Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Indiana, 1818. Moonlight falls through the dense woods that surround a one-room cabin, where a nine-year-old Abraham Lincoln kneels at his suffering mother's bedside. She's been stricken with something the old-timers call Milk Sickness.

My baby boy... she whispers before dying.

Only later will the grieving Abe learn that his mother's fatal affliction was actually the work of a vampire.

When the truth becomes known to young Lincoln, he writes in his journal, henceforth my life shall be one of rigorous study and devotion. I shall become a master of mind and body. And this mastery shall have but one purpose... Gifted with his legendary height, strength, and skill with an ax, Abe sets out on a path of vengeance that will lead him all the way to the White House.

While Abraham Lincoln is widely lauded for saving a Union and freeing millions of slaves, his valiant fight against the forces of the undead has remained in the shadows for hundreds of years. That is, until Seth Grahame-Smith stumbled upon The Secret Journal of Abraham Lincoln, and became the first living person to lay eyes on it in more than 140 years.

Using the journal as his guide and writing in the grand biographical style of Doris Kearns Goodwin and David McCullough, Seth has reconstructed the true life story of our greatest president for the first time-all while revealing the hidden history behind the Civil War and uncovering the role vampires played in the birth, growth, and near-death of our nation. NEW Watch Honest Abe in action here: http: //www.hachettebookgroup.com/authors_ABLVH.aspx

"Given the zany conceit of Grahame-Smith's latest novel — that a young Abraham Lincoln vowed to become a vampire slayer upon learning that his mother died after being tainted with vampire blood, and then made good on that promise — performing the story as if it were completely unremarkable is essential to the listener's suspension of disbelief. And in this audio edition, narrator Scott Holst does just that, reading with measured delivery and a calm demeanor. This decision — and his fine performance — accomplishes more than over-the-top histrionics would in delving the listener into this remarkable alternate history, in which the blood-sucking undead play a part in the Civil War (on the side of the South, supernaturally) and the fatal events in Ford's Theater. Holst aligns his pace with the mood of the text, slowing down at vital moments, e.g., when good vampire Henry Sturges informs a young Lincoln that he was born to 'free men from the tyranny of vampires.' This audiobook will serve as a nice contrast to the big-screen adaptation of the book, which, inevitably, substitutes explicit gore for the listener's imagination. A Grand Central paperback." Publishers Weekly Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.