Regardless of what you think of it, the new-in-paperback Chuck Palahniuk’s RANT: AN ORAL BIOGRAPHY OF BUSTER CASEY will screw with your head. And I don’t just mean shock you, but really mess with it. It’ll cut around your entire scalp, scoop out your brain and wring it dry before putting it back — and not exactly in the same condition.

The Buster Casey of the title is now deceased, and the novel is comprised of nothing more than snippets of interviews with those who knew him, reminiscing about his life. Nicknamed Rant, he was a famous serial killer, but not like a Jeffrey Dahmer or even a Jason Voorhees; he was responsible for a plague-like outbreak of rabies that turns people into zombies of sorts. His infection was brought on by his hobby of purposely getting bit by snakes, spiders and scorpions.

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With the political season not taking a break, Ed Gorman’s mystery SLEEPING DOGS is a perfect respite from the headlines. Longtime political advisor Dev Conrad works for Sen. Warren Nichols, who is trying to hold onto his seat while his opponent Jim Lake seems to be gaining ground.

The novel opens with the two candidates about to have another debate, where things will change for everyone involved, once Nichols goes down from either a stroke or a heart attack. Lake comes off as the savior after trying to revive his opponent, but Dev believes that somebody might have screwed around with the dead’s drink.

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

STAR WARS: LEGACY OF THE FORCE — INVINCIBLE by Troy Denning — The rebel cause is losing ground under the twin blows of Admiral Gilad Pellaeon’s assassination and the death of Mara Jade Skywalker. At the same time, the Galactic Alliance, with the extraordinary power of newly ascendant Sith Lord Darth Caedus at its helm, may be unstoppable. Tormented and torn between the call of duty and the thirst for vengeance, Luke has searched the Force and beheld an unspeakable vision of the galaxy enslaved under tyranny more monstrous than even Palpatine’s. Now it seems that the last, best hope lies in mobilizing the scattered Jedi for one decisive search-and-destroy mission. The objective: eliminate Darth Caedus.

SHADOW COMMAND by Dale Brown — Gen. Patrick McLanahan’s new Aerospace Battle Force has grown into a full-fledged task force based on the Armstrong Space Station. Providing almost instant access to space and every corner of the globe, its powerful network of satellites and unmanned aircraft controlled from space can not only attack any target anywhere on the planet within hours, but can even invade any computer network as easily as making a phone call. But the program has its critics and doomsayers. Wealthy, Western-educated and sophisticated Russian President Leonid Zevitin uses a combination of top-secret anti-spacecraft weaponry, fearmongering and new U.S. President Joseph Gardner’s own egotism in an effective plan to eliminate all support for the program. Gardner and his allies in Congress and the Pentagon will stop at nothing — even destroying one of their own — to get what they want.

IN A DARK SEASON by Vicki Lane — In a North Carolina winter, new vistas appear through the bare trees. For Elizabeth Goodweather of Full Circle Farm, still a newcomer after more than 20 years, one terrible glimpse ignites a mystery that reaches back years into these hills, drawing together dozens of seemingly unconnected lives. Elizabeth sees a frail old woman on a high porch where dolls hang by twine. When the woman jumps, and Elizabeth reacts, there is no turning back. Nola Barrett’s ancient, sprawling house is spewing a dark past: of depravity, scandal and murder. Her land is at the center of multiple mysteries, ranging from a suspicious death to the brutal rape of a young woman to the legend of a handsome youth hanged for murder. But with Nola recovering from her self-inflicted wounds, Elizabeth has inherited her mad, violent drama — while a killer has a perfect view of it all.

THE ANSWER IS ALWAYS YES by Monica Ferrell — Matthew Acciaccatura of Teaneck, N.J., begins his freshman year at NYU in the fall of 1995 with one goal in mind: to become cool. A former high school outcast used to lumbering the hallways alone in oversize turtlenecks, Matt seems an unlikely candidate for such a transformation. Yet by dint of effort, he lands the coveted position of promoter at one of the hottest clubs in New York in the heyday of rave music and Ecstasy. However, as “Magic” Matt rises to fame, portents of tragedy begin to appear, literally in the margins of the story. Footnotes from one Dr. Hans Mannheim, an imprisoned German academic obsessed with Matt’s dangerous trajectory, suggest that Matt is not as in control of his destiny as he might appear.

Buy it at Amazon.

Two things become readily apparent reading EVERY SIGH, THE END: 1) I’m not the only person in the world who thought that LESS THAN ZERO was actually the scariest zombie book ever written, and 2) author Jason S. Hornsby boldly takes on the undead genre with a challenge I haven’t read before. EVERY SIGH, THE END — yes, another novel about zombies — is hip, referential and daring.

The plot requires a bit of explaining — maybe a couple of flow charts, possibly even fractions. I suck at math, so I’ll try and sum it up the best I can: New Year’s Eve, 1999. Professional layabout Ross Orringer is complaining about his life and jaded affair with his girlfriend’s best friend. Ross and his asshole buddy Preston, when they aren’t getting stoned, dub those hard-to-find classics you saw in the back of old-school FANGORIA. It’s not much of an existence, but it beats being dead.
 
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THE MONEYPENNY DIARIES proposes one of the greatest “what if”s in modern literature: What if Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels were based on real people? That is the line of logic that author Kate Westerbrook, even portraying herself as the niece of one Jane Moneypenny, who — 10 years after her death — has sent Kate her private diaries. It’s a brilliant idea for a series that is now hitting the final book overseas, while in the U.S., we are finally being treated to the first one.

For those unfamiliar with Bond, Miss Moneypenny works for Bond’s boss M. Moneypenny has a very rich history to mine through, thanks to the very clever plotting of Westbrook. We find out all about Moneypenny’s life leading up to joining the service in her youth in Africa to her first meeting with her future employer.

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All the news that’s fit to capsulize!

‘SNUFF’ FILMS
To promote Chuck Palahniuk’s upcoming novel SNUFF, the book’s heroine — aging porn queen Cassie Wright — has her own MySpace page. I abhor MySpace, but at least it includes a hilarious faux trailer (more suggestive than explicit) for one of Cassie’s ’70s skin flicks: THE WIZARD OF ASS, also viewable at YouTube. Two more trailers will soon follow; here’s hoping that they’re as entertaining as this one (and that the book is even better).

GET ASTONISHED … AGAIN
Issue #3 of ASTONISHING ADVENTURES MAGAZINE is now available as a free download or to read online. This one is the first “all-story issue,” with new pulp tales from Bill Cunningham, Matthew Mayo and six others.

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With INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL mere days away from hitting the multiplex, DK Publishing has kindly provided us with five copies of INDIANA JONES: THE ULTIMATE GUIDE to give away! This book is packed with a wealth of information from all four movies — about the characters, the storylines, the ancient ruins and artifacts, the history and the mysticism.

To be eligible, just e-mail us your name, mailing address and answers to the following favorite-of-the-franchise questions:
1. Film?
2. Leading lady?
3. Sidekick?

At the request of the publisher, only U.S. readers may enter. We’ll pick the lucky winners at random and announce them on the morning of Friday, May 16. Or if you’re not all that adventurous, buy it at Amazon.

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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