Most Popular Books by Christopher Moore

"Set adrift by his pirate crew, Pocket of Dog Snogging--last seen in The Serpent of Venice--washes up on the sun-bleached shores of Greece, where he hopes to dazzle the Duke with his comedic brilliance and become his trusted fool. But the island is in turmoil. Egeus, the Duke''s minister, is furious that his daughter Hermia is determined to marry Lysander instead of Demetrius, the man he has chosen for her. The Duke decrees that if, by the time of the wedding, Hermia still refuses to marry Demetrius, she shall be executed ... or consigned to a nunnery. Pocket, being Pocket, cannot help but point out that this decree is complete bollocks, and that the Duke is an egregious weasel for having even suggested it. Irritated by the fool''s impudence, the Duke orders his death. With the Duke''s guards in pursuit, Pocket makes a daring escape. He soon stumbles into the wooded realm of the fairy king Oberon, who, as luck would have it, is short a fool. His jester Robin Goodfellow--the mischievous sprite better known as Puck--was found dead. Murdered. Oberon makes Pocket an offer he can''t refuse: he will make Pocket his fool and have his death sentence lifted if Pocket finds out who killed Robin Goodfellow. But as anyone who is even vaguely aware of the Bard''s most performed play ever will know, nearly every character has a motive for wanting the mischievous sprite dead. With too many suspects and too little time, Pocket must work his own kind of magic to find the truth, save his neck, and ensure that all ends well"--

In 1783 and 1784, some fifty thousand Americans felt that they could not support the revolution against Britain. They were called Loyalists – and there would be no place for them in the new United States. As they streamed into the Canadian colonies to the north, they changed forever the face of settlement there. Their arrival would eventually lead to the formation of the provinces of New Brunswick and Ontario. First published in hardcover in 1984, the bicentenary of the migration, The Loyalists tells the very human story of these people – of the societies that shaped them, the attitudes that motivated them, and the circumstances that determined their future and influenced the future of Canada. It went on to win the Secretary of State''s Prize for Excellence in Canadian Studies.

Venice, a long time ago. Three prominent Venetians await their most loathsome and foul dinner guest, the erstwhile envoy from the Queen of Britain: the rascal-Fool Pocket. This trio of cunning plotters—the merchant, Antonio; the senator, Montressor Brabantio; and the naval officer, Iago—have lured Pocket to a dark dungeon, promising an evening of sprits and debauchery with a rare Amontillado sherry and Brabantio''s beautiful daughter, Portia. But their invitation is, of course, bogus. The wine is drugged. The girl isn''t even in the city limits. Desperate to rid themselves once and for all of the man who has consistently foiled their grand quest for power and wealth, they have lured him to his death. (How can such a small man, be such a huge obstacle?). But this Fool is no fool . . . and he''s got more than a few tricks (and hand gestures) up his sleeve. Greed, revenge, deception, lust, and a giant (but lovable) sea monster combine to create another hilarious and bawdy tale from modern comic genius, Christopher Moore.

Teach your students how to think like scientists. This book shows you practical ways to incorporate science thinking in your classroom using simple "Thinking Tasks" that you can insert into any lesson. What is science thinking and how can you possibly teach and assess it? How is science thinking incorporated into the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and how can it be weaved into your curriculum? This book answers these questions. This practical book provides a clear, research-verified framework for helping students develop scientific thinking as required by the NGSS. Your students will not be memorizing content but will become engaged in the real work scientists do, using critical thinking patterns such as: Recognizing patterns, Inventing new hypotheses based on observations, Separating causes from correlations, Determining relevant variables and isolating them, Testing hypotheses, and Thinking about their own thinking and the relative value of evidence. The book includes a variety of sample classroom activities and rubrics, as well as frameworks for creating your own tools. Designed for the busy teacher, this book also shows you quick and simple ways to add deep science thinking to existing lessons.

“If there’s a funnier writer out there, step forward.” —Playboy The always outrageous Christopher Moore—New York Times bestselling author of Bite Me, Lamb, You Suck, The Stupidest Angel, and a host of other prime cuts of literary hilarity—joins forces with award-winning screenwriter and director Ian Corson to bring you The Griff. An absurdly entertaining graphic novel about alien invasion—in the grand tradition of Cowboys and Aliens, but considerably more ridiculous—The Griff is vintage Chris Moore…with pictures! Get ready for thrills, chills, and a chain-smoking professional squirrel, in this high-octane tale of the infestation of Earth by extraterrestrial interlopers and the motley crew of humans who save the world…sort of.

Waking up after a fantastic night only to discover that his girlfriend is a vampire and has transformed him into one, C. Thomas Flood adapts to his new powers while dealing with a dangerous faction of bloodsuckers trying to kill off all other vampires.

Now in a special holiday edition, the hilariously deranged tale of Santa, fruitcakes, angels, and Kung fu. . . . “Christopher Moore writes novels that are not only hilarious, but fun to read as well. He is an author at the top of his craft.—Nicholas Sparks ’Twas the night before Christmas . . . and all through Pine Cove, Florida, the creatures were stirring in this wonderfully funny tale that gives the spirit of Christmas a whole new meaning.

