Just in time for the comedy act’s 75th anniversary is THREE STOOGES FAQ: EVERYTHING LEFT TO KNOW ABOUT THE EYE-POKING, FACE-SLAPPING, HEAD-THUMPING GENIUSES by David J. Hogan. In this excerpt from the Applause Theatre & Cinema Books release, coming out Oct. 15, the Stooges learn about “the fairer sex” …

In 1934, at the beginning of the Stooges’ tenure at Columbia—and for one film only—executives were not completely sure of how to showcase them. As we’ve seen, Columbia was a “minor major” that hadn’t the resources to make use of the boys’ talents in the MGM manner. But Columbia had established a “Musical Novelty” shorts series in 1933, and had the services of a vivacious blonde starlet named Marjorie White.

A Canadian native who stood just 4’10”, White had energy and screen presence to spare. (She also had a wisecracking, New York-style attitude that belied her Canadian origins.) During 1929–31, she’d been under contract to Fox Film Corporation, appearing in nine pictures. White sang and danced, and knew her way around a page of dialogue. She’d had leads and second leads in comedies and musicals at Fox, and found similar success later in pictures for First National, Universal, Paramount, and RKO.

Even more promising from Columbia’s point of view is that White held her own on screen with bombastic, well-established male comics. She was sterling in support of First National star Joe E. Brown in Broadminded (1931) and easily kept pace with RKO’s high-energy comedy-team sensation Wheeler and Woolsey in Diplomaniacs (1933).

White arrived at a propitious moment. The Roaring Twenties had come and gone, and the notion of the emancipated jazz baby who smoked, worked at a job, and necked with whomever she pleased had been diminished by the Depression. But movie audiences had become accustomed to smart, sassy dames, and White fit the mold. It wasn’t unreasonable, then, that the Three Stooges were designated as the fourth Musical Novelty entry, which would co-star Marjorie White. The boys would be properly introduced, and White—for whom Columbia had high hopes—would receive an amiable showcase.

All of that being said, the Stooges’ inaugural Columbia effort, Woman Haters, is among the two or three most perplexing shorts they made at Columbia. It’s also atypical, in the extreme, of their subsequent output.

In the end, the aggressive bride doesn’t take any guff from her husband’s pals: “This man’s my husband, we were married a coupla hours ago, and the agreement that you fellas signed is fake and it don’t go, ’cause everybody’s cheated, I can prove it and I know!”

Longtime Stooge fans will be happy to see blustery actor Bud Jamison as the leader of the Woman Haters; we’ll meet Bud numerous times in the course of this book. Some sources claim that later stock-company regular Emil Sitka (who would have been about twenty at the time of Woman Haters) has a wordless bit as a beat-up husband, and although the actor might be Sitka, the short doesn’t show up on any Sitka filmography, nor could this writer uncover any occasion when Sitka men- tioned the film.

For real novelty we have future three-time Oscar winner Walter Brennan, cast as a conductor on the train where most of the short’s action plays out. Brennan nearly always looked elderly, no matter his real age; here, he appears merely middle-aged—and as thin as a reed, too.

The film offers a few hints of the boys’ future greatness. When Moe sinks his teeth into Curly’s bare foot, Curly lets out with a ferocious “Woop woop woop woop woop woop woop!” Curly also reprises one of his gags from the Healy days, loudly whacking his derby on his head and moving his arm like a machine gun. Moe pokes eyes and administers plenty of slaps—one of which, in fact, is a startlingly violent backhand of a sort that we’ll rarely see again.

Most satisfying of all is that Larry, in the boys’ very first Columbia short, lets loose with one of his best-liked signature lines: “I’m warnin’ you!” Bliss.

Sadly, all was not blissful for talented Marjorie White, who was killed in a Santa Monica car crash on August 21, 1935, just fourteen weeks after the release of Woman Haters. The short was the last time audiences would see her on film. Just four years earlier, Columbia lost Robert Williams, its most promising young leading man, to appendicitis.

