Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter

Indiana, 1818. Moonlight falls through the dense woods that surround a one-room cabin, where a nine-year-old Abraham Lincoln kneels at his suffering mother's bedside. She's been stricken with something the old-timers call "Milk Sickness"."My baby boy..." she whispers before dying. Only later will the grieving Abe learn that his mother's fatal affliction was actually the work of a vampire.When the truth becomes known to young Lincoln, he writes in his journal, "henceforth my life shall be one of rigorous study and devotion. I shall become a master of mind and body. And this mastery shall have but one purpose..." Gifted with his legendary height, strength, and skill with an axe, Abe sets out on a path of vengeance that will lead him all the way to the White House.While Abraham Lincoln is widely lauded for saving a Union and freeing millions of slaves, his valiant fight against the forces of the undead has remained in the shadows for hundreds of years. That is, until Seth Grahame-Smith stumbled upon The Secret Journal of Abraham Lincoln, and became the first living person to lay eyes on it in more than 140 years.Using the journal as his guide and writing in the grand biographical style of Doris Kearns Goodwin and David McCullough, Seth has reconstructed the true life story of America's greatest president for the first time - all while revealing the hidden history behind the Civil War and uncovering the role vampires played in the birth, growth, and near-death of the nation.

Amazon.com Review

Indiana, 1818. Moonlight falls through the dense woods that surround a one-room cabin, where a nine-year-old Abraham Lincoln kneels at his suffering mother's bedside. She's been stricken with something the old-timers call "Milk Sickness.""My baby boy..." she whispers before dying.Only later will the grieving Abe learn that his mother's fatal affliction was actually the work of a vampire.When the truth becomes known to young Lincoln, he writes in his journal, "henceforth my life shall be one of rigorous study and devotion. I shall become a master of mind and body. And this mastery shall have but one purpose..." Gifted with his legendary height, strength, and skill with an ax, Abe sets out on a path of vengeance that will lead him all the way to the White House.While Abraham Lincoln is widely lauded for saving a Union and freeing millions of slaves, his valiant fight against the forces of the undead has remained in the shadows for hundreds of years. That is, until Seth Grahame-Smith stumbled upon The Secret Journal of Abraham Lincoln, and became the first living person to lay eyes on it in more than 140 years.Using the journal as his guide and writing in the grand biographical style of Doris Kearns Goodwin and David McCullough, Seth has reconstructed the true life story of our greatest president for the first time-all while revealing the hidden history behind the Civil War and uncovering the role vampires played in the birth, growth, and near-death of our nation.. Take a Look Inside this Book(Click on each image below to see a larger view)

From Publishers Weekly

Following the success of his bestselling Pride and Prejudice and Zombies with another mélange of history and horror, Grahame-Smith inserts a grandiose and gratuitous struggle with vampires into Abraham Lincoln's life. Lincoln learns at an early age that his mother was killed by a supernatural predator. This provokes his bloody but curiously undocumented lifelong vendetta against vampires and their slave-owning allies. The author's decision to reduce slavery to a mere contrivance of the vampires is unfortunate bordering on repellent, but at least it does distract the reader from the central question of why the president never saw fit to inform the public of the supernatural menace. Grahame-Smith stitches hand-to-hand vampire combat into Lincoln's documented life with competent prose that never quite manages to convince. (Mar.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine

After the commercial success of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (and Ben H. Winters's lesser effort, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters), critics wondered if the monster-meets-historical-or-literary-figure conceit has worn thin. Fortunately, most reviewers found Abraham Lincoln to be an entertaining and fast-paced work of revisionist history, if gruesome and glib in parts. But others called the novel melodramatic, as well as faulted the author's (and Abe's) voices, though the diaries allow Grahame-Smith to narrate omnisciently. In the end, the novel is, perhaps, a gimmick--but an imaginative one that, if it won't "change anyone's life ... [is] still worth the short time it takes to read it" (i99.com).

From Booklist

Capitalizing on the runaway success of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2009), Grahame-Smith introduces an irreverent “biography” of Abraham Lincoln chock-full of that other horror-genre staple: vampires. Everyone knows that Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves and saved the country from disunion, but very few were privy to the fact that Honest Abe was an honest-to-goodness vampire hunter; that is, until Grahame-Smith unearthed Lincoln’s secret journal, an intimate document detailing the lifelong battle he waged against the undead. Motivated by the vampire-initiated death of his mother, 11-year-old Abe vowed to “kill every vampire in America.” True to his pledge, he spent the next 50 years honing his skills and stalking his prey. Recognizing an inextricable link between slavery and vampires, he expanded his mission to include destroying the “peculiar institution.” And the rest, as they say, is history. Grahame-Smith’s breezy narrative style makes this a quick and easy read guaranteed to tickle the funny bone. Vampires are hot, so expect high demand (except from, probably, die-hard history buffs, who may not be amused). --Margaret Flanagan

From AudioFile

When he was still a youngster, Abraham Lincoln's mother was murdered by vampires. (You didn't know that?) He took umbrage and henceforth lived a secret life while, on the surface, saving the Union. The secret part was his war with a second Earth species of carnivorous sapiens: vampires! This book is a clever evocation that reveals "the truth" about Honest Abe as uncovered in a hitherto unknown journal written by Lincoln himself. Narrator Scott Holst moves through the mixture of realism and fantasy with skill. However outrageous the plot may sound, Holst portrays the characters in a way that makes them exciting and credible. Together, author and narrator put an imaginative twist on our nation's history and the life of our sixteenth president. D.R.W. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

About the Author

Seth Grahame-Smith is the New York Times bestselling author of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. In addition to adapting the screenplay for Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Seth also wrote Tim Burton's film Dark Shadows. He lives in Los Angeles.

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