all started -- telling the life story of the vampire Larten Crepsley. Spanning centuries and continents, taking in sea voyages, murder, war and love, this is the epic, bloodsoaked tale of a vampire who started out a nobody! and ended up changing the world forever. For every vampire, the end! is just the beginning. When terrible events force young Larten Crespley to flee his home he finds himself alone in the world. Then he meets the mysterious Seba Nile, who introduces him to the ways of the vampire clan. But will Larten turn his back on humanity and join a world from which there can be no return!? So begins the blood-soaked tale of a vampire who starts out a nobody ! but will change the world forever.

Charlie Asher is a pretty normal guy. A little hapless, somewhat neurotic, sort of a hypochondriac. He's what's known as a Beta Male: the kind of fellow who makes his way through life by being careful and constant -- you know, the one who's always there to pick up the pieces when the girl gets dumped by the bigger/taller/stronger Alpha Male.But Charlie's been lucky. He owns a building in the heart of San Francisco, and runs a secondhand store with the help of a couple of loyal, if marginally insane, employees. He's married to a bright and pretty woman who actually loves him for his normalcy. And she, Rachel, is about to have their first child.Yes, Charlie's doing okay for a Beta. That is, until the day his daughter, Sophie, is born. Just as Charlie -- exhausted from the birth -- turns to go home, he sees a strange man in mint-green golf wear at Rachel's hospital bedside, a man who claims that no one should be able to see him. But see him Charlie does, and from here on out, things get really weird. . . .People start dropping dead around him, giant ravens perch on his building, and it seems that everywhere he goes, a dark presence whispers to him from under the streets. Strange names start appearing on his nightstand notepad, and before he knows it, those people end up dead, too. Yup, it seems that Charlie Asher has been recruited for a new job, an unpleasant but utterly necessary one: Death. It's a dirty job. But hey, somebody's gotta do it.Christopher Moore, the man whose Lamb served up Jesus' "missing years" (with the funny parts left in), and whose Fluke found the deep humor in whale researchers' lives, now shines his comic light on the undiscovered country we all eventually explore -- death and dying -- and the results are hilarious, heartwarming, and a hell of a lot of fun.

Publisher:. HarperCollins UK The eighth instalment in the biggest. funniest. most thrilling comedy-horror-adventure series in the universe - and the follow-up to 2012's number-one bestseller. Kingdom of the Wicked ... War has finally come But its not a war between good and evil. or light and dark -.. its a war between Sanctuaries For too long. the Irish Sanctuary has teetered on the brink of world-ending disaster. and the other Sanctuaries around the world have had enough Allies turn to enemies. friends turn to foes. and Skulduggery and Valkyrie must team up with the rest of the Dead Men if theyre going to have any chance at all of maintaining the balance of power and getting to the root of a vast conspiracy that has been years in the making. But while this war is only beginning. another war rages within Valkyrie herself. Her own dark side. the insanely powerful being known ...

Alex Schwartz had a promising future - until he contracted an unfortunate bout of vampirism, and agreed (on pain of death) to join the Laundry, Britain's only counter-occult secret agency. The thought of telling his parents that he's lost his old job, let alone them finding out about his 'condition', is causing Alex more anxiety than learning how to live as a vampire secret agent preparing to confront multiple apocalypses. His only saving grace is Cassie Brewer, a student appearing in the local Goth Festival, who flirts with him despite his awkward personality and massive amounts of sunblock

Preparations for the Ghastly-Gorm Garden Party and bake-off are under way. Celebrity cooks—such as Nigellina Sugarspoon, Gordon Ramsgate and Heston Harboil—are arriving at the hall for the big event and, true to form, Maltravers, the indoor gamekeeper, is acting suspiciously. Elsewhere at Ghastly-Gorm Ada's wardrobe-dwelling lady's maid Marylebone has received a marriage proposal. Ada vows to aid the course of true love and find out what Maltravers is up to, but amidst all this activity, everyone, including her father, appears to have forgotten her birthday!

With their enemies clamoring for blood, the vampires prepare for a deadly battle--and Darren Shan is framed as public enemy number one in this ninth installment of the "New York Times" bestselling series, now in mass-market paperback.

Jaz Parks here. But I'm not alone. I'm hearing voices in my head - and they're not mine. The problem, or maybe the solution, is work. And the job's a stinker this time -- killing the gnomes that are threatening to topple NASA's Australian-based space complex. Yeah, I know. Vayl and I should still be able to kick this one in our sleep. Except that Hell has thrown up a demon named Kyphas to knock us off track. And damn is she indestructible!