These losses were serious blows to Columbia’s spirit and to its bottom line. Fortunately, the Stooges were now on the lot, ready to pitch in.

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She’s back each Tuesday, pimpin’ out notable new releases to place on your radar, so let the tempting, publisher-provided plot descriptions begin!

FEAST DAY OF FOOLS by James Lee Burke — Sheriff Hackberry Holland patrols a small Southwest Texas border town with a deep and abiding respect for the citizens in his care. Still mourning the loss of his cherished wife and locked in a perilous almost-romance with his deputy, Hackberry feeds off the deeds of evil men to keep his own demons at bay. When alcoholic ex-boxer Danny Boy Lorca witnesses a man tortured to death in the desert and reports it, Hack’s investigation leads to the home of Anton Ling, a regal, mysterious Chinese woman known for sheltering illegals.

THE DOVE OF DEATH by Peter Tremayne — In A.D. 670, an Irish merchant ship is attacked by a pirate vessel off the southern coast of the Breton peninsula. Merchad, the ship’s captain, and Bressal, a prince from the Irish kingdom of Muman, are killed in cold blood after they have surrendered. Among the other passengers who manage to escape the slaughter are Fidelma of Cashel and her faithful companion, Brother Eadulf. Once safely ashore, Fidelma, sister to the King of Muman, is determined to bring the killers to justice.

WEREWORLD: RISE OF THE WOLF by Curtis Jobling — Imagine a world ruled by Werelords, men and women who can shift at will into bears, lions and serpents. When Drew suddenly discovers he’s not only a werewolf, but the long-lost heir to the murdered Wolf King’s throne, he must use his wits and newfound powers to survive in a land suddenly full of enemies. Drew’s the only one who can unite the kingdom in a massive uprising against its tyrant ruler, Leopold the Lion. But the king is hot on Drew’s tail and won’t rest until he’s got the rebel Wolf’s head.

GANDHI: A MANGA BIOGRAPHY by Kazuki Ebine — The life of a true 20th-century hero told in a vibrant graphic novel format. Through his quietly powerful leadership and influential use of nonviolent resistance in India’s struggle against the British Raj, Mahatma Gandhi became one of the most revered figures of the modern era. While history has recorded Gandhi’s words and deeds, the man himself has been eclipsed by maxims of virtuosity that seem to have little resonance in our everyday lives.

I LOVE LUCY: A CELEBRATION OF ALL THINGS LUCY: INSIDE THE WORLD OF TELEVISION’S FIRST GREAT SITCOM by Elisabeth Edwards — Upon the 60th anniversary of the landmark television show’s debut and the 100th birthday of superstar Lucille Ball, I LOVE LUCY includes rare backstage photos and images from the stars’ personal collections, Ball’s personal commentary on her favorite episodes, trivia, character bios, fashions, music, recipes and more.

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Sexual and spiritual healer and leader Caroline Muir delivers her autobiography, TANTRA GODDESS: A MEMOIR OF SEXUAL AWAKENING, on Nov. 15. Here’s your menses-packed preview …

Susan put her hand to her yoni and from its deepest folds brought forth some of her fresh menstrual blood. Tenderly, she touched my third eye, or brow center, with it as I began sobbing uncontrollably. I could see the power of the goddess in her as she placed another drop of her blood on my throat. “You will speak highly of the power of this anointing to other women,” she said.

“Give me another taste,” I said, desiring more of her surprisingly sweet moon flow. I asked her to smear her blood on my face and my breasts and thighs that I might fully claim my return to wholeness. … Susan gave me an incredible gift.

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Come Sept. 27, horror fans will want to sink their teeth into the release of THE VAMPIRE FILM: FROM NOSFERATU TO TRUE BLOOD newly updated and expanded by Alain Silver and James Ursini. Now in its fourth edition, the 488-page book tracks the genre’s evolution into the 21st century of movies and TV series. In this excerpt, Linda Brookover looks at politics in TRUE BLOOD.

