Had she thought of it, your mother would’ve told you, “Never get involved with a woman who dances with snakes at a carnival.” And from what the protagonist of Ray Garton’s outrageous road-trip novella SERPENT GIRL goes through, your mother would’ve been right. As in, dead-on.

Steven Benedetti is just passing through a California mountain town when he decides to stop at a two-bit carnival, where he’s entranced — or at least his nether regions are — by Carmen, the titular (in every sense of the word) woman whose act consists of writhing about suggestively as reptiles encircle her voluptuous body. Afterward, Benedetti witnesses Carmen in an argument with her boss, sticks up for her and offers to give her a ride (eventually in every sense of the word).

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It’s always best to read from an author who knows his subject inside and out, and can weave together a story the layman can understand. Police officer Michael A. Black does both in RANDOM VICTIM.

What happens to a case that’s so cold, it has icicles forming off it, especially in an election year? You form a task force with the idea that it will get good press, and if the case gets solved, even better. This is what Sgt. Frank Leal had put upon him after a little outburst at a judge, and is thrown into a no-win situation with two green officers and a fellow sergeant who knows Leal shouldn’t be in charge.

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By day, the men and women of Blue Sky Studios animate blockbuster movies like ICE AGE, ROBOTS and HORTON HEARS A WHO! But the stories they tell in those films aren’t their own; those they have saved for OUT OF PICTURE: ART FROM THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN — VOLUME 1.

This oversized, themeless, anything-goes anthology is a unique project that straddles the genres of “art book” and “graphic novel,” allowing its 11 contributors to exercise — and perhaps exorcise — their personal creative demons that their day job of animating a character to be voiced by John Leguizamo just doesn’t offer.

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Following the events of THE ELECTRIC CHURCH, Jeff Somers has given us another look into his creation of the dystopian future where bizarre robots run rampant, in THE DIGITAL PLAGUE.

After years of living high on the hog, antihero Avery Cates stills lives and breathes with the criminal element. But it comes as no shock when groups of cops and soldier types try to bring him to a clandestine meeting, which of course, Cates wants nothing to do with — especially not on their terms. But something strange is also going on with Cates: Friends of his are dropping like flies from some mysterious disease.

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Because time isn’t always kind: economic reviews in a world full of waste!

THE 5TH WITCH is a ho-hum witch-meets-gangster thriller by Graham Masterton. Bizarre killings are occurring in the City of Angels, and what looks like a mob war is overshadowed by the presence of four of the aforementioned witches. Fortunately, there’s a neighborhood white witch available to investigate and uncover the real reasons behind the grisly deaths. Masterton is a prolific writer, but this isn’t one of his better works; perhaps Lifetime may come calling. There’s nothing very unique in this cross-blending of subject matter, but he does manage to make the concept work the first few pages. Still, it ultimately fails more in conception than execution. A quick, easily forgettable read — kinda like a literary Smarties. —Matt Adder

Medical thrillers aren’t as in vogue as in the past, despite — or perhaps because of — their scenarios becoming ever too close for comfort. Robin Cook had this genre practically to himself, but now that he’s on autopilot, some newbies are taking up the slack, like Michael Palmer and Joshua Spanogle. Add to that list Daniel Kalla, who delivers his latest with COLD PLAGUE. His all-too-real virus tales peg him as fiction’s answer to Richard Preston – a rep worth strengthening with this number about a mad-cow-like disease that rages the systems of animals and humans. It’s just a tad too lengthy, but its science feels legit, which of course, makes it frightening if you let it get to you — something any med-thriller should aspire to achieve.

I may have graduated from college 15 years ago, but I can still remember how entirely terrifying it seemed to join the real world. For artist Kate T. Williamson, she chose to postpone life by staying in her parents’ house for a couple of months to work on a book. That time stretched into more than a year, all chronicled in the autobiographical ink-and-watercolor graphic novel AT A CROSSROADS: BETWEEN A ROCK AND MY PARENTS’ PLACE. It’s not a conventional narrative, but admirably brave and real, full of both joy and depression as Williamson wonders if she isn’t letting life pass her by. She draws with a style that reminds me of Roz Chast, but tidier, and the emotions are as genuine as they come (loves laying in bed at night and hearing the sounds of the train — me, too!). Transitionary spreads depicting the changing of the seasons are gorgeous. She’s an amazing talent.

