Did someone here recommend 13 Bullets to me? I finished it yesterday, and man, that is FUCKED UP. But I can't for the life of me remember where I heard of it to have gotten it from the library.

She's a tattoo artist, he's a vampire, together, they fight crime!

No... seriously.

Elle Jasper's THE DARK INK CHRONICLES, pitched as LA INK meets TWILIGHT/LOST BOYS in which a gorgeous, tough-as-nails tattoo artist pairs up with Savannah's unlikely guardian-unpredictable, a sexy vampire, and together they take on a pair of blood-thirsty vampire brothers determined to control the city's youth, to Laura Cifelli at NAL,

A question about book covers.

I was glancing through the supermarket's collection of current ficton, and I saw more examples of my least favorite trend--decapitated women on the covers of "chick lit". Is it an attempt to appeal to Every Woman, whoever she is? Even if it's not a photo-type picturewith an identifiable person, more often than not there's only a partial person on the cover, generally with her head missing. Potboiler romance novels have a gorgeous woman swooning/mooning around, but other fiction seems to hate having a full human being on the cover. I find it very disturbing.

I'm not sure what you mean by "chick lit" Connie, since as a genre, it's pretty much gone the way of the dodo bird. Can you recall any of the titles?

And the headless woman/man trend is also very popular in paranormal and historical romance/fiction, although it seems to have been giving way to backs of late.

I going to guess this is photo cropping style decapitation rather than a bloody demise style decapitation since the latter would be weird.

I don't remember any of the titles, but they're the kind of "divorced woman finds her mojo/single woman discovers happiness in being herself and then the perfect guy comes along/hanging out with your girl friends and gossiping over lattes and shoes is the best thing ever" type of books.

The backs thing annoys me too.

I going to guess this is photo cropping style decapitation rather than a bloody demise

Yes, the cartoon of the woman has the neck at the top of the cover or there's a realistic painting and they crop the top at the chin or something.

I going to guess this is photo cropping style decapitation rather than a bloody demise style decapitation since the latter would be weird.

Heh. Yes. Photocropping. I guess the idea is for the reader to identify. It's creepy.

I don't remember any of the titles, but they're the kind of "divorced woman finds her mojo/single woman discovers happiness in being herself and then the perfect guy comes along/hanging out with your girl friends and gossiping over lattes and shoes is the best thing ever" type of books.

I wonder if they were older titles, because really, that sort of book has been somewhat out of vogue for quite a while. They are annoying, but frankly, I'm finding the glitz lit book covers more annoying-- the Candace Bushnell and Gigi Levangie Grazer and Lauren Weisberger titles.

I've got a secret weakness for that stuff. It actually embarrasses me more than reading about stash houses and shooting galleries, and etc. But I don't pay full price for it. And Entourage is really chick lit with a dick, anyways. Except that at least canonically, it doesn't seem to bother E. that Vince is totally prettier than him.

Covers like this, Connie? [link]