MY SOUL TO TAKE is Yrsa Sigurdardóttir’s second book featuring Icelandic lawyer Thóra Gudmundsdóttir, and continues her chosen theme of having Thóra investigate two crimes at once that are related, one set in the present, and one set in the past. This time, one of her real estate clients has decided that the property he bought is haunted.

Since he is building a spiritual spa on the site, he is furious about this and wants a settlement with the sellers. When Thóra starts to sniff around, the female architect at the site is brutally beaten, raped and killed, with long pins shoved into the soles of her feet. Not long after that, the male aura reader of the resort is found trampled to death by a stallion. He has a dead fox tied to his chest, and the same pins driven into his feet.

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Paul A. Toth’s third novel, FINALE, is full of appealing promises. But Toth seems to go out of his way to make them difficult to accept. The Raw Dog Screaming Press release presents itself as a road novel, a journey of self assessment and discovery, and an irreverent commentary on love. But Toth’s techniques become so off-putting that we find ourselves doubting his intentions as the story unfolds.

Jonathan Thomas, the novel’s narrator, receives a strange, threatening letter signed with the initials M. W. He’s certain the letter was sent by Mary Whitcomb, an ex-girlfriend. So he immediately resurrects “The Wanderer,” his persona prior to married life with Rosie in Northern California, and drives to San Diego to confront Mary.

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Scouring out the weekly singles scene … in comics!

With Marvel Comics celebrating seven decades in business, it’s been putting out a series of one-shots focused on its earlier characters, featuring a brand-new story with yesteryear reprints in the back, all sporting its original Timely Comics shield. One of them is THE HUMAN TORCH COMICS 70TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL #1, featuring the original Torch — not Johnny Storm. Scott Snyder and Scott Wegener provide a terrific throwback tale tinged with racial overtones, while the backup story from 1940 has the Torch meeting Toro, the Flaming Torch Kid, at a circus. You can tell the story is old just from its first page, with lines like “The Torch is attracted by the gay colored tents” and “Can’t say — but it’s mighty queer!” And that’s all part of its charm.

Another in the birthday series is SUB-MARINER COMICS 70TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL #1. Roy Thomas and Mitch Breitweiser’s anchoring piece featuring Prince Namor is moody and noir-ish, while Mark Schultz and Al Williamson’s “Vergeltungswaffe!” leans more toward the character’s fantasy origins, being set underwater. Closing out the fin-footed fun is Bill Everett’s debut of the Sub-Mariner from 1939’s first issue of MARVEL COMICS. Boy, is it ever primitive, and boy, do I like it. Namor’s never been among my favorite superheroes — partly because I can’t figure out if he’s really that or a supervillain — but this is a nice little trio of tales, each very different.

Like the clown princes of comics, Scott Gray and Roger Langridge tear THE FANTASTIC FOUR’s villainous dragon character of Fin Fang Foom a new one in the one-shot FIN FANG FOUR RETURN! #1. The pair has turned the creature into comic relief before in MARVEL MONSTERS, but here are a half-dozen more stories, also starring fellow monsters Gorgilla, Googam and Elektro. They get psychoanalyzed by Doc Samson; FFF works as a chef in a Chinese restaurant; Gorgilla gets the CURIOUS GEORGE treatment; Googam gets adopted; Elektro gets arrested; and FFF saves Christmas. Self-deprecating fun all around, and the kind of thing comics companies should do more of.

Given that THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN: THE SHORT HALLOWEEN #1 one-shot is written by none other than SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE players Bill Hader and Seth Meyers, you’d think it’d be funny, but it’s really not. Then again, it doesn’t appear to be designed to be joke-driven. But it’s certainly amusing, based upon its premise, with a drunk Halloween celebrant dressed as Spidey constantly confused for the real deal, and vice versa, on a night when The Furious Five unleashes a not-so-well-planned reign of terror. Sometimes celebrity writers are brought on just for their name value, but Hader and Meyers adequately display genuine love for the material. Kevin Maguire drew the fine art. —Rod Lott

Warren Fahy wears his inspirations for FRAGMENT on his sleeve — or, rather, in his acknowledgments. Among them are Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and Michael Crichton, and there’s a great big helping of each to be found in his debut novel, which mixes sci-fi, horror and adventure into a semi-pleasing package that’ll make a great movie someday. It’s clearly designed with that in mind.