In the laboratory, sometimes you cure a disease, and sometimes the experiment just blows up in your face. It’s the latter that neuroscientist Simon LeVay explores in WHEN SCIENCE GOES WRONG: TWELVE TALES FROM THE DARK SIDE OF THE DISCOVERY. To me, the well-intentioned failures are always the most interesting than the eventual successful, so LeVay’s nonfiction collection of essays is fascinating. They play out like mini-mysteries, and I was particularly disturbed by the account of a Parkinson’s-stricken jogger who underwent highly experimental fetal transplants; not only did they not work, but an autopsy found hair growing in his brain from it. Other chapters of note involve explorers who stupidly descended into an active volcano and a rape case where CSI-style methods fingered the wrong guy. Because LeVay went out of his way to interview the actual people we read about (at least those who agreed to talk), this book has the benefit of being that much more credible. –Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Sometime in the 1960s — 1968, to be exact, DC Comics had the bright idea* to strip Wonder Woman of her dumb-ass costume** and give her a mod makeover that’s equal parts Emma Peel and James Bond. The groovy results are now collected in DIANA PRINCE: WONDER WOMAN – VOLUME ONE, you dig?

So here’s how it all goes down: Diana’s boy toy Steve Trevor is convicted of a murder he didn’t commit and makes a run for it. Meanwhile, she’s lost her powers temporarily***, so the star-spangled shorts get kicked to the curb in favor of high-fashion duds straight from the pages of MS.

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Joe Dunne is a big-city private investigator hired to do a job he doesn’t really want: scaring a local student-preying drug dealer out of town. Nonetheless, Joe does the job well. Perhaps even too well, because then his one-time employer recommends him to a guy who comes in with an even bigger assignment: “I want you to kill five people.”

Joe’s no killer, but the price is awfully right, and could put him smack onto easy street. Such a setup is difficult to resist – for him and us – in Shepard Rifkin’s 1960 novel THE MURDERER VINE, now back in print and unabridged from Hard Case Crime.

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It’s coming to that time when all my reading takes place on the porch so I can enjoy the summer breeze. To mark that occasion, I’ve picked three books that deliver in the fun-in-the-sun variety, be it a story about ships, an old pulp hero or a thief who never, ever seems to get caught.

THE MONA INTERCEPT by Donald Hamilton — At more than 500 pages there is one word to describe this 1980 effort: sprawling. Giving John D. Macdonald a run for his money on the paperback original front, Hamilton came up with a multicharacter story that tells this adventure from a variety of perspectives … which is also its downfall, in my opinion, since it hits the point of overload.

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THE PRICE OF BLOOD is the third book from Declan Hughes, the man who writes nothing but feel-good Irish crime stories … if you think “feel-good” means gut-wrenching and skin-crawling. Again, Hughes paints such a picture — such a disturbing picture — that you can’t tear yourself away from it, no matter how close to the bone the story gets.

Returning from THE COLOR OF BLOOD is P.I. Ed Loy, thrown into a case that would make Lew Archer envious: dealing with priest Vincent Tyrell asking for help in the search of a man named Patrick Hutton, a former jockey who also happened to race for Vincent’s brother F.X., the big man of racing in these parts.

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Somewhere at this very moment, a guy is contemplating getting a tattoo that will stain his skin for the rest of his life. He is narrowing his choices toward the select one for permanent status. Suddenly, it hits him: “I know! A pile of shit! With flies on ‘er!”

It happens. And with alarming frequency, if one is to believe the “art” on display in Aviva Yael and P.M. Chen’s NO REGRETS: THE BEST, WORST, & MOST #$%*ING RIDICULOUS TATTOOS EVER. In frightening full color, the humor collection prints page after page after photos of truly horrendous tats that their owners should have been talked out of. (Seriously, ignore the word BEST in the title.)

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As reliant on rhythm as any given pop song, Veronique Tanaka’s METRONOME is a unique graphic novel worthy of your time. Each of its 64 pages are divided into 16 symmetrical squares, slowly telling a story through images, not words.

At first, those images appear abstract and unconnected. The entire first page is taken up by the ticking of the titular object, soon joined in the next couple of pages by a wristwatch and extreme close-ups that pan out to reveal a housefly, a telephone, an odd statue, a picture on a wall, a fan, a lava lamp and a photograph of a smiling woman.

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PAPER CITIES: AN ANTHOLOGY OF URBAN FANTASY is what you’d expect to find on Tori Amos’ bookshelf. Editor Ekaterina Sedia’s put together an anthology of cityscapes, where the locations are often at the world’s end. Writers are sometimes the main characters, with pretentious titles like “dreamcatcher” or “storyteller” (try claiming that to the IRS and see how quick you catch an audit!). Instead of meeting tomorrow, characters meet “in the morn.” These tales often span innocent, mystical times … and remind me of the reasons why I never liked Shakespeare or Doug Henning.

