River Of Teeth

I couldn't put this book down. The plot of revenge-for-profit is a favorite of mine, and Gailey takes an actual honest-to-god fact about America's past interest in...HIPPO FARMING and turns it into a watery-style western with characters as annoying and believable as your own family. One of the cleverest threads in this book is how the author thought through the logistics of hippo ranching--I'm still completely terrified of the beasts, but Gailey gives all of the hippos in the book as much personality as their human riders. This book is without a doubt, firmly on the shelf under the category of 'buy this for that stuck-up-relative who swears there's nothing new under the sun." I'm off to go buy the sequel now!