Road Trip of the Living Dead

January 18, 2010
Clever, fast-paced, and so delightfully trashy that it should have been printed on Hefty bags, Henry's third Amanda Feral novel (after 2009's Road Trip of the Living Dead
) smartly skewers popular culture. Brilliant, bitchy undead diva Amanda is desperate for a fledgling reality show to succeed, because being paid to judge it is the only thing that can keep her financially afloat. When someone murders the show's host, a would-be playboy wood nymph, the show's contestants—a snooty Belgian ghoul, a werewolf drag queen, a pair of sirens, a down-home backwoods stripper, and a tentacled manicurist—are all suspects. Amanda's got to solve the case while attempting to rebuild a relationship with her werewolf boyfriend. Henry gleefully delivers a sharp-edged, snarky whodunit with some smart and funny twists.

January 5, 2009
Two fashionista zombies on the lam leave a trail of carnage from Seattle to Rapid City, S.D., in this unabashedly raunchy sequel to 2008’s Happy Hour of the Damned
. Narrator Amanda Feral, who sneers at the poor fashion sense of her victims before eating their brains, coaxes fellow zombie Wendy Miller to accompany her on a visit to Amanda’s dying, abusive mother. They pick up the pace when their vampire friend, Gil, offends a strip club owner, who chases them with a pack of werewolves. Someone also keeps beheading members of Amanda’s pickup entourage, but it’s hard to credit her outrage given her own homicidal proclivities. Casual browsers drawn in by sarcastic, hip comments may be taken aback by deliberately filthy incidents involving genitalia and excrement; this is not a tale for the weak of stomach.