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Here’s what a lot of horror novelists do, even the good ones: They start off with a unique variation on a standard theme and then, in an effort to stretch the material to novel length, they pile on so much extra spookshow cliché hoo-hah that a terrific short story or decent novella becomes a downright silly book. Even Bentley Little, one of the best of the post-Stephen King generation writers, can fall into the trap.

But what makes Little so different from his colleagues — and one of the top four or five horror novelists working today — is the fact that just about the time you start to think that his story is sliding off the rails, he tosses in something spookier than what has gone before and it ain’t so silly anymore. That goes for THE VANISHING.

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

A PRISONER OF BIRTH by Jeffrey Archer – If Danny Cartwright had proposed to Beth Wilson the day before, or the day after, he would not have been arrested and charged with the murder of his best friend. But when the four prosecution witnesses are a barrister, a popular actor, an aristocrat, and the youngest partner in an established firm’s history, who is going to believe your side of the story? Danny is sentenced to 22 years and sent to the highest-security jail in the land, from where no inmate has ever escaped. However, Spencer Craig, Lawrence Davenport, Gerald Payne, and Toby Mortimer all underestimate Danny’s determination to seek revenge, and Beth’s relentless quest to pursue justice, which ends up with all four fighting for their lives.

MADAPPLE by Christina Meldrum – Aslaug is an unusual young woman. Her mother has brought her up in near isolation, teaching her about plants and nature and language, but not about life. Especially not how she came to have her own life, and who her father might be. When Aslaug’s mother dies unexpectedly, everything changes. For Aslaug is a suspect in her mother’s death. And the more her story unravels, the more questions unfold. About the nature of Aslaug’s birth. About what she should do next. About whether divine miracles have truly happened. And whether, when all other explanations are impossible, they might still happen this very day.

PHANTOM PREY by John Sandford – A widow comes home to her large house in a wealthy suburb to find blood everywhere, no body – and her college-aged daughter missing. She’s always known that her daughter ran with a bad bunch: Goths, so attracted to death. But the police can’t find the girl, alive or dead, and when a second Goth is found slashed to death, the widow truly panics. Lucas Davenport begins to investigate only reluctantly – but when a third Goth is slashed in what is now looking like a Jack the Ripper series of killings, he starts working it hard. The clues don’t seem to add up, though. And then there’s the young Goth who keeps appearing and disappearing: Who is she? Where does she vanish to? And why does Lucas keep getting the sneaking suspicion that there is something else going on here … something very bad indeed?

THE REPORT TO THE JUDICIARY by Eugene Sullivan – Former Judge Tim Quinn is assigned to investigate and compile a dossier on the newly appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court before his Senate confirmation hearing. The President realizes that the chance of establishing a legacy before his Presidency comes to an end is slim at best. So when the Chief Justice, a reasonably young and vigorous man, unexpectedly dies, the President happily appoints an interim successor to the position: the first black Chief Justice in U.S. history. But one of the most conservative justices on the court feels that the position should have been his. He is hell-bent on claiming it no matter who gets in the way … even if it means Quinn’s report will bring dishonor to the highest court in the land.

THE KING’S GOLD by Yxta Maya Murray – One look at the centuries-old document she receives from a mysterious stranger is all it takes to plunge Lola Sanchez – a brilliant bibliophile and owner of the Red Lion bookshop – into the adventure of an already adventurous lifetime. The ancient writings tell of a stolen fortune in Montezuma’s gold, and of the thief’s transformation from conquistatore to alchemist … to werewolf. Riches beyond imagining possibly await the stalwart globe-trotter who can solve the intricate riddles hidden in the artifact’s crumbling pages. But a deadly curse is buried there as well, and villainous treasure hunters who would eagerly kill for the secrets and the Aztec gold.

THE STEEL WAVE by Jeff Shaara – Gen. Dwight Eisenhower once again commands a diverse army that must find its single purpose in the destruction of Hitler’s European fortress. His primary subordinates, Omar Bradley and Bernard Montgomery, must prove that this unique blend of Allied armies can successfully confront the might of Adolf Hitler’s forces, who have already conquered Western Europe. On the coast of France, German commander Erwin Rommel fortifies and prepares for the coming invasion, acutely aware that he must bring all his skills to bear on a fight his side must win. But Rommel’s greatest challenge is to strike the Allies on his front, while struggling behind the lines with the growing insanity of Adolf Hitler, who thwarts the strategies Rommel knows will succeed.