TRUE BLOOD brings an unlikely array of characters out of the swamp into a soap opera of Southern seediness and short shorts. At the center of the tale, based loosely on the ten-volume Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris, are the new vampires. Their mission is to coexist with humans and the myriad other weird beings that inhabit Bon Temps, Louisiana and its environs. This setting has the proper Gothic atmosphere for both the novels and the series. Both begin with all the “fangers” outed, and some wanting to be welcomed into red-neck hang outs like Merlottes’ where they can sit a spell with the breathers. Eternal alienation is TRUE BLOOD hell, and the source of its deadpan Grand Ol’ Opry-style humor.

TRUE BLOOD is a parody of antebellum intolerance, where the vampire is just the latest entity to be vilified or wanting equality, unusual but not unknown to the horror genre. It follows in the politically correct if somewhat distant footsteps of such movies as George Romero’s anti-racist zombie movie NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. The people of Bon Temps are still embroiled in the same civil-rights-era struggles, which include the standard issues of race, gender, nationality, sexual orientation and now vampire rights.

The vampires of TRUE BLOOD have the usual aversion to sunlight and silver, require a proper invitation to enter human dwellings and, of course, must consume blood or the bottled, synthetic alternative “Trublood” in order to survive. On the plus side, they can see, smell, and hear with considerable acuity and run like a house afire. In both series episodes and novels, these blood-craving “supes” are a highly organized if quarrelsome bunch with lots of arcane rules and a feudal-style government run by monarchs and sheriffs. Mainstreaming vampires are represented by the AVL (American Vampire League) because, as former humans, their rights are inalienable, and, by the way, they pay taxes. Modeled after the televangelist types of the religious right, the Fellowship of the Sun is their prime opposition, who discredit vampires entirely for their soul-lessness.

Alan Ball’s HBO series widens and probes the complex connection between humans and vampires postulated by Charlaine Harris. While the narrator of the novel, telepath Sookie Stackhouse, is still the main character and soon joins the ranks of human sympathizers known as Fangbangers, she is a romantic, motivated by her affection for the chivalrous Bill Compton (who went vampire right after his service with the Confederacy) and not like those seeking to get high by drinking the illicit “V” or vampire blood. Hedonism is a major undercurrent in the aptly named Bon Temps, which in Ball’s vision progressed from the sex addition of Sookie’s brother Jason to the atavistic orgies when Maryann the Maenad comes to town in season two.

From the earliest episodes, pleasure seekers both living and dead come from miles around to mingle at Fangtasia, a vamp nightclub and headquarters of local undead sheriff Eric Northman. The transformation of this character from an older and colder vampire who has all but lost empathy for humankind — like most unreconstructed vampires, Eric views humans as either food or pets — to a lovesick fanger distracted by day dreams of Sookie is typical of the evolution of the series from quaint moments and biting parody to emotional drama, from sturm und drang to actual angst. Paralleling Eric’s “enlightenment,” there is a similar transformation in season two for Sookie’s bro, Jason, the main Bubba in Bon Temps. Guilt-ridden over the death of several lovers in season one, Jason joins the Fellowship of the Sun. He also seduces the pastor’s wife and ends up on the other side. prompting his anti-zealot taunt: “I reckon I’ve already been to heaven. It was inside your wife.”

