Abraham Lincoln--Vampire Hunter

New York, N.Y.: Grand Central Publishing, 2010. Fifth Printing. Mass market paperback. Good. x, [4], 433, [1] pages. Footnotes. Illustrations. Slightly cocked. Some cover wear. Includes Introduction and Acknowledgments. Part 1 discusses Boy; Part 2 discusses Vampire Hunter; Part III discusses President. Seth Grahame-Smith (born Seth Jared Greenberg; January 4, 1976) is an American novelist, film director, film producer, and screenwriter. He is best known as the author of The New York Times best-selling novels Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, both of which have been adapted as feature films. Grahame-Smith is also the co-creator, head writer and executive producer of The Hard Times of RJ Berger, a scripted television comedy appearing on MTV. This novel debuted at No. 4 on The New York Times best seller list under the category "Hardcover Fiction." This work became a New York Times Bestseller and then a Major Motion Picture. While Abraham Lincoln is widely lauded for saving the Union and freeing millions of slaves, his valiant fight against the forces of the undead has remained in the shadow for almost two hundred years--until Seth Grahame-Smith stumbled upon The Secret Journal of Abraham Lincoln. Now, using the journal as a guide, Seth reconstructs the true life story of America's greatest president. For the first time ever, he reveals the hidden history behind the Civil War--and uncovers the role vampires played in the birth, growth, and near-death of the nation. This book has been termed the funniest, most action-packed, and weirdly well-researched account of the Civil War you'll probably read in a long time. Derived from a Kirkus review: The latest literary experiment from the author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. After striking gold with his gimmicky mash-up between Jane Austen and grindhouse horror, Grahame-Smith takes a stab at creating an original plot with this new historical aberration. The author picks a larger-than-life hero: the legendary 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. In his fictional introduction, the author claims to have received a visit from "Henry," a creepy young roustabout whose curiosity leads him to deliver to the writer Lincoln's lost diaries, detailing his life as a gifted vampire hunter. The fictional Grahame-Smith is instructed to compose a historical biography, resulting in a mimicked, formal study of the late president in the vein of Doris Kearns-Goodwin, infused with a macabre dose of gore. According to the book, when he's only nine, Lincoln's mother dies from a supernatural assault, passed off as milk sickness. From that moment, the future president vows: "I hereby resolve to kill every vampire in America." Subsequently we find him earnestly decapitating America's vampires with his trusty ax. Not to be missed are Lincoln's trusty companions in his crusade against the undead, among them the president's real-life wrestling pal Jack Armstrong, and a New Orleans encounter with a gloomy, little-known writer, Edgar Poe, newly fascinated with stories of the undead. The book's grotesque joviality should be fun for those looking for it.