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
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• strap on dildos for first timers
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• 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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