In cross-cutting between a myriad of zany sub-plots, Ball’s constant irony is the contrast between the weaknesses of Bon Temps’ human society and the highly organized and disciplined world of the undead. Like many of the characters already surveyed, Bill Compton is the vampire next door — his old house being just a couple of magnolias removed from that of Sookie’s grandmother — and the sensitive male with especially sharp teeth who longs for nothing morethan human love. After fellow romantic Sookie saves him, he saves her, they share some blood and become soulmates, leaving her shape-shifting boss Sam Merlotte spurned and somewhat jealous. Sam rivals Bill in the sensitive and brooding department, and became enamoured of Sookie deep in the series’ backstory; but in the end he’s just presiding over the Bon Temps equivalent of CHEERS. As it was (and is) with a semitraditionalist like Romero, the ability of Ball and his collaborators to alternate between shocked and bemused reactions to a world full of fantastic creatures and events keeps TRUE BLOOD from becoming too horrific, too melodramatic, or too silly. The problems of the core characters may not rise to the level of Greek myth, but they are flawed, full of hubris in some cases, and too frail to avoid being possessed by others. These vampires and humans alike can be kind or cruel but almost all cling to their prejudices. Bill’s type does not feed on friends but broods instead over bottles of unfrosty “Trublood,” the powerful sustenance of politically correct vampires who crave redemption and acceptance in a vegan-like way. When Bill kills a vampire who is menacing Sookie, he is forced to create a replacement with neverbeen-kissed teen Jessica Hamby and instantly becomes a pompous parent: “Your bedtime will be at 4 a.m. and not a minute later.” “Whilst you’re under my roof, hunting is completely forbidden.” “We also recycle in this house. TruBlood and other glass items go in the blue container. And paper products go in the white container.”

Before she is done in by a serial killer in the first season, Sookie’s grandmother is one of the few enlightened beings, curious but not nosy, kind without condescension, rule abiding but not rigid. Her mirror on the vampire side would be Godric, who was more Daedalus than undead. Eric’s maker, he appears in the second season as one of the oldest of his kind, so weary of his 2000-odd years of life that he opts for vampire suicide via sun bath. Sookie, who has helped to rescue him from the Fellowship of the Sun, is the only witness to his self-immolation, as he transcends immortality by exposing himself to the deadly rays. Godric’s last words, “A human with me at the end, and human tears; 2,000 years and I can still be surprised. In this, I see God.”

It should be clear by now that TRUE BLOOD is more than a 21st-century, vampire PEYTON PLACE. It may seem at times overwrought, overdone or outright tacky, too self-absorbed and in search of a rip-roaring good time, but it’s really just a best-of-times, worst-of-times fable in a truly alternate world. The style can be dark or day-lit, dry or wet, noir or blanc. However the outrageous goings-on are staged, Bon Temps is there to soothe and provide freedom from ordinary standards of good taste, a shadow world as greasily delicious as a chicken fried steak, where all are welcome to indulge, to watch the characters “do bad things” then laugh or cry.

And that is how, “tiny humans,” TRUE BLOOD is about a new generation of vampires who reflect, have feelings, and do whatever they want anyway because they are individuals, not a monolithic vampire stereotype. They can be powerful and humble like Godric; scheming and seductive like the vampire Queen of Louisiana; or smug and power-hungry like the ruler across the river in Ole Miss. They might be childish, Yahtzee playing Delta Queens like Sophie Anne LeClerc or shoe-loving lesbian vampires like Pam. TRUE BLOOD vampires are as complex as their human counterparts, but in the words of Bubba Jason himself “Like if a tree falls in the woods, it’s still a tree ain’t it?” —Linda Brookover

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She’s back each Tuesday, pimpin’ out notable new releases to place on your radar, so let the tempting, publisher-provided plot descriptions begin!

LASSITER by Paul Levine — Jake Lassiter, second-string linebacker turned low-rent lawyer, is cynical about the law, but if you hire him, he’ll take a punch for you, and maybe a swing at the prosecutor, too. Amy Larkin — beautiful, angry, mysterious — accuses Lassiter of involvement in the disappearance of her sister 18 years earlier. What does Lassiter know about Krista Larkin, the runaway teen turned porn actress? More than he’s saying. Seeking to atone for his own past, Lassiter follows the cold trail of the missing Krista and butts head with the powerful men who also knew her: a porn king turned philanthropist, a Cuban prosecutor who’d love to be governor, and an aging mobster who once worked for Meyer Lansky.

SPELLBOUND by Blake Charlton — In a world where one’s magical prowess is determined by one’s skill with words and ability to spell, Nicodemus is a wizardly apprentice afflicted by a curse that causes him to misspell magical texts. Now, the demon who cursed him has hatched a conspiracy to force Nicodemus to change language and ultimately use it to destroy all human life. As Nico tries to thwart the demon’s plan, he faces challenges from all sides. But his biggest challenge is his own disability, which causes him to create chaos wherever he goes.

