Are you predator or prey? CLASSIFIED ADS: RESTAURANTS SANGUINI'S: A VERY RARE RESTAURANT IS HIRING A CHEF DE CUISINE. DINNERS ONLY. APPLY IN PERSON BETWEEN 2:00 AND 4:00 PM. Quincie Morris has never felt more alone. Her parents are dead, and her hybrid-werewolf first love is threatening to embark on a rite of passage that will separate them forever. Then, as she and her uncle are about to unveil their hot vampire-themed restaurant, a brutal murder leaves them scrambling for a chef. Can Quincie transform their new hire into a culinary Dark Lord before opening night? Can he wow the crowd in his fake fangs, cheap cape, and red contact lenses or is there more to this earnest face than meets the eye? As human and preternatural forces clash, a deadly love triangle forms, and the line between predator and prey begins to blur. Who s playing whom? And how long can Quincie play along before she loses everything? TANTALIZE marks Cynthia Leitich Smith s delicious debut as a preeminent author of dark fantasy. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

Following her parents' death, Quincie Morris was left in her Uncle Davidson's care, and the fate of the family's Italian restaurant was left in hers. Now 17, Quincie, who narrates, and her uncle have renamed the place Sanguini's. They've remodeled it with a "vampire theme," which they believe will sell in their Texas college town since "vampires are a fringe population, and Austin is a tolerant place." A month before the grand re-opening, however, the longtime chef is mauled to death in the kitchen, and the murder suspect is a werewolf. Quincie finds this problematic, since her lifelong best friend and love interest, Kieren, is a "hybrid werewolf" who traces his lupine heritage to the wolves that roamed Ireland with St. Patrick. A new chef shows up who may be talented but is also spooky, with red contact lenses, pale hair and a menu featuring sweetbreads, blood sausage and baby squirrels in honey cream sauce. Best known for her Native American stories, Smith uses advertisements, newspaper clippings and menu pages to liven the pace, and creates palpable tension in the novel's second half. Quincie's story hews closer to the campy Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes (e.g., " `You ate the police?!' I exclaimed") than to the elegant romanticism of Stephenie Meyer's books, but horror fans will be hooked by Kieren's quiet, hirsute hunkiness, and Texans by the premise that nearly everybody in their capitol is a shapeshifter. Ages 14-up. (Mar.) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

Gr 8 Up-Orphaned at 13, Quince Morris, now 17, has been living with her Uncle Davidson and managing the family's restaurant. Her best friend and the love of her life, Kieran, is a werewolf in training who can not fully control the "monster" in him. As a result he will not return her affection for fear of the harm he could do to her. Within weeks of the grand reopening of the new vampire-themed restaurant, chaos breaks out. The chef is brutally murdered "werewolf style," thus making Kieran a possible suspect. Quince has a month to transform the newly hired chef, Brad, into Sanguini's vampire extraordinaire and at the same time deal with the fact that Kieran is abandoning her to join his own wolfpack and that Brad is making advances. Readers will be tantalized by this dark, romantic, and disturbing fantasy of vampires, werewolves, and a strong no-nonsense heroine. Fans of Stephenie Meyer and Annette Curtis Klause will eat it up.-Donna Rosenblum, Nassau Boces School Library System, NY Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information