“Fablehaven: Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary,” by Brandon Mull, is the fourth installment in the five-part series, and if the first three books were a little light on high-stakes risks, things are definitely beginning to crescendo now.

As always, Mull’s writing is breezy and fun, wasting little time on unnecessary exposition or tangents. It is the story, as you hopefully know by now, of a brother and sister, Kendra and Seth, whose grandparents are caretakers at a preserve for magical creatures. A dark society is trying to obtain the keys necessary to open a demon prison, which would end the world as we know it; it’s up to the kids and their fellow good guys to find the keys first and prevent this.

In “Secrets of the Dragon Sanctuary,” it becomes necessary to visit the highly dangerous, off-limits-to-humans locale of the title, where much excitement and mayhem awaits. I continue to appreciate the fact that Kendra and Seth talk more or less like real kids do, and I’m glad to see some real consequences starting to turn up as the story nears its finale. (In other words: People die.)

If you haven’t checked out the “Fablehaven” series yet, I highly recommend it. While not as rich and complex as Harry Potter (its most obvious parallel), it’s an enthralling and imaginative — and highly addictive — saga in its own right.

“Heyday,” by Kurt Andersen, is by far the best book I’ve read this year. Set in 1848, and enlivened by fascinating, carefully researched period details, it’s a love letter to America’s spirit of adventure and discovery. A young Englishman comes to New York to see what the Yanks are all about, falls for a local girl, befriends her brother and their cynical journalist pal, and the four wind up traveling all the way to California in search of excitement (and gold). The book brims with all manner of villains and colorful characters, and the story is just plain fun, with plenty of humor, excitement, and romance.

Most appealing to me, however, is the way Andersen completely immerses the reader in the world of 1848. He only uses vocabulary that would have been common then, with characters remarking on new words or usages (“OK” was just coming into vogue at the time). America-inspired democracy is starting to spring up around Europe, and America itself is in the midst of a remarkable era of progress and change. It’s easy to see parallels to modern life, particularly of the “the more things change, the more they stay the same” variety. Someone sends a telegraph, receives a reply almost instantly, sends his own response back, and marvels at how he’s able to have an actual conversation with someone hundreds of miles away — which is exactly what modern instant messaging is. Andersen lets us notice these little parallels without commenting on them.

As a fan of history, I’m also amazed and delighted by how much detail Andersen includes. Sometimes it’s not relevant to the story, but it’s always interesting nonetheless. (Did you know that in New York City, May 1 was a semi-official “moving day”? That’s when leases would run out, resulting in thousands of people changes residences all on the same morning. Thanks, “Heyday”!) He covers every elements of life — religion, politics, courtship, entertainment, etc. — to create a very vivid sense of what it was like to be American in 1848. And it’s in the service of an enjoyable, intelligent story with memorable characters. It’s just out in paperback, and I heartily recommend it.

“Last One In” is fictional, but author Nicholas Kulish drew on his real experiences as a journalist embedded with the U.S. military during the 2003 invasion of Iraq to tell this engrossing, sometimes satirical story. The novel is about a shallow gossip columnist who gets sent to Iraq with a Marine convoy. (The reason his newspaper makes him go: He happens to have the same name as the incapacitated war correspondent who was supposed to do it, and the Pentagon refuses to change the name on their list at the last minute.) The character arc is standard (Jimmy learns what’s really important in life), and Kulish’s occasional dips into “Catch-22″-style wartime satire don’t mesh with the rest of the book’s more earnest tone. His believable descriptions of Marine culture and the daily routine of waiting in the desert for marching orders are compelling, though. His vivid, humane treatment of the characters will give you a new appreciation for the military and perhaps give clarity to the often-vague idea of “supporting the troops.”

“I Love You, Beth Cooper,” by former “Simpsons” writer Larry Doyle, is a loving homage to the cheesy teen comedies of the 1980s, albeit set in the present and a book instead of a movie. (It is being made into a movie, though.) Denis Cooverman is a nerdy high school valedictorian who blurts out the title declaration during his graduation speech. The problem: Beth Cooper is the most popular girl in school, and she barely knows who Denis Cooverman is. The book covers the events of graduation night as Denis and his movie-geek best friend Rich interact with Beth, her friends, her angry coke-head boyfriend, and various other classmates. The details of the story are implausible, and some of the jokes are sitcom-ish. But I laughed out loud many, many times while I read the book, particularly in response to Doyle’s droll descriptions of high school angst and the absurdity of the teenage caste system. It is not high literature, but it is definitely funny.

“Fablehaven: Grip of the Shadow Plague,” the third installment in Brandon Mull’s excellent kid-lit fantasy series, is as delightful as the first two, full of the subtle wit and great storytelling that have made these books my favorite post-Harry-Potter magical series. Our heroes, 14-year-old Kendra and her little brother Seth, spend summers at their grandparents’ estate, which turns out to be a preserve for magical creatures. In “Grip of the Shadow Plague,” there is concern that the head of their good organization might be a traitor to the bad side; meanwhile, a mysterious darkness is overcoming Fablehaven. Mull’s style is to write fantasy for non-fantasy audiences, with kids who act like real modern-day kids. He continues to introduce new facets to the mythology (Kendra’s fairy powers, some Native American-inspired supernaturalism), and he sets up elements that will surely come into play in later books. (Two words: zombies. ZOMBIES!) The book comes out next week, but you can pre-order it now. If you haven’t picked up the series yet, do it! My brief reviews of the first two books are here and here.