SANCTUS by Simon Toyne — A man climbs a cliff face in the oldest inhabited place on earth, a mountain known as the Citadel, a Vatican-like city-state that towers above the city of Ruin in modern-day Turkey. But this is no ordinary ascent. It is a dangerous, symbolic act. And thanks to the media, it is an event witnessed by the entire world. Few people understand its consequence. But for foundation worker Kathryn Mann and a handful of others, it’s evidence that a revolution is at hand.

THE SLEEPWALKERS by Paul Grossman — As Hitler and his National Socialist party angle to assume control of Germany, beautiful girls are seen sleepwalking through the streets. Then, a young woman of mysterious origin, with her legs bizarrely deformed, is pulled dead from the Havel River. Willi Kraus, a high-ranking detective in Berlin’s police force, begins a murder investigation. Despite his elite status in the criminal police, he is disturbed by the direction Germany is taking. Working urgently to solve the murder, the Jewish Willi finds his superiors diverting him at every turn. 

MURDER IN THE 11TH HOUSE by Mitchell Scott Lewis — Astrological detective David Lowell must use his astrologer’s charts and knowledge to solve the murder of a state judge in a New York City parking garage. Joined by his daughter, Melinda, a young defense attorney who believes the person arrested innocent; his hacker sidekick, Mort; patient assistant, Sarah; and bodyguard Andy, Lowell races against time to prove the innocence of Johnny Colbert, a mouthy bartender accused of the crime. Birth charts and street smarts help Lowell sort out the misdirections of a cast of characters, ranging from the judge’s clerk to the judge’s life itself, to trace the crime back to a surprising source.

ANGEL by Nicole “Coco” Marrow and Laura Hayden — A beautiful woman awakens on a plane and discovers that things are going terribly wrong. The plane is about to crash into the Hudson River, and she can’t even remember her own name. After she survives, the airline determines that her name is Angela Sands. But she has no idea who she really is. Reporter Dante Kearns is fascinated by the woman the media dubs “the Angel of the Hudson,” especially once he discovers her shocking secret: Angela can hear voices in her head — the thoughts of all men around her.

JUDY: A LEGENDARY FILM CAREER by John Fricke — JUDY tells the story of Garland’s movie work in unprecedented detail. Hundreds of never-before-published photos, newly assembled contemporary reviews, insight from her costars and co-workers, and production histories are provided for each film in which she appeared. Complimenting the films are a definitive biography, an examination of Judy’s short subjects, details of the movies she did not complete, and a compendium of film projects for which she was considered or rumored. The text is illustrated by more than 500 photos, encompassing poster art, costume tests, behind-the-scenes candids, onstage and backstage glimpses of her theatrical successes, and personal snapshots.

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Paul Simon has a new book coming out tomororow: LYRICS 1964-2011, a collection of his lyrics from 1964 to 2011. Here’s a preview.

Tih tih tih tih
Tih tih tih tih
Guh guh guh guh
Guh guh guh guh
Lih lih lih lih
Lih lih lih lih
Oom bop a doom

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She’s back each Tuesday, pimpin’ out notable new releases to place on your radar, so let the tempting, publisher-provided plot descriptions begin!

THE POSTMORTAL by Drew Magary — John Farrell is about to get “The Cure.” Old age can never kill him now. The only problem is, everything else still can. Imagine a near future where a cure for aging is discovered and — after much political and moral debate — made available to people worldwide. Immortality, however, comes with its own unique problems, including evil green people, government euthanasia programs, a disturbing new religious cult and other horrors.

THE STRANGER YOU SEEK by Amanda Kyle Williams — In the sweltering heat of an Atlanta summer, a killer is pushing the city to its breaking point, preying on the unsuspecting, writing taunting letters to the media, promising more death. Desperate to stop the Wishbone Killer before another victim meets a shattering end, APD Lt. Aaron Rauser turns to the one person he knows can penetrate a deranged mind: ex–FBI profiler Keye Street. Keye was a rising young star at the Bureau until addiction derailed her career and her life. Now sober and fighting to stay so, Keye picks up jobs where she can get them: catching adulterers, serving subpoenas, chasing down bailjumpers and dodging the occasional bullet.

