CIRQUE DU FREAK: A Living Nightmare

Darren Shan, . . Little, Brown, $6.50 (272pp) ISBN 978-0-316-60510-6

A boy sneaks out to an illicit freak show, and his life becomes entangled with a vampire spider-wrangler. "The author mines the exploitative history of early 20th-century sideshows to create an artfully macabre 'Cirque du Freak,' " wrote PW. Ages 10-up. (June)

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