Fantasy that ties in with another medium (movies) is the only one I can think of.  Maybe Fantasy/Romance, considering the ending.

Edited for possible spoilers.

Thanks Melanti! My brain was on hyperdrive and I couldn't think. I was going through 30g worth of ebooks. 

I've never seen any of the movies/cartoons so I can't compare but the book itself is amusing.  A very Disney-ish style of humor. 

Also... 30 gigs worth of ebooks???  How many books is that?  50,000?  100,000?

I'm alright with Disney style humor. I've been wanting to read the Tarzan series and Conan series for a while now. I'm not sure how many ebooks I have but I'll post a final count after I enter them into my organizer. 

Well, I finished The Fixer by Jon F. Merz.  This is the first book in the authors Lawson series about a "Fixer."  In Merz’s world, vampires are real, but they are not undead; they are a separate species from humans.  They don't hate sunshine, care about religious symbols, or live forever.  They do drink blood, live for a couple hundred years, and can be killed by a stake through the heart.  Vampire society, led by the Council, tries to protect the secret that they exist from humans.  This is where the Fixers come in; they are like the secret police force that enforces the vampire laws, up to and including dealing out the death sentences.  The main character, Lawson, is a Fixer.  I initially added this series to my wish list because of how popular it was on Amazon.  The first book has 31 reviews and averages a 4.5 rating.  It is also very much out of print, and can only be purchased for $20-$40, so I never expected to read them.  However, the author is trying to get his name out there to promote a new book in the series and a potential TV show, so he has released the previous books on Kindle and Nook for $2.99/each.  I picked up the first book, and I have to say, it was only okay.  I would give it a 2-2.5 stars, definitely a book to be read then passed on, not a keeper.  The book had a lot of typos and odd formatting in it, although this might be just the version I read (for the Nook).  I also have a problem with the main character's detective style, which is 1) make a guess 2) it works out 3) Profit?  I am going to give the second book a chance, since I hate to judge an author by the first book in the series, especially if it is also the first book the author has written. 

It would definitely fill the Fantasy Mystery and Secret History categories.  It also might someday fill the category for Other Medium Tie-In, since his website says that a Fixer TV show is in pre-production.   However, I am not sure that this will happen this year, or ever.  The Facebook page for the TV show says “Coming 2010,” and the posts on the wall are from the stars ex-students; apparently he used to be an art teacher?  Not that there is any problem with teachers, but the lack of an established actor attached to the project makes me doubt it a little more. 

EDIT: And now it appears that the webpage for the TV Show is no longer around.  There is still a Facebook page, but that is it. 

Hey, cool! Tor.com posted excerpts from all their 2010 Locus recommended books here.

So if there were any you hadn't heard of and wanted to check out, have at it! ;)

Very nice.  I'll have to check it out when I get a chance. 

I always forget to look at Tor.com for things to read.  Which is slilly cause they have that short story archive.

I checked out Tor.com this weekend and proceeded to download three short stories to my Kindle for 99 cents each. All of the were enjoyable reads, but my favorite was Clockwork Fairies by Cat Rambo. The other two I downloaded were Beauty Belongs to the Flowers by Matthew Sanborn and Eve of Sin City by S.J. Day.

And, that got me looking on Amazon in the Kindle Fantasy section for more and I found about five more e-books to download for under $3 each, all with good reviews.

Oh, the cycle will never end for me.

I assume e-books count for the challenge?

 I assume e-books count for the challenge?

Of course! As do audiobooks. . . as would someone reading a book to you, if you happened to end up in that situation. . . ;)

Those $0.99 ebooks are as dangerous as the clearance rack at the bookstore.

Nebula nominees have been announced, so if you couldn't find any previous nominees that you wanted for the category maybe there's something in the batch for this year!

Best Novel Nominees

• The Native Star, M.K. Hobson (Steampunk Western Fantasy)
• The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, N.K. Jemisin (High Fantasy)
• Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal (Historical Fantasy Romance)
• Echo, Jack McDevitt (Space Opera -- latest in a series)
• Who Fears Death, Nnedi Okorafor (Post-Apocalyptic Science Fantasy -- Set in AND based on the myths of Africa, Nigeria I think)
• Blackout / All Clear, Connie Willis (Time Travel Science Fiction)

The rest of the list is here.

I started the audiobook version of Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor a couple of days ago.  It's very good so far.  Every time I closed my eyes to try to sleep last night, I kept hearing the story. 

It is set in Africa but since it's post-apocalyptic, the nation really isn't important (or even mentioned).  The fantasy elements are far outweighing the post-apocalyptic elements so far.  This one also would be a great one for a book dealing with race.  The main character is bi-racial, a big problem in this society.