GRAVE EXPECTATIONS by Charles Dickens and Sherri Browning Erwin — Pip is a robust young whelp, an orphan born under a full moon. Between hunting escaped convicts alongside zombified soldiers, trying not to become one of the hunted himself, and hiding his hairy hands from the supernaturally beautiful and haughty Estella, whose devilish moods keep him chomping at the bit, Pip is sure he will die penniless or a convict like the rest of his commonly uncommon kind. But then a mysterious benefactor sends him to London for the finest werewolf education money can buy. In the company of other furry young gentlemen, Pip tempers his violent transformations and devours the secrets of his dark world.

JANE AND THE CANTERBURY TALE by Stephanie Barron — Three years after news of her scandalous husband’s death, Adelaide Fiske is at the altar again, her groom a soldier on the Marquis of Wellington’s staff. The prospects seem bright for one of the most notorious women in Kent, until Jane Austen discovers a corpse on the ancient Pilgrim’s Way that runs through her brother Edward’s estate. As First Magistrate for Canterbury, Edward is forced to investigate, with Jane as his reluctant assistant. But she rises to the challenge and leaves no stone unturned, discovering mysteries deeper than she could have anticipated.

DOWN TO THE BONE by Justina Robson — Lila Black is now a shape-shifting machine plugged into the Signal, the total dataset of all events in the known universe and all potential events: Zal, the elf rock star with a demon soul, is now a shadow form animated and given material actualization by firelight; Teazle the demon has taken up the swords of Death and is on the way to becoming an angel. To say this puts some pressure on their three-way marriage is an understatement. Meanwhile, the human world is seeing an inexplicable influx of the returning dead, and they’re not the only ones. Many old evils are returning to haunt the living following three harbingers of destruction created in the ancient past.

WHITE TIGER by Kylie Chan — Emma Donahoe has just started her new job as nanny to Simone, the daughter of John Chen, a very rich Hong Kong businessman. She understands that Simone may be a target for kidnappers but she does not expect to be drawn into a world of martial arts, magic and extreme danger, where both gods and demons can exist in the mortal domain. When John and his American bodyguard, Leo, teach Emma their particular style of martial arts, they begin to realize that Emma herself is more than she seems.

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She’s back each Tuesday, pimpin’ out notable new releases to place on your radar, so let the tempting, publisher-provided plot descriptions begin!

THE EDINBURGH DEAD by Brian Ruckley —Edinburgh: 1828. In the starkly-lit operating theaters of the city, grisly experiments are being carried out on corpses in the name of medical science. But elsewhere, there are those experimenting with more sinister forces. Among the crowded, sprawling tenements of the labyrinthine Old Town, a body is found, its neck torn to pieces. Charged with investigating the murder is Adam Quire, Officer of the newly formed Edinburgh Police. The trail will lead him into the deepest reaches of the city’s criminal underclass, and to the highest echelons of the filthy rich.

THE UNINCORPORATED WOMAN by Dani Kollin and Eytan Kollin — Justin Cord, the unincorporated man, is dead, betrayed, and his legacy of rebellion and individual freedom is in danger. General Black is the great hope of the military, but she cannot wage war from behind the President’s desk. So there must be a new president, anointed by Black, to hold the desk job, and who better than the only woman resurrected from Justin Cord’s past era, the scientist who created his resurrection device, the only born unincorporated woman. The perfect figurehead. Except that she has ideas of her own, and secrets of her own, and the talent to run the government her way. She is a force that no one anticipated, and no one can control.