Richard Wagner’s four operas known as the “Ring Cycle” or simply “The Ring” are the subject of a book with the ill-conceived title “Penetrating Wagner’s Ring.” Inevitably, some smart-alecks have posted entendre-laden reviews of the book on Amazon.com, which our old friend Luscious Malone was kind of enough to bring to our attention. Some of the sophomoric highlights:

“Before reading this book, the thought of penetrating Wagner’s ‘Ring’ left me cold.”

“When I initially came across Wagner’s Ring it was like a revelation. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it — but I wanted to.”

“I found Wagner’s Ring accommodating, even if it had the texture of Bach’s last movement.”

Tee-hee!

“Hartsburg, USA,” by David Mizner. One of the skills I most envy in good writers is the ability to get inside the heads of their characters and show the readers what they believe and why. Mizner does that exceptionally well in this comic, lightly satiric novel about a small-town school board election that comes to represent the Red vs. Blue divide in America.

The candidates are a born-again Christian busybody housewife and a failed-screenwriter liberal journalist. They’re polar opposites, yet Mizner makes them both seem real and empathetic — no small feat, considering the emotionally charged issues that come up in their heated campaign, and their very different opinions on them.

Mizner doesn’t stack the deck against either side. Both candidates have their strengths and flaws, and while I assume Mizner himself is probably more like the liberal character, he represents the conservative character’s thought process as well as if it were his own.

The writing is often funny and always affectionate toward its characters (though the characters themselves are not always nice to each other). It’s also very insightful with regard to the political process and the way it divides people who, differences aside, all have a lot in common, too.

I know there are quite a few fans here of the “Twilight” books about a teenage girl who has fallen in love with a vampire, so here’s some more big news about the upcoming movie based on the first novel. A director (Catherine Hardwicke) was confirmed a few months ago, and now we have our leads.

Bella will be played by 17-year-old Kristen Stewart, best known as Jodie Foster’s androgynous daughter in “Panic Room.” (That was five years ago; she has grown out of her androgyny.) She’s currently in “Into the Wild” and was seen earlier this year in “The Messengers.” She’s a solid actress and a good choice for the part, I think.

Edward’s the tricky one. The book spends many pages describing him, and in particular how beautiful he is. Can you find an actual human being to play such a role? Maybe it will be like Stephen King’s “It,” where it’s one thing to describe on paper how scary something is, but quite another to actually show it.

Anyway, they’ve hired 21-year-old Robert Pattinson, an English actor best known for playing Cedric Diggory in the Harry Potter movies. Does Edward have an English accent in the books? I don’t remember. English accents are romantic, though, so lots of male leads in chick flicks have them. Pattinson hasn’t been in enough movies for me to have an opinion on his talent, and I’ll leave the discussion of whether he’s beautiful enough to play the impossibly gorgeous Edward to others.

The book’s author, Stephenie Meyer, cheerfully admits on her website that she has no say whatsoever in the casting of the film, but offers some suggestions for whom she would choose. Given her previous selections, I’d guess Pattinson probably fits in with her tastes.

The movie is supposed to start shooting soon, with a tentative release date of late 2008.

I haven’t read a lot of scary novels. Not intentionally; it just hasn’t turned out that way. So maybe it doesn’t mean much when I tell you that Joe Hill’s “Heart-Shaped Box” is the scariest book I’ve ever read.

It is the story of an aging heavy metal superstar named Judas Coyne who, owing to his carefully crafted public image, has developed a habit for acquiring morbid things. This includes a procession of pale Goth girlfriends, groupies who become lovers and think they’re the one who will tame the beastly Judas.

Then Judas buys a ghost online. A woman says she’s selling the suit that belonged to her stepfather, and that the man’s ghost is now “attached” to it so that whoever buys the suit will get the ghost, too. Stupid, of course, but hey, it’s only a thousand bucks, and Judas is rich, and the public eats it up when he does morbid things like buy ghosts. So why not?

Well, I’ll tell you why not. BECAUSE THE GHOST IS EVIL AND MEAN AND HE WANTS TO MAKE JUDAS KILL HIS CURRENT GOTH GIRLFRIEND AND HIMSELF!!

I’m not embarrassed to tell you that this book made me poop my pants a lot. The first half, in particular, is fiendishly creepy and spooky, the kind of chilly ghost story you read only during the daytime and in public. The second half gets bloody and is more horrifying than terrifying (if you catch the difference), but no less thrilling.

It is the first novel from Joe Hill, who had previously written a collection of short stories. I just discovered that Joe Hill’s real name is Joe King, as in son of Stephen King. It’s good that he keeps that fact hidden. It would create unfair expectations of him. Also, it might make some people think that the glowing reviews heaped on “Heart-Shaped Box” are occurring automatically because of his pedigree. No sir! Joe Hill stands on his own. I’m terrified of him.

(Time magazine has a review of the book here, and Entertainment Weekly has one here.)

“My Holocaust,” by Tova Reich, is a relentlessly savage satire about the modern-day religion of Victimism, where everybody wants in on the martyr action in order to feel special about themselves.

Its central character is Maurice Messer, an old Jew who survived the Holocaust (by hiding in the woods, though he tells everyone he was a resistance fighter) and now runs the lavish U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., with his son Norman. Norman is what they call a “second generation survivor,” even though he didn’t actually survive anything himself, having been born long after the war. Survivorship can be inherited, you see. They spend ridiculous amounts of government money wining and dining potential donors, taking personalized tours of Holocaust sites in Europe and forever claiming everything they do is for “the six million.” You can’t cut their budget or insist they stop flying first class everywhere — it’s for the six million! Many Jews, Reich suggests, worship at the altar of the Holocaust, using it to define themselves and their religion above everything else.

But that’s not all! Reich also has stinging barbs for all the gentiles who try to latch onto the Holocaust for their own needs,

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