Library Buzz: Staying Alive?

(Originally published in the Andover American 10/3/13. "Library Buzz" is written by Toria Hamilton.)

Man, zombies are everywhere lately!

Not literally, of course. I mean, zombies are all over books and other popular media. Obviously, if zombies were really everywhere, I’d be far too busy to write newspaper articles.

Let me start again.

This month, I have some fabulous recommendations featuring our friends the undead. Check them out!

I know what you’re thinking: zombies aren’t real. Well, tell that to Frank Swain, author of the nonfiction book, “How to Make a Zombie: The Real Life (and Death) Science of Reanimation and Mind Control”. Documenting horrific true stories of so-called “voodoo zombies”, dead animals brought back to life in shady labs, and Manchurian Candidate-style mind control, this book is both creepy and engrossingly cool.

Too much for you? We have a similar, shorter book in the children’s nonfiction section. The newly released “Zombie Makers: True Stories of Nature’s Undead” by Rebecca L. Johnson has everything you didn’t want to know about the parasitic fungi and bacteria that take over insect and animal host bodies through freaky mind control, with full color photographs for those with strong stomachs.

For fiction, try “My Life as a White Trash Zombie” by Diana Rowland. Angel Crawford wakes up in the ER after an alleged drug overdose that should have killed her. Or did it? Soon, she’s craving brains and solving murders at her new job with the county morgue. It’s a dark-humored urban fantasy that will appeal to fans of Charlaine Harris’ “Sookie Stackhouse” series.

In our New Books section, Michael Logan’s “Apocalypse Cow”, inaugural winner of the Terry Pratchett Prize, pits three unlikely heroes against a zombie horde—that is, herd—of bloodthirsty, flesh-eating cattle after a bioweapon experiment goes terribly awry in this debut novel that is just as surreal as it sounds, part “Shaun of the Dead”, part “Outbreak”.

Get the kids involved with adorable picture books like Kristyn Crow’s “Zombelina” (about a zombie who joins a dance academy for real girls where she’s so good, it’s scary), or “Zombie in Love” by Kelly Dipucchio (in which Mortimer the zombie can’t find a girl despite working out, dance lessons, and online dating), both starring lovable zombies who are neither terrifying nor gory.

Don’t forget to pick up some zombie movies like “Warm Bodies” or the new “World War Z”, or “The Walking Dead” TV series from our DVD section.

Until next month, keep shambling along out there, and tell the zombies they can’t have your brains: you’re still using them!