Book Club

Sun., June 27, 1999

Name: Barnes & Noble Horror Club

City: Spokane Valley

Group history: Brand new group, met first time in June and plans to meet monthly at store site (located just east of the Spokane Valley Mall). Fifteen people showed, but is a public group open to any number. Store coordinator Helen Morris picks the books and facilitates the discussion. (Store offers 30 percent discount on book-club selections.) July book is “Slave of My Thirst” by Tom Holland. For further information on the store’s other book-discussion groups (which involve mysteries, romance, contemporary literature, non-fiction, fiction and more), call 922-4104.

Book reviewed: “The Blood Countess” (Dell Books, 453 pages, $6.99 paper) by Andrei Codrescu.

Group representative: Nick Heilman, store community relations manager.

The review: Codrescu’s book tells two stories in one: He follows the reign of the evil Countess Elizabeth of 16th-century Hungary, who ordered the deaths of 650 virgins so that she could bathe in their blood, and he explores the modern-day story of a Hungarian journalist (a descendent of the bloody countess) who returns home to face a request that he join a patriotic group. “They liked the book,” Heilman says of the first group’s participants. “They thought it was well-written. They even discussed maybe that the book should be made into a movie.”

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