Andrew Fox

This title is suitable for children aged 3 to 6 years old. In Larry the loveable pup's latest adventure, he falls asleep at home next to Pete (who is reading a book about dinosaurs) and travels back in time, waking up in the pre-historic era! Starting with dinosaurs, where he encounters some big (the Tyrannosaurus Rex and Tricerotops), and others small (the Iberomesornis), he tumbles forward to the Ice Ages where he meets a Woolly Mammoth and on to the cavemen of the Stone Age. But will he ever find his way back to his best friend Pete and the family again? This is a first in a new Larry Gets Lost series that features adventures back through time.

After morphing into 187 very large white rats in the name of self-preservation, Jules Duchon is back to his portly self, a member of that secret class of New Orleans citizens known as the undead. Though he would like nothing better than to spend his nights raising hell and biting flesh in his beloved French Quarter, duty calls when an exclusive club of blue blood vampires demands that the 450-pound cabbie find out who is attacking its young and beautiful members. Adding insult to injury, he has to enlist the help of a former foe: a black vampire named Preston. What's a vampire to do? Without the love of a woman to ease his pain, Jules isn't convinced that his undead life is worth living. He doesn't desire Doodlebug (she may be a woman now but Jules knew her back when she was just a boy) any more than he longs for Daphne, a rat catcher who nourishes a crush the size of Jules. No, only Maureen will do. Once a beautiful stripper with nothing but curve after curve to her bodacious body, now she is mere dust in a jar. But Jules will move heaven and earth to get her back . . . even if it means pulling her back from the dead.

Imagine a meal that serves up portions of two Big Easy favorites, Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles and John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces. After more than a century of feasting on the rich blood of unsuspecting French Quarter revelers, New Orleans cabdriver and vampire Jules Duchon finds himself in a bit of a slump. As the dietary habits of his human prey go from bad to worse, Jules now tips the scales at over 450 pounds, rendering seamless transformation into a functionally flying bat next to impossible. To make matters worse, a vicious urban turf war unfolds, when rival vampire Malice X threatens Jules with permanent death. Fox's debut novel holds appeal as both a parody of the vampire genre and an homage to the unique charms of New Orleans.