Mike's Pick of the Week:

Charlie Huston's Joe Pitt Casebooks
Crime and mystery writer Charlie Huston has created a twisted netherworld Manhattan that coexists right alongside the one I work in every day. The streets are the same as are the seedy bars and pizza places, but in Joe Pitt's world there are also vampyres. Now normally vampires or in this case vampyres aren't something I go in for but Joe Pitt is just too good of a character to pass up on. Pitt is infected with something called the vyrus which requires blood to sustain before it eats him alive. There are some positives though, the vyrus makes Joe stronger and faster than a normal human and able to take ungodly amounts of damage. The negative reaction to sunlight is still there but these vampyres can and do go outside during the daylight, they just use protection.. But what you get is a noir fairytale with tough guy Pitt caught between the Society, a politicly correct commune where everyone is A OK to the mafia style Coalition who rules most of Manhattan. It makes for some fun reading. Rounding out the supporting cast is Evie, Joe's love interest who is HIV positive who Joe could cure in an instant as the vyrus destroys anything harmful to the host, to the Enclave who are a cult like group that live in a fortress in the meat packing district where the train in a bone breaking martial art and prepare for a savior to be able to walk into the daylight.

These books won't be for everyone. They are bleak and they are ultra violent. But if you like alternate takes on seemingly played out ideas, give this noir vampyre series a shot.

Larry's Pick of the Week:

JOIN ME by Danny Wallace.

Subtitled "The True Story of How One Man Started a Cult... by accident," journalist Danny Wallace placed an ad in a small London newspaper as a bit of a goof. JOIN ME, it said, with contact info. Asked for a recent photo, just to prove your were a person. No other info.

Just, you know, as a lark. To see what would happen.

And then. From all over the world. People did. They had no idea what they were joining, and yet, that sort of didn't matter. Equal parts of hope and humor, inspiration and despair, good deeds and bad curry, imagine a book written by Monty Python about that one time when they found themselves in control of an army of believers, who were looking to them for inspiration.

It goes from a joke, to... well:

"His Royal Highness applauds the initiative taken to establish Join Me and is thrilled that so many good deeds have been done as a result... The prince of Wales congratulates all Joinees for their good deeds so far and has asked me to send his very best wishes for future acts of kindness." The Office of Prince Charles

http://www.join-me.co.uk/

Julian's Pick of the Week:

Summer '08 is looking like the best moment to be a comic book nerd. Starting with 2000's X-Men, Hollywood started paying attention to the medium in a way it never did before. Sure, there were the Superman and Batman franchises but those seemed to be the exception and definitely not the rule (as Steel, Supergirl, Tank Girl and many others proved.) Now, this summer we have got one of the best superhero movies ever made in Iron Man, a big budget Hulk reboot and two upcoming (and excellent-looking) others: Hellboy II - The Golden Army and The Dark Knight, along with another one that should have been a comic book (specially if it had been produced by John Arcudi and Doug Mahnke) in Hancock.

If those weren't enough, Hellboy II is Guillermo Del Toro latest effort. Guillermo "MY NEXT MOVIE IS THE HOBBIT" Del Toro, which I'd assume played a part (along with his good-beyond-words Pan's Labyrinth) in getting him into the director's chair to direct the story of Bilbo Baggins.

It's a good time to be a nerd, particularly a comic book nerd.

Erin's Pick of the Week:

Raymond K. Feist's Riftwar Saga: I know I might be letting my nerd show, but this fantasy series is not to be missed. Complete with magicians, invasions from other worlds, monsters, sleeping princesses and zombies, Feist's Riftwar books take us to the world of Midkemia and focus primarily on the Kingdom of the Isles with visits to the planet Kelawar. We're introduced to this world in Magician: Apprentice and Magician: Master, the story of a young boy discovering his magical abilities between being kidnapped by aliens and fighting a war at, like, fourteen. The story continues with a focus on the Kingdom's royal family in Silverthorn (see: sleeping princess) and A Darkness at Sethanon, which features lots of creepy zombies. And who doesn't love creepy zombies? An oldie, but a goodie, I'm going to recommend this to any lovers of High Adventure out there.

Ash's Pick of the Week:

Ash is off in sunny Orlando this week, but were he here, he'd be extolling the virtues of Primavera's ProSight application. As an Enterprise Portfolio Management solution, ProSight is easily and infinitely customizable to your company's portfolio management needs. Prioritization is a snap with customizable investor maps, "what-if" scenario building and constraint analysis, and Primavera supports integration with key enterprise solutions like MS Project Server. ProSight is fully customizable out of the box, but Primavera also supplies "Fast Track" configurations, allowing organizations to leverage industry best practices for the foundation of their configuration, and then tweak to meet their individual needs.

Rich's Pick of the Week:

Y The Last Man Vol 10 Whys And Wherefores TP. This is it, trade-waiters. The conclusion to Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra's excellent post-apocalyptic sci-fi epic about Yorick Brown, the last man on earth, is finally collected in this new trade paperback. I've been avoiding spoilers for the last few months ever since the final issue was released and hopefully I can avoid them for a couple of more days before I have a chance to read this. I'm currently re-reading volumes 1-9 to lead myself in to this final volume.