The Trident is a ship carrying 40 people across the globe’s oceans, for a reality show called SEALIFE. A storm has thrown it a little off course, but within range of a distress signal from an uncharted island. The reason is evident once they land: The South Pacific locale is filled with deadly creatures unlike the world has ever seen. Some enchanted evening.

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Over in Japan, FAUST is considered a “mook” — that’s a magazine and a book — speaking to the disaffected otaku culture, with a mix of cutting-edge fiction and manga. You can see what you’re missing out on with Del Rey’s FAUST: VOLUME TWO, the sophomore edition of the translated anthology. (VOLUME ONE came out last year.)

It opens with “Magical Girl Risuka” by NISIOISIN, which is a pen name, not a brand of ramen. (Strangely, many Japanese authors hide behind these cryptic monikers; others here include VOFAN, x6suke and TAGRO.) The story is a quasi-Lovecraft tribute about a boy who witnesses four people throw themselves in front a moving subway at once, and the titular girl who has the powers to alter time.

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Here’s another column of novels that have been made into films, including another stab at one of the Dortmunder books, Michael Caine with a machine gun, and a certified classic with the late, great Charles Bronson and a very young Jeff Goldblum. (This is actually the fourth book I’ve covered that became a Bronson vehicle. Can you tell I’m a fan of his films?) All are on DVD, I believe (one as an import-only), so for those to lazy to read, you have that option. But as we already know, the books are always superior to the films … especially this first one.

BANK SHOT by Donald E. Westlake — George C. Scott is not who I think of when I think Dortmunder. Robert Redford was not a great choice, either. Talk about a botch job of turning this 1972 book into the 1974 film, with whole parts ignored and others added that just fall flat.

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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle must be one of the most difficult authors to imitate in style. Thousands have tried, but few have ever been able to capture his measured, lilting Victorian sentences — every word carefully chosen, intense drama hidden beneath the chasteness of a very careful prose, a pause in the direction that modern editors would never allow today.

So when the Conan Doyle estate, Daniel Stashower (the author of a Doyle biography), and Leslie S. Klinger (the editor of THE NEW ANNOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES) all praise author Lyndsay Faye’s DUST AND SHADOW: AN ACCOUNT OF THE RIPPER KILLINGS BY DR. JOHN H. WATSON for its perfect pastiche of Doyle’s style, and her capturing of the inimitable characters Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes, the reader takes note.

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Hoping to capitalize on what the success of THE STRAIN, the collaboration with film director Guillermo del Toro, Harper has brought back Chuck Hogan’s 1998 medical thriller, THE BLOOD ARTISTS, in mass-market paperback. But the intervening11 years have not been kind to the novel, making it rather predicable and ordinary.

By the year 2010, clean, uninfected blood is a rare and valuable commodity. Virologists Peter Maryk and Stephen Pearse are working to synthesize blood for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (a stricter, more encompassing off-shoot of the actual CDC as we know it), but their work is interrupted with the news of an outbreak of a particularly dangerous virus in a remote village in Africa. They arrive there and attempt to understand and contain the virus before it spreads. But when their efforts fail, Maryk take command and bombs the entire village, its inhabitants and — they hope — the virus as well.

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She’s back, pimpin’ out notable new releases to place on your radar!

A PLAGUE OF SECRETS by John Lescroart — The first victim is Dylan Vogler, a charming ex-convict who manages the Bay Beans West coffee shop in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district. When his body is found, inspectors discover that his knapsack is filled with high-grade marijuana. It soon becomes clear that San Francisco’s A-list flocked to Bay Beans West not only for their caffeine fix. But how much did Maya Townshend — the beautiful socialite niece of the city’s mayor, and the absentee owner of the shop — know about what was going on inside her business? And how intimate had she really been with Dylan, her old college friend?

THE SHORE by Robert Dunbar — As a winter storm tightens its grip on the small shore town of Edgeharbor, the residents are frightened of much more than pounding waves and bitter winds. A series of horrible murders has the town cowering in fear. Mangled victims bear the marks of savage claws, and strange, bloody footprints mar the beach. A young policewoman and a mysterious stranger are all that stand between this isolated community and an ancient, monstrous evil.