Jody never asked to become a vampire. But when she wakes up under an alley Dumpster with a badly burned arm, an aching back, superhuman strength, and a distinctly Nosferatuan thirst, she realizes the decision has been made for her. Making the transition from the nine-to-five grind to an eternity of nocturnal prowlings is going to take some doing, however, and that''s where C. Thomas Flood fits in. A would-be Kerouac from Incontinence, Indiana, Tommy (to his friends) is biding his time night-clerking and frozen-turkey bowling in a San Francisco Safeway. But all that changes when a beautiful undead redhead walks through the door...and proceeds to rock Tommy''s life—and afterlife—in ways he never thought possible.

The town psychiatrist has decided to switch everybody in Pine Cove, California, from their normal antidepressants to placebos, so naturally—well, to be accurate, artificially—business is booming at the local blues bar. Trouble is, those lonely slide-guitar notes have also attracted a colossal sea beast named Steve with, shall we say, a thing for explosive oil tanker trucks. Suddenly, morose Pine Cove turns libidinous and is hit by a mysterious crime wave, and a beleaguered constable has to fight off his own gonzo appetites to find out what''s wrong and what, if anything, to do about it.

Charlie Asher is a pretty normal guy with a normal life, married to a bright and pretty woman who actually loves him for his normalcy. They''re even about to have their first child. Yes, Charlie''s doing okay—until people start dropping dead around him, and everywhere he goes a dark presence whispers to him from under the streets. Charlie Asher, it seems, has been recruited for a new position: as Death. It''s a dirty job. But, hey! Somebody''s gotta do it.

In Christopher Moore''s ingenious debut novel, we meet one of the most memorably mismatched pairs in the annals of literature. The good-looking one is one-hundred-year-old ex-seminarian and "roads" scholar Travis O''Hearn. The green one is Catch, a demon with a nasty habit of eating most of the people he meets. Behind the fake Tudor façade of Pine Cove, California, Catch sees a four-star buffet. Travis, on the other hand, thinks he sees a way of ridding himself of his toothy traveling companion. The winos, neo-pagans, and deadbeat Lotharios of Pine Cove, meanwhile, have other ideas. And none of them is quite prepared when all hell breaks loose.

“Christopher Moore is a very sick man, in the very best sense of the word.” —Carl Hiaasen The undead rise again in Bite Me, the third book in New York Times bestselling author Christopher Moore’s wonderfully twisted vampire saga. Joining his farcical gems Bloodsucking Fiends and You Suck, Moore’s latest in continuing story of young, urban, nosferatu style love, is no Twilight—but rather a tsunami of the irresistible outrageousness that has earned him the appellation, “Stephen King with a whoopee cushion and a double-espresso imagination” from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and inspired Denver’s Rocky Mountain News to declare him, “the 21st century’s best satirist.”

From the master of subversive humor Christopher Moore comes a quirky, irreverent novel of love, myth, metaphysics, outlaw biking, angst, and outrageous redemption. As a boy, he was Samson Hunts Alone—until a deadly misunderstanding with the law forced him to flee the Crow reservation at age fifteen. Today he is Samuel Hunter, a successful Santa Barbara insurance salesman with a Mercedes, a condo, and a hollow, invented life. Then one day, destiny offers him the dangerous gift of love—in the exquisite form of Calliope Kincaid—and a curse in the unheralded appearance of an ancient god by the name of Coyote. Coyote, the trickster, has arrived to reawaken the mystical storyteller within Sam...and to seriously screw up his existence in the process.

Take a wonderfully crazed excursion into the demented heart of a tropical paradise—a world of cargo cults, cannibals, mad scientists, ninjas, and talking fruit bats. Our bumbling hero is Tucker Case, a hopeless geek trapped in a cool guy''s body, who makes a living as a pilot for the Mary Jean Cosmetics Corporation. But when he demolishes his boss''s pink plane during a drunken airborne liaison, Tuck must run for his life from Mary Jean''s goons. Now there''s only one employment opportunity left for him: piloting shady secret missions for an unscrupulous medical missionary and a sexy blond high priestess on the remotest of Micronesian hells. Here is a brazen, ingenious, irreverent, and wickedly funny novel from a modern master of the outrageous.

“Hilarious, always inventive, this is a book for all, especially uptight English teachers, bardolaters, and ministerial students.” —Dallas Morning News Fool—the bawdy and outrageous New York Times bestseller from the unstoppable Christopher Moore—is a hilarious new take on William Shakespeare’s King Lear…as seen through the eyes of the foolish liege’s clownish jester, Pocket. A rousing tale of “gratuitous shagging, murder, spanking, maiming, treason, and heretofore unexplored heights of vulgarity and profanity,” Fool joins Moore’s own Lamb, Fluke, The Stupidest Angel, and You Suck! as modern masterworks of satiric wit and sublimely twisted genius, prompting Carl Hiassen to declare Christopher Moore “a very sick man, in the very best sense of the word.”