And as long as we're speaking of audiobooks - anyone wanting to read Red Seas Under Red Skies (sequel to The Lies of Locke Lamora) should be warned that it ends on a cliffhanger, the 3rd book is 3 years overdue, and the publication date just got pushed back another 9 months. It's a good book (not quite as good as Locke Lamora, though) but I hate not being able to just jump into the next one when there's a cliff hanger.  (Can you tell I'm slightly disgruntled?) 

Melanti, that's driving me crazy about George R.R. Martin.  At least I have the HBO adaptation to look forward to....

I had it all planned out too -- just in case there was a cliff hanger, the 3rd book was supposed to be released 4 or 5 days ago, according to Amazon's info.  So I finished Red Seas Under Red Skies and then went online to download the 3rd book.  That's when I found out about the publishing issues.  Though It's not quite as bad as GRRM.  It apparently has been turned in to the publishers recently, it just needs to be edited/typeset/etc. 

I finished Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde for the work on the Locus Recommended Reading List for 2010.  This is set in a psuedo Edwardian/Victorian utopia which is slowly revealed to be repressive, opressive and alienating.  I enjoy the way a certain set of expectations are raised only to spun 180 degrees and then flipped on their backs.  This is definately a keeper book for me.

I've had a slow reading month, I guess.

I've read the next two in the Ballad series by Sharyn McCrumb.  She Walks These Hills is really good.  It focuses around journeys made mostly by females, and mostly with a betrayal of some sort at the end.  The stories ranged from historical (a woman escaping from being kidnapped by Indians in pioneer days and coming 200 miles home alone) to the land itself (continental drift) to modern (a backpacker hiking a trail) to the metaphorical (a woman advancing a career).  I really loved how this one was put together with bits and pieces of each story revealed in turn. The next one - The Rosewood Casket - wasn't quite as good.  It lacked that tight construction of the second and third books.  It focused on different ways of loosing land.  Death, taxes, disinterest, lack of heirs, crooked politicians, etc. 
These fit Mystery or Interstitial. 

I also read Lois McMaster Bujold's The Hallowed Hunt.  It's set in the same world and the same religion as the others (The Curse of Chalion and  Paladin of Souls) but in a different country with completely different characters.  On PhoenixFalls's advice, I deliberately waited almost a year between reading the first two and this one and I'm very glad I did.  I think long break between them let me appreciate it more on its own merits, rather than  earning for the first two books (this still happened a bit though).  And while it was wonderful and I really loved it, I didn't get the immediate desire to go back to the first page and start over like I did with The Curse of Chalion.
This was a nominee for the Locus Award and the Mythopoeic Award, I believe.

The last one I'll mention is Naomi Novik's His Majesty's Dragon.  The series is a alternate history that explores the idea of dragons being used as an air force during the Napoleonic Wars.  I was kind of expecting this one to be really reminiscent of McCaffery's Pern series but even though it shares a lot of the same elements, the overall impression was completely different.  If this one hadn't been a freebie, I never would have even tried it, and I would have missed out on a great series.  There's a lot of growth in both Lawrence and his dragon Temeraire and I loved the interaction between them and the developing bond.   I couldn't help but compare it to Walton's Tooth and Claw, which was also set in the Regancy period - and IMO, this one is the clear winner, though Tooth and Claw is rather unique. 
This was a Hugo Nominee.

I love the Naomi Novik series.  I'm waiting for book 6.

Finished Hell and Earth by Bear last night. It all came together very nicely. I hope to read more of Bear's Promethean Age works, once they're published.

Started The Lady of the Sorrows by Cecilia Dart-Thornton last night, the second in her Bitterbynde series. Hopefully I can use it for one of the categories.

Today I happened across a copy of Shannon Hale's Rapunzel's Revenge at the library.  It's a very young adult (say 8-12 yrs) graphic novel that takes the Rapunzel story and turns it into a western.  Rapunzel doesn't sit around waiting for the prince to come by and rescue her.  Instead, she uses her hair as a ladder to escape the tower, then decides to go get revenge on the evil witch who stole her from her family as a baby and enslaves her mother in the mines. 

Along the way she runs around on stolen horses and uses her long braids as lassos, whips, ropes, and bridles for her various steeds.  And she still manages to marry at the end.

It's quite funny and charming.  It had me chuckling throughout, though quietly of course, since I was in the library.

I've already filled my graphic novel slot with the second Sandman book, but maybe this will sound good to someone who doesn't mind kid's books once in awhile.