FALL by Colin McAdam — Awkward Noel thinks he’s been allowed into the inner circle of his elite boarding school when he discovers his senior-year roommate is to be handsome, athletic Julius. Julius, in turn, cares only for the fleeting joys of teenage life: sneaking out to parties, playing pranks with friends, and spending the night with his girfriend, Fall. Always an outsider, Noel develops an unhealthy fascination with Julius, and his crush on Fall begins to border on a dangerous obsession. When Fall disappears close to winter break, Julius and Noel are forced to face their own inner desires — a confrontation that ushers the two boys out of the innocence of adolescence and into adulthood.

SADOMASOCHISM FOR ACCOUNTANTS by Rosy Barnes — Paula is still smarting from being called boring by Alan, her longtime boyfriend. Then he leaves her for Belinda, the egotistic would-be partner of accountancy firm Smith, Smith-Brown and Smith. Her mother suggests she spice up her life, so Paula joins the local fetish club. Luda the transvestite is not fooled when Paula enters Club Liscious. Her off-the-shoulder dress cannot turn her into a thrill-seeking member of the Liscious elite. “She” decides to have nothing to do with the newcomer.
Over the next few weeks, the club-goers’ suspicion turns to friendship, and “boring” Paula recruits Luda, gentle Dominatrix Gretchen, and bossy SlaveBoy to help her win Alan back. Meanwhile, Alan’s new fiancée, Belinda, locked in a bitter battle for a promotion with her paraplegic colleague, starts working on Alan’s own lack of ambition.

CITY OF SOULS by Vicki Pettersson — In Sin City, a little girl suffers from a strange and terrible malady. If she dies, the Light will die along with her. Warrior/avenger Joanna Archer has survived countless otherworldly terrors — and has found her rightful place among the agents battling the all-pervasive evil of Shadow, even as she struggles against the darkness within herself. A war is raging for Las Vegas — one that catapults Joanna into a new world hidden from mortal sight. In this lethally seductive alternate dimension the lines blur between good and evil, love and hate, and here lies the last hope for the Light. But Joanna’s price of admission is a piece of her own soul — and the odds of her escaping are slim … to none.

RUBICON by Lawrence Alexander — Hoping to escape the political spotlight, California Sen. Bobby Hart declined a presidential run. But while in Germany, the idealistic young politician discovers terrifying evidence of a conspiracy to destroy democracy in America: an unthinkable plot codenamed Rubicon. Someone important is going to die, though Hart doesn’t know who, why or when. Only two things are clear: It will happen some time before the upcoming election, and once it does, there will be no turning back. Caught in a desperate race against death and time, Hart must now expose an insidious nightmare that threatens every man, woman and child in America.

Buy them at Amazon.

A sampling of some of the bizarro search terms with (thankfully) low numbers that brought people to BOOKGASM over the last 30ish days:

• my son thinks he is turning into a zombi
• how to dress like a cowboy
• a true book about four guys that get capped
• bakugan battle porn
• strap on dildos for first timers
• porno ghosts excited
• where does the historians get there material
• russian turtleneck sweater gagged
• book with character named falcon and tit
• old b-movie about a robot with a pumpkin

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Not only has Max Allan Collins penned the novelization for Stephen Sommers’ summer blockbuster G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA, but he’s also gotten the chance to play around further with the property, simultaneously delivering an original prequel novel in G.I. JOE: ABOVE & BEYOND.

Consider it an origin story — not of the high-tech, desert-based international organization known as G.I. Joe, which remains a secret to 99 percent of the population — but of two of its core members: Conrad “Duke” Hauser and Wallace “Ripcord” Weems. Good pals, they’re “mere” members of the U.S. military before being drafted by Gen. Hawk to join G.I. Joe’s elite team. Already included among its members are highly trained specialists like the lovely Scarlett, the gung-ho Gung-Ho and the masked, mute ninja known as Snake Eyes.

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As we celebrate the 40th anniversary of America’s moon landing this summer, it’s important to remember the contributions of all it took to get us there. And I’m talking waaay back, like the late 19th century and early 20th century, when early astronomers ended up shaking up preconceived notions as telescopes grew bigger and more powerful.

Marcia Bartusiak’s THE DAY WE FOUND THE UNIVERSE is a perfect way to get schooled. The title comes from Edwin Hubble’s controversial 1925 assertion that the Milky Way wasn’t the only galaxy around, and that the overall universe was infinitely greater than previously thought. Those stars they saw that shimmered strangely? They weren’t stars at all, but entire galaxies.

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