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Thursday, August 22, 2024

#HorrorForLibraries Giveaway: Hampton Heights

Today I have an ARC of a book that is coming out next month, a title that will be a great suggestion for your readers who want to experience Horror during the Spooky Season but don't want to be terrified. More details below, but first here are the rules for the giveaway:

  1. You need to be affiliated with an American Library. My rationale behind that is that I will be encouraging you to read these books and share them with patrons. While many of them are advanced reader copies that you cannot add to your collections, if you get the chance to read them, my hope is that you will consider ordering a copy for your library and give away the ARC away as a prize or pass it on to a fellow staff member.
  2. If you are interested in being included in any giveaway at any time, you must email me at zombiegrl75 [at] gmail [dot] com with the subject line "#HorrorForLibraries." In the body of the email all you have to say is that you want to be entered and the name of your library.
  3. Each entry will be considered for EVERY giveaway. Meaning you enter once, and you are entered until you win. I will randomly draw a winner on Fridays sometime after 5pm central. But only entries received by 5pm each week will be considered for that week. I use Random.org and have a member of my family witness the "draw"based off your number in the Google Sheet.
  4. If you win, you are ineligible to win again for 4 weeks; you will have to re-enter after that time to be considered [I have a list of who has won, when, and what title]. However, if you do not win, you carry over into the next week. There is NO NEED to reenter.

Click here to see the previous giveaway. Our winner was John from Everett [WA] Public Library. Now on to this week's giveaway.

While I was at PLA back in April, the library marketing dream team from Harper, otherwise known as Library Love Fest, was raving about Hampton Heights by Dan Kois. I even got to hear him speak about the book. 

I love the subtle on this one: One Harrowing Night in the Most Haunted Neighborhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Here is the publisher description:

From the author of the Washington Post notable novel Vintage Contemporaries, something completely a hair-raising and rollicking adventure set on one night in 1987, when six paperboys must confront a slew of monsters as well as their own personal demons in a haunted Midwestern neighborhood.

On a cold winter’s evening in 1987, six middle-school paperboys wander an unfamiliar Milwaukee neighborhood, selling newspaper subscriptions, fueled by their manager Kevin’s promises of cash bonuses and dinner at Burger King. But the freaks come out at night in Hampton Heights. Sent out into the neighborhood in pairs, the boys will encounter a host of primordial monsters—and triumph over them. 
Sigmone, who is bussed to a white school, is stuck with Joel, a white kid who idolizes Black culture. Mark, who's wrestling with his sexuality, joins his secret crush, Ryan. Nishu and Al are outsiders; one is a second-generation immigrant, the other a poor kid in a rich school. Over the course of one eventful evening, the three pairs will encounter the wild things of Hampton Heights—werewolves, witches with a centuries-old story to tell, and a creepy, ancient monster who feeds on memories. Meanwhile, Kevin is having an adventure of his own, seducing a beautiful woman in the neighborhood’s tavern . . . but who is actually in control? As the night nears its end, everyone will reunite for a cataclysmic finale.

Funny, thrilling, outrageous, and sneakily beautiful, Dan Kois’s Hampton Heights captures without sentimentality the dreams and fears of teenage boys in a tender horror-comedy about camaraderie, bravery, vulnerability, and the terrifying prospect of growing up.

This novel a great readalike for Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, nostalgic Stephen King ala The Body (novella in Different Seasons which was made into the movie Stand by Me) or 11/22/63, Boy's Life by Robert McCammon and more recently, Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero.  It is the perfect Spooky Season suggestion for readers who are new to horror but want to see what it is all about. It has a memoir feel which makes sense because it is based on his childhood. 

Get this one on order ASAP.

But right now, one of you will win an ARC courtesy of Harper and Library Love Fest

Enter now and you are entered going forward. 

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