THE MOON MAZE GAME by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes — The Year: 2085. Live-action role-playing attracts a very special sort of individual: brilliant, unpredictable, resourceful, and addicted to problem-solving. By kidnapping a dozen gamers in the middle of the ultimate game, watched by more people than any other sporting event in history, they have thrown down an irresistible gauntlet: to “win” the first game that ever became “real.” Pursued by armed and murderous terrorists, forced to solve gaming puzzles to stay a jump ahead, forced to juggle multiple psychological realities as they do … this is the game for which  they’ve prepared their entire lives, and they are going to play it for all it’s worth.

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF WALWORTH: A TALE OF MADNESS AND MURDER IN GILDED AGE AMERICA by Geoffrey O’Brien — The Walworth family was the very symbol of virtue and distinction for decades, rising to prominence as part of the splendor of New York’s aristocracy. When Frank Walworth travels to New York to “settle a family difficulty” by shooting his father at point blank range, his family must reveal their inner demons in a spectacular trial to save him from execution. The resulting testimony exposes a legacy of mania and abuse, and the stately reputation of the family crumbles in a Gothic drama “sensational to the last degree.”

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She’s back each Tuesday, pimpin’ out notable new releases to place on your radar, so let the tempting, publisher-provided plot descriptions begin!

STAR WARS: FATE OF THE JEDI: ASCENSION by Christie Golden — As Luke and Ben Skywalker pursue the formidable dark-side being Abeloth, the Lost Tribe of the Sith is about to be sundered by an even greater power — which will thrust one Dark Lord into mortal conflict with his own flesh and blood. On Coruscant, a political vacuum has left tensions at the boiling point, with factions racing to claim control of the Galactic Alliance. Suddenly surrounded by hidden agendas, treacherous conspiracies, and covert Sith agents, the Jedi Order must struggle to keep the GA government from collapsing into anarchy.

DARKNESS, MY OLD FRIEND by Lisa Unger — After giving up his post at the Hollows Police Department, Jones Cooper is at loose ends. He is having trouble facing a horrible event from his past. Then, on a brisk October morning, he has a visitor. Eloise Montgomery, a psychic, comes to him with predictions about his future, some of them dire. Michael Holt, a young man who grew up in The Hollows, has returned looking for answers about his mother, who went missing many years earlier. He has hired local P.I. Ray Muldune and Eloise to help him solve the mystery that has haunted him. What he finds might be his undoing.

THE NEIGHBORS ARE WATCHING by Debra Ginsberg — Aside from their annual block party, the neighbors on Fuller Court tend to keep to themselves, which doesn’t mean that they aren’t all watching and judging each other on the sly. So when pregnant teenager Diana Jones shows up, literally, on her biological father’s doorstep, the neighbors can’t stop talking. Joe Montana is a handsome restaurant manager who failed to tell his wife Allison that he fathered a baby with an ex-girlfriend 17 years ago. Allison, already harboring her own inner resentments, takes the news very badly. She isn’t the only one. Diana’s bombshell arrival in their quiet cul-de-sac sets off a chain reaction of secrets and lies that threaten to engulf the neighborhood along with the approaching flames from two huge wildfires fanned by the Santa Ana winds.

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She’s back each Tuesday, pimpin’ out notable new releases to place on your radar, so let the tempting, publisher-provided plot descriptions begin!

THE SIXES by Kate White — Phoebe Hall’s Manhattan life has suddenly begun to unravel. Looking for a quiet place to put her life back together, she jumps at the offer to teach in a sleepy Pennsylvania town at a small private college run by her former boarding school roommate and close friend, Glenda Johns. But behind the campus’s quiet cafés and leafy maple trees lie evil happenings. The body of a female student washes up on the banks of a nearby river, and disturbing revelations begin to surface: accusations from coeds about abuses wrought by a secret society of girls on campus known as The Sixes. To help Glenda, Phoebe embarks on a search for clues that soon raises painful memories of her own boarding school days years ago.

DEN OF THIEVES by David Chandler — Born and raised in the squalid depths of the Free City of Ness, Malden became a thief by necessity. Now he must pay a fortune to join the criminal operation of Cutbill, lord of the underworld, and one does not refuse the master … and live. The coronet of the Burgrave would fulfill Malden’s obligations, though it is guarded by hungry demons that would tear the soul from any interloper. But the desperate endeavor leads to a more terrible destiny, as Malden, an outlaw knight, and an ensorcelled lady must face the most terrifying evil in the land.

