Memorial Day marks the start of a special season: the time to stop lying about what you read for fun. Call anything a beach book, and suddenly you’ve got an excuse for being seen with it. No need to claim you’re reading Christopher Farnsworth’s “Blood Oath,” about the president’s personal vampire, only because there’s a wait at your library for a copy of “The Road.” Don’t think of Mr. Farnsworth’s debut thriller as the umpteenth vampire knockoff on the market. Think of it as the inventive one in which a brave young White House staff member asks, “You really expect me to believe we’ve got a vampire on a leash, and we can just send him after terrorists and spies whenever we want?” Multibook series and $200 million movie franchises have been built on a lot less. – From NY Times