“Minotaurs The New Vampires,” says a story in The Onion:

In a desperate effort to find a trendy new fantasy subgenre to succeed the ebbing vampire craze, Razorbill Books executive Graham Childress decided this week to throw all his professional weight behind a new series of novels featuring minotaurs, the bull-headed, human-bodied creatures of ancient Greek mythology.

“Everywhere I go, I hear people talking about minotaurs,” Childress said at a publishing conference, “Plus, labyrinths are really hot right now.”

According to The Onion, the book is the first in a “planned trilogy about a bad-boy minotaur who transfers to a new high school and eventually falls for the one girl who can see the pain and sensitivity behind his brooding exterior.”

It is scheduled to be released “on Dec. 14, the same date three rival publishers will release novels featuring a bad-boy mummy, a bad-boy cyclops, and a bad-boy Mayan vision serpent.”

While some publishers fear they have already scraped the bottom of the monster barrel, Quirk Books, the people who brought you Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, continues undaunted, now creating monster mash-ups out of bad puns. Just out: Android Karenina. Coming soon: Meowmorphosis.

When will it end, oh Lord, when will it end?