Highfire

Behold Squib Moreau at fifteen: a swamp-wild, street-smart, dark-eyed, Cajun-blood tearaway, no future to speak of unless he wanted to work creosote or hump bricks in Slidell. Long on dreams, short on plans most of the time. He was doing his best to stay straight but it seemed like straight didn't pay the bills even with his own three jobs and his momma's work in the Petit Bateau clinic.

But change was a-coming for Squib had been presented an opportunity. On this summer evening with the blood-sucking gauze of mosquitoes hovering above the swamp murk and the cypress trees standing sentry on the shores of Honey Island, Squib would shake on a deal to buy himself and his mother a little wiggle room from the attentions of Constable Regence Hooke, who was escalating his courtship of Elodie Moreau.

Unfortunately for Squib, the crooked constable has his own eye on that very opportunity - and none of them have taken into account the dragon hiding out in the Louisiana bayou . . .

Think Pete's dragon crossed with the Sopranos with a hint of True Blood and you won't go far wrong in this funny, violent, gripping tale of a boy and his wyrm: the last dragon in the world. Maybe.