Buy it at Amazon.

Once again, Free Comic Book Day has come and gone. Thanks to the good people at Speeding Bullet Comics in Norman, Okla., we were able to tell you in advance what was worth picking up and what was worth leaving on the shelf. (Remember, kids: Just because it’s free doesn’t mean it’s good.) Whether you missed out or have yet to crack the stack, here are looks at 25 of the 2008 freebies.

EC SAMPLER (Gemstone) – It may just be a reprint, but this four-story sampler was the most fun for me of all of this year’s FCBD offerings. From the pages of WEIRD SCIENCE, SHOCK SUSPENSTORIES and other EC classics come tales of astronauts on Venus, Korean soldiers, werewolves and Klansmen, each with the requisite twist ending, and art by the likes of Wally Wood, Harvey Kurtzman and Al Feldstein. The Venus one is especially sweet. This makes me want to buy all of Gemstone’s extremely expensive hardcover collections of all the EC titles. Must resist … must resist …

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When did comics go from good-time, fantastical escapism to altruistic studies of the human condition through contrived four-colored mythology? When did the nerds who loved the exploits of wholly ridiculous heroes become the embittered dorks that have to nitpick every single nuance of any character that crosses their path?

And with IRON MAN now out, perhaps the more pointed question is this: If you are just going to hate every comic-book movie that comes out, why do you even bother going anymore? You might as well stay in your mother’s basement, surrounded by your eggshell-long boxes, your Mylar-encased, graded first editions of THE INCREDIBLE HULK #181 (the first appearance of Wolverine!) and your multiple, stained copies of Wizard’s “Guide to the 100 Hottest Chick Superheroes” double-sized issue. You’re safe down there. No one will hurt you. I’m sure if you yell loud enough, Mom will even bring you a sandwich.

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It’s the familial touches that make Deborah Crombie’s WATER LIKE A STONE — the subtle interactions between people who know each other well, sometimes too well, and how they deal with pain, joy, and transition. These are exemplified when Detective Superintendent Duncan Kincaid and his partner Sgt. Gemma James take a visit to Kincaid’s family in the country for a Christmas visit.

Things aren’t necessarily going so well for their adolescent teenager Kit, and when he meets a sultry siren named Lally who happens to be his cousin, well, things tend to go all pear-shaped. And it doesn’t help when a baby girl is found walled up in a dairy barn.

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Jim Butcher’s DRESDEN FILES is a series I want to love, yet so far like to varying degrees. SMALL FAVOR, the 10th and latest adventure featuring freelance P.I./wizard Harry Dresden, falls short of the level of fun sustained by the past few installments, yet ironically, has delivered the franchise’s biggest commercial punch in its list-topping debut.

With Chicago under heavy snow that builds to blizzard conditions, the novel begins with Dresden under attack by “weregoats” – not a bad way to grab a reader’s attention. Emerging unscathed, he soon is “hired” by Mab, the faerie-queen villainess of Winter Court for a job he doesn’t want, but as the title has it, he owes her.

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Those Roxy Music album covers of my childhood will always be ingrained in my head. I had no clue what was between those cardboard shells, but I sure knew I liked the artwork, eventually sending yours truly into world of Bryan Ferry and company.

Those expecting a critical analysis of the first Roxy Music album will be in for a shock in Michael Bracewell’s exhaustive RE-MAKE/RE-MODEL: BECOMING ROXY MUSIC, since very little is actually discussed of the record. Instead, it’s mainly a history of the band’s members.

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All the news that’s fit to capsulize!

SPIDER-BABY
Spider-Man’s “birth certificate” is now part of the permanent archives at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., as an anonymous donor has donated Steve Ditko’s original artwork from Marvel Comics’ AMAZING FANTASY #15, which marked the 1962 debut of our favorite wall-crawler. “The donation of these wonderful drawings is a treasured gift to the American people,” said Sara W. Duke, curator of popular and applied graphic art in the Library’s prints and photographs division. “Looking at the drawings inspires a new appreciation for the artist’s skill and design choices and also deepens our understanding of how a superhero created to attract a teenage audience became a cultural icon with mass appeal.” If you can’t make an appointment to see the real deal, you can view samples from the comfort of home.

FREE ‘BETRAYAL’
You have until May 13 to download a free copy of Aaron Allstone’s STAR WARS: LEGACY OF THE FORCE – BETRAYAL, courtesy of Del Rey. Visitors can choose between a PDF, audiobook or e-books for the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader. The novel follows Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Princess Leia after the events of RETURN OF THE JEDI. –Rod Lott