It's been six years since Eli and his family took refuge in the compound.  Luckily his dad had the foresight to build an underground shelter before the nuclear attack. Eli lived with his parents and his two sisters, and he missed his twin brother Eddy and his grandma, who didn’t make it on time. Eli could still hear the sound of the compound door closing on them.

Being cooped up six years in one place will drive anyone crazy, even if your billionaire dad has created an almost exact replica of your old mansion. Lately things had gone for the worse. They discovered that their food supplies had been contaminated and it didn't look like it’s going to last them another nine years before they could safely go back outside. It’s odd that his father would make such an amateur mistake. His father, who'd thought of everything…


Mason's mom seemed to have an irrational anger towardsTrodyn, one of the world's leading company in global warming research, and had forbidden him to apply for a summer internship there, but what did Mason find in her drawer one day?  An old Trodyn employee batch!  She's worked there before? Why didn't she say so? That was the last straw. Mason had had enough with all the family secrets. He's old enough now and deserved answers, like where was his father all these years, so he marched right up to the nursing home where his mom worked to confront her.

His mom didn't take care of old people like he had always imagined, but young teens just like him, except that they suffered major brain injuries in various accidents and basically just sat there, neither talk nor move, and stared out all day. While he's waiting for his mom to come back to explain this all, Mason took out a DVD of the only video he had of his dad and put it in the player to calm himself down. You couldn't even see his face, just his hands holding a copy of the Runaway Bunny, but it was enough to relax Mason.

"If you become a mountain climber," said the little bunny,
"I'll be a crocus in a hidden garden."...

"Where am I?" Mason turned and saw one of patients staring wide awake at him.

"If you become a crocus in a hidden garden," said his mother, 
"I will be a gardener. And I will find you."


Mason stopped the DVD and walked over, but that was it. The girl had gone back to being totally unresponsive.  Maybe he had dreamt it all, so he restarted the DVD, but when it got to the same line about the crocus, again the girl spoke, "Where am I?" As soon as the next line was uttered though, she was gone again.

Why did his father's reading wake her up?

Both of these books are thrilling pageturners. The crazy and scary premises in both of the books will draw readers in right away, and then along the way, you'll be sitting on the edge of your seat waiting to see what's going to happen next. The books are about the difficult choices you've to make in life, and it's frightening to see what people believe to be good intention and what they would do because of it. Can't wait for the author to write another novel...

» Visit the author's website and blog

Uncle John's Bathroom Readers fill this gap. This is trivia at its finest, with short but detailed articles on pretty much subject under the sun, and including the sun itself. Usually no more than 5 pages per article, they allow for picking and choosing what stories you want to read.

Lest you be concerned that trivia books are a nerdy pursuit (they generally are) there are different types of Readers that will appeal to various types of boys: general information that covers everything you can think of, but also specific titles as in the image. TV, General Sports, Movies, Music, Oddities, National Parks, Canada, Hockey, Baseball, various US States, Science, etc. There are dozens of titles. You may already know of the spin-off "For Kids" versions.

I started reading these when I was a teen visiting my grandparents house and not having much to do. They had stacks of these books, and I was engrossed, usually spending more time reading them than visiting. Now I have a large collection of my own.

The book is a collection of blog posts from 27bslash6. Language warning. But also really funny to a certain sense of humour (mine included). While this could qualify as a novelty book since it is a spinoff of anothre medium, it is a little more substantial than most other novelty books. There aren't many images in the book, but those that are there are well worth it (see the missing-cat posters mentioned above).

The best part for the more hesitant boys here is that, even though it is a thick, heavy book, there is no story and no continuity from segment to segment. If bored, the reader can just move on to the next section or skip around to whatever strikes their fancy. I think the subtitle of the book is all the hook needed for those guys: "Irreverent Correspondences of an Evil Online Genius".