I picked up The Death Defying Pepper Roux off the same display at the library as I Am a Genius of Unspeakable Evil and I Want to Be Your Class President, but it's a very different book. Set in France in the 1920s or '30s (or so), Pepper Roux has been certain since birth that he will die at 14. So on that birthday he leaves home to meet that fate and along the way has a series of episodic adventures. The adventures are anything but cliched—at one point, Pepper becomes a reporter who only writes good, if fictional, stories. And the language is just a delight to read.

FuzzyCo grade: A