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"Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted. That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history . . ."
--Aldous Huxley

DOCTOR WHO in THE DYSTOPIAN BLUES

Crimea Sixtus had lived in the bookstore by herself as long as she could remember. She supposed she had had parents, but as hard as she tried -- she couldn't conjure an image of them in her mind. They flitted away like ghosts on the edge of her sight. So instead, she settled for the photos she saw on books. Her father she imagined as dashing and debonair as James Patterson on the back jacket of 12th of Never (9780316210829) 27.99, and her mother was surely as beautiful and glamourous as Gwyneth Paltrow is on the front cover of It's All Good: Lots of Words (9781455522712) 32.00 (or the 35 pictures inside of the book in which she is featured). Crimea liked flipping through the cookbooks. The food all looked so good. It didn't look like that now, not since the Time of Troubles.

Her inner timer told her that the bombers would be coming soon. She scuttled into the teepee she had made from her hundreds of copies of Fifty Shades of Grey: Inner Goddess: A Journal (9780345806758) 16.99 by E.L. James. The jets always flew over at 1300 hours and then they bombed, bombed, and bombed. In fact, you could say they had bombed themselves right back into the Stone Age. Her city was nothing but a pile of rubble. She couldn't even remember what they were fighting about. She hadn't seen anyone else in years. Fortunately the bookstore was underground so she would just hear the large booms from above, but sometimes a little drywall and plaster would fall from the ceiling.

Crimea already had her reading schedule planned out. First of all, she wanted to tackle Michael Pollan's Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation (9781594204210) 27.95. There were some recipes in there that she might be able to prepare herself. To lighten her mood, she'd follow that one with David Sedaris' Let's Expore Diabetes with Owls (9780316154697) 27.00. His books would really make her laugh. And finally, for mere entertainment she had Kristin Hannah's Fly Away (9780312577216) 27.99 to round out her day . . .

Her thoughts were cut short by a pulsating sound that seemed to echo around the bookstore. Suddenly, before her very eyes, a giant blue box materialized out of thin air in front of her Inner Goddess shelter.

She jumped to her feet to examine it, but a door cracked open and a man with a garishly ugly sports jacket and a red bow tie stepped out. He was staring intently at a cracked open copy of Nathaniel Philbrick's Bunker Hill (9780670025442) 32.95. He looked at her and said, "Not Bunker Hill. Huh? Who are you?"

"I'm Crimea Sixtus."

"Oh, you're not even human. You're an android. That's alright. I'm the Doctor."


Odds & Sods

For Michigan sleuth fans, Joseph Heywood is back with 20 new stories in his latest short story collection, Hard Ground: Woods Cops Stories (9780762781263) 16.95. This book highlights Grady Service's game-warden friends, but also features a short story from early in Grady Service's career. Fans of smart crime fiction and the woodlands of Michigan will love this title . . .

I'm as sick of young adult Dystopian fiction as much as you are, but I'm willing to give Rick Yancey the benefit of doubt. His new one is called The 5th Wave (9780399162411) 18.99. And we're looking at an alien apocalypse. Don't worry, B. Traven Jr. is on the case . . .