In San Francisco, the souls of the dead are mysteriously disappearing—and you know that can’t be good—in New York Times bestselling author Christopher Moore’s delightfully funny sequel to A Dirty Job. Something really strange is happening in the City by the Bay. People are dying, but their souls are not being collected. Someone—or something—is stealing them and no one knows where they are going, or why, but it has something to do with that big orange bridge. Death Merchant Charlie Asher is just as flummoxed as everyone else. He’s trapped in the body of a fourteen-inch-tall “meat puppet” waiting for his Buddhist nun girlfriend, Audrey, to find him a suitable new body to play host. To get to the bottom of this abomination, a motley crew of heroes will band together: the seven-foot-tall death merchant Minty Fresh; retired policeman turned bookseller Alphonse Rivera; the Emperor of San Francisco and his dogs, Bummer and Lazarus; and Lily, the former Goth girl. Now if only they can get little Sophie to stop babbling about the coming battle for the very soul of humankind . . .

At the end of the eighteenth century, when ten lawyers gathered in what is now Niagara-on-the-Lake to form the Law Society of Upper Canada, they were creating something new in the world: a professional organization with statutory authority to control its membership and govern its own affairs. Today''s Law Society of Upper Canada, with more than 25,000 members, still wields these powers. Marking the bicentennial of the society''s foundation, Christopher Moore''s history begins by exploring the unprecedented step taken in 1797 and follows the evolution of lawyers'' work and the idea of professional autonomy through two hundred years of growth and change. The Law Society of Upper Canada and Ontario''s Lawyers is a broad-ranging story of the growth and development of the Law Society and the legal profession, from the days when horseback barristers travelled the backwoods by horseback, through the reforms of the late nineteenth century to the period of reaction between the two world wars and the long struggle of women and minorities for access to and equity in the legal profession. Writing in a style that is scholarly as well as entertaining, Moore traces to the present a story rich in personalities, and shows how, after a period of tremendous growth and change, questions of governance, legal aid, and practice insurance triggered a series of crises that rocked the society to its foundations. This is the first study to be based on full access to the society''s two hundred years of historical records. Moore, who has organized his research into themes and periods to illuminate the story, also includes new material on the lives and careers of Ontario lawyers and on the place of the Law Society in professional and public life. Readable and extensively illustrated, The Law Society of Upper Canada and Ontario''s Lawyers shows that such issues as professional autonomy and the internal organization, at the forefront of debate at the society''s inception, continue to dominiate discussions today.

“Christopher Moore is a very sick man, in the very best sense of that word.” —Carl Hiassen A magnificent “Comedy d’Art” from the author of Lamb, Fool, and Bite Me, Moore’s Sacré Bleu is part mystery, part history (sort of), part love story, and wholly hilarious as it follows a young baker-painter as he joins the dapper Henri Toulouse-Lautrec on a quest to unravel the mystery behind the supposed “suicide” of Vincent van Gogh. It is the color of the Virgin Mary''s cloak, a dazzling pigment desired by artists, an exquisite hue infused with danger, adventure, and perhaps even the supernatural. It is . . . Sacré Bleu In July 1890, Vincent van Gogh went into a cornfield and shot himself. Or did he? Why would an artist at the height of his creative powers attempt to take his own life . . . and then walk a mile to a doctor''s house for help? Who was the crooked little "color man" Vincent had claimed was stalking him across France? And why had the painter recently become deathly afraid of a certain shade of blue? These are just a few of the questions confronting Vincent''s friends—baker-turned-painter Lucien Lessard and bon vivant Henri Toulouse-Lautrec—who vow to discover the truth about van Gogh''s untimely death. Their quest will lead them on a surreal odyssey and brothel-crawl deep into the art world of late nineteenth-century Paris. Oh là là, quelle surprise, and zut alors! A delectable confection of intrigue, passion, and art history—with cancan girls, baguettes, and fine French cognac thrown in for good measure—Sacré Bleu is another masterpiece of wit and wonder from the one, the only, Christopher Moore.

The birth of Jesus has been well chronicled, as have his glorious teachings, acts, and divine sacrifice after his thirtieth birthday. But no one knows about the early life of the Son of God, the missing years-except Biff, the Messiah''s best bud, who has been resurrected to tell the story in the divinely hilarious yet heartfelt work "reminiscent of Vonnegut and Douglas Adams" (Philadelphia Inquirer). Verily, the story Biff has to tell is a miraculous one, filled with remarkable journeys, magic, healings, kung fu, corpse reanimations, demons, and hot babes. Even the considerable wiles and devotion of the Savior''s pal may not be enough to divert Joshua from his tragic destiny. But there''s no one who loves Josh more-except maybe "Maggie, " Mary of Magdala-and Biff isn''t about to let his extraordinary pal suffer and ascend without a fight