Maggie Stiefvater has an interesting author site for this book, called "The Wolves of Mercy Falls," at http://www.maggiestiefvater.com/shiver/ If you liked "Shiver," there is a follow-up book , called "Linger," coming out on July 20. There are already over 100 holds on it! Do you think Sam and his pack will grow to be as popular as Jacob and the wolf pack from the "Twilight" series?

I really appreciated your insights, Ruth and Rebecca, and I agree with you about the maddening ending. There is so much substance in the book, almost a gluttony of food for thought, that the ending almost seems unworthy of the writing that went before it. Yet it kind of fits in a strange way. I think that we as readers are so viscerally involved with Todd's constant struggle for survival and reframing of reality, that ending at the pinnacle of uncertainty makes us really get into his skin. Someone once told me that the mark of a good book is that you have lots of questions and curiosity left when you are finished reading it, and my questions on this book just keep multiplying. I wonder about the hypnotic hold that Mayor Prentiss has on men, and I'm curious about the religious worldview of original colonists--can we find equivalents today? Also I have to mention that I just love the way the author portrays the conscious thought of animals, particularly the herd of "thangs." I also want to know more about the Spackles. But my biggest question is, what do you think would happen in our culture if we were subjected to a "virus" that revealed men's but not women's thoughts?