Sin

The first thing to keep in mind about Swoon (2009) by Nina Malkin is that it's a sexy book. By which I mean racy. The second thing to keep in mind is that it's totally nuts. More about that after the summary.

Nothing ever happens in Swoon, Connecticut. Just ask Candice, Swoon's newest (transplanted) resident. There are many reasons Dice would rather be in her native New York City but the fact remains that she is in Swoon. And strange as this land of cookie-cutter preps and family values is, Dice is getting used to it.

Everything changes when Dice's cousin, the beautifully and tragically perfect Penelope, nearly dies. In those moments between life and death, Pen's body picked up an uninvited guest: a long-dead ghost named Sinclair Youngblood Powers. Wronged by the town years ago, Sin is looking for revenge and none too concerned about the Swoon residents who stand in his way.  read more »

As a librarian, I am a list maker, and lately I have been lucky enough to review the bibliography titles in the Mid-Manhattan Library Art Collection. Bibliographies are elaborate lists that contain citations, and sometimes abstracts, of other books, journal articles, etc., that relate to a focused subject. If you have ever written a research paper, you probably created a bibliography at the end, listing the publication information of the materials you used in your research process.

An example that I find particularly charming is a two volume work entitled Early American Book Illustrators and Wood Engravers 1670-1870 by Sinclair Hamilton. It contains a catalog of works about illustrators and engravers organized first by year, then by artist, of books and articles relating to the title. This bibliography is especially generous because it also reproduces illustrations of some of the works cited. The picture here is from The Progress of Sin, or the Travels of Ungodliness... by Benjamin Keach (click to enlarge).  read more »