BLACKTREE, DIURNAL
"It's funny. It's scary. It's thrilling. It's a book!" The authors' fathers, Pappa Billy and Daddy John.
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"I sincerely, genuinely, from the bottom of my heart, absolutely loved it!" Paid Reader
Disgraced grad student and former werewolf Moss Blacktree has stopped changing - no more howling, no more fangs, and no more nights spent prowling Manhattan's Lower East Side, full moon or new, for flesh. Maybe now he can resume normal life, even if it means begging for readmission to NYU, winning back his ex-girlfriend from an arch-rival Ph.D. candidate, and apologizing to his best friend Sid for eating Sid's pet chickens.
Unfortunately, Sid wants more than a simple apology. He wants to sponsor Moss for Lycanthropes Anonymous, a werewolf rehab program advertised in the way-back of the Village Voice. Initially Moss refuses - after all, he's been cured. But when Moss wakes up one morning to find his right hand has changed back into a wolf's, he has no choice but to travel to the Long Island temple where the rehab's basement meetings are held.
Little does Moss know that every step he takes towards a normal future brings him one step closer to his monstrous past. Ridiculed by the clinic’s members, hounded by agents of the suburban cult who turned him, and desperate to find the woman apparently responsible for his cure, Moss soon discovers his disease isn't the simple stroke of bad luck he thought it was—and to truly cure it, he must stop an evil bent on destroying him and everyone he loves (and also everyone he hates, but still).
GHOUL CONDOS
"Not the kind of children's book we grew up with. A tad scary. But the neighbor's kids loved it." The authors' mothers, Ma Maria and Mommy MJ
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"I liked it. But if they paid me like the other guy, I would've REALLY liked it." Unpaid reader
Ashley Newcastle, straight-A student at the Humphrey School for Gifted Boys, has no idea who's coming for him - and it's a good thing, too, because life as a sixth-grader is complicated enough. There's his parents' divorce, the bully in his tae kwon do class, and the not-so-small matter of being accused of cheating on his secondary school placement exam.
But things go from complicated to horrible when Ash and his father move to an apartment building owned by Piet der Broodheer, the centuries old demon who controls all of New York City's undead real estate. Broodheer's looking for the archomancer - an individual with the power to divine and reposition hidden portals located in every piece of architecture in the city - and it's not long before he knows it's Ash.
It's not long before Ash knows it, either. He just has to figure out why, on the night of his best friend Lucy's piano recital, he hit his head and woke up in an apartment full of flesh-eating ghouls. And how is the class know-it-all back in school if the ghouls were eating him?
Only when Ash gathers the courage to seek out the rest of his estranged family does he discover the truth about his gifts, which, he comes to realize, include much more than special powers.