Last Chance Texaco -- Brent Hartinger Shattering Glass -- Gail Giles

Two books that I now have to buy.

This weekend, while I wasn't having my heart broken about the house, or going to a wedding, or spending time with my absolutely insane family, I was (surprise!) reading. Chrissy and Lauren had both (completely independent of each other, unless there is some strange conspiracy that I'm unaware of) been on my case to read Last Chance Texaco. Neither of them would tell me anything about it--they just said that I had to read it. I don't really want to ruin anything for anyone either, so I'll give you the first few sentences:

The door was locked, and I sure as hell didn't have the key.

I was standing on a front porch, and the door before me was tall and wide and arched, with a fancy black iron handle and hinges, like the door to a church or a haunted house. I should know--I'd been dragged into a whole lot of different churches over the years, and while none of the many houses I'd lived in had actually been haunted, most of them had been plenty scary.

This was a great book. I had a couple of vague tiny complaints, but they weren't really even worth going into... If, at the end of a book, I feel like turning it over and starting again, it is considered a Very Good Book. So read it.

The second one, Shattering Glass, might have found a place on the hallowed shelf of my Chris Crutcher books. (Well, not really, because Crutcher and Giles are separated by authors D, E, and F, but in terms of quality, it'll join 'em). In fact, on the back of the book, Chris Crutcher says:

Shattering Glass is a dark, finely crafted, on-the-money coming of age suspense story. From page one, I felt myself being pulled to its grim conclusion by a very fine storyteller. This novel will be around for a while.

So, a recommendation from Leila is good. A recommendation from Chris Crutcher is basically a command to read the book. I don't want to give anything away, though, so get your butts in gear and read the book so that we can talk about it. Here's the first paragraph:

Simon Glass was easy to hate. I never knew exactly why, there was too much to pick from. I guess, really, we each hated him for a different reason, but we didn't realize it until the day we killed him.

How could you not run out and devour this book after an opening paragraph like that??