Cat Out of Hell by Lynne Truss

In her first foray into fiction, punctuation expert Lynne Truss brings us an absurd, completely horrifying novel about the evil inner lives of cats. I'd forgotten how subversively funny Truss can be, but her nonfiction books were both informative and hysterical. This novel sneaks up on you with the laughs ... and the cold heebie jeebies.

A man on a grief sabbatical gets bored and begins reading a document emailed to him by a former colleague. What starts out fantastical and unbelievable begins slowly to make more and more sense until you're scared of your own housecat and can't put the damn book down.

It's a gothic horror premise: Let me tell you my tale of death and immortality. But it's told in a more contemporary manner, in a shifting variety of forms: sometimes it's straight narrative, other times it's transcripts of oral recordings, descriptions of images, email correspondence and more.

I love horror, and I have a cat. That said, I had to put this down for a bit in the middle because I made it half-way through after dark and I got the creeps. I finally got up the guts to finish, and I loved it - but I'm still giving my cat the side-eye treatment.

Immortal Beloved by Cate Tiernan

Absolutely not another vampire book. Really! (Just immortals - they're not vampires. :))

Nastasya (Nasty to her reprobate friends) is about 400 years old. She's seen and been everywhere, so by now she's desperately looking any kind of a thrill: alcohol, drugs, sex - the usual kinds of debauchery. But then something happens, and Nasty begins to wonder if there's more to life.

So she goes into hiding, finding a commune-of-sorts especially for immortals like herself. Reluctantly she begins mucking the barn, growing spinach, scrubbing floors, meditating and studying crystals - in short, trying to learn to be a better human (who lives forever).

It makes perfect sense to me that if you are forced into immortality, at some point you could lose your morality. Nasty's quest for a better self is agonizing, and she spends a lot of time sabotaging her own journey. That makes it a story that will resonate for many people. And while I understand the marketing of a supernatural novel is easier in the teen market, I really think a lot of "mature" readers will find this book engaging.

The writing is captivating, and the story also encompasses ancient flashbacks, modern-day romance and family drama, and hints of a much bigger storm brewing on the horizon for Nastasya. This is the first book in a trilogy, but I didn't feel like the story was incomplete. While the end certainly doesn't wrap everything up in a neat bow, I was satisfied and still curious about the next book's release date (pushed back to Jan 2012).