THE WATCHTOWER by Lee Carroll — Jewelry designer Garet James is the last in a long line of women sworn to protect the world from evil. Now she has received a sign from Will Hughes, the 400-year-old vampire who once helped her defeat the evil threatening to destroy New York City. Hughes, tortured by his own violent history, has asked her to join him on a quest to rid himself of his curse of vampirism. While looking for Will in Paris, Garet encounters a number of mysterious figures: an ancient botanist metamorphosed into the oldest tree in Paris, a gnome who lives under the Labyrinth at the Jardin des Plantes, a librarian at the Institut Oceanographique, and a dryad in the Luxembourg Gardens.

THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT PLAYS 2009-2010 edited by Barbara Parisi — Applause Books continues the series that for over 70 years has been the standard of excellence for one-act plays in America. From its inception, THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT PLAYS has identified new, cutting-edge playwrights who have gone on to establish award-winning careers, including Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, Wendy Wasserstein, David Mamet and Horton Foote (The Trip to Bountiful). This volume is Barbara Parisi’s fifth edition as series editor. The volumes of the new millennium include the work of playwrights Murray Schisgal, Adam Kraar, Theodore Mann, David Ives, and Mark Medoff, among others, and tackle complex human issues through diverse theatrical styles and a wide range of character perspectives.

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She’s back each Tuesday, pimpin’ out notable new releases to place on your radar, so let the tempting, publisher-provided plot descriptions begin!

FULL BLACK by Brad Thor — A wave of dramatic terrorist attacks is set in motion. Their goal: the complete and total collapse of the United States. With the CIA’s intelligence abilities hobbled, former Navy SEAL Team 6 member turned covert counterterrorism operative Scot Harvath launches an audacious plan to infiltrate the terrorists’ network and prevent one of the biggest threats the United States has ever faced. Simultaneously, a foreign wet work team has been sent to California. Their target: one of Hollywood’s most famous filmmakers.

ORIGIN UNKNOWN by Pierre Davis — Dr. Lydia South, a cutting-edge neuroscientist, has perfected a lucrative, top-secret technology that can map secrets of the brain. But Lydia’s past is inextricably bound with that of a brilliant but deranged sociopath, a man with the ability to blend in anywhere around the world, sow seeds of destruction, and escape unscathed — and he’ll stop at nothing to remain anonymous.

IN SEARCH OF THE ROSE NOTES by Emily Arsenault — Eleven-year-olds Nora and Charlotte were best friends. When their teenage babysitter, Rose, disappeared under mysterious circumstances, the girls decided to “investigate.” But their search — aided by paranormal theories and techniques gleaned from old Time-Life books — went nowhere. Years later, Nora is drawn back to her old neighborhood and estranged friend when Rose’s remains are finally discovered. Upset over their earlier failure to solve the possible murder, Charlotte is adamant that they join forces and try again.

STORMLORD’S EXILE by Glenda Larke — Shale is finally free from his greatest enemy. But now, he is responsible for bringing life-giving rain to all the people of the Quartern. He must stretch his powers to the limit or his people will die, if they don’t meet a nomad’s blade first. Terelle is Shale’s secret weapon, covertly boosting his powers with her own mystical abilities. But her people may save Shale and his people once again … or lead them to their doom.

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Now out from the GRAPHIC CLASSICS line is WESTERN CLASSICS, a full-color, 144-page collection of seven classic Old West tales transformed into new comics. Featured are:
• an adaptation of Zane Grey’s grand Western prototype novel, RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE, illustrated by Cynthia Martin;
• an early Hopalong Cassidy story illustrated by original “Hoppy” newspaper strip artist Dan Spiegle; and
• a comic Western by Conan the Barbarian creator Robert E. Howard.

The 20th volume in the series also includes stories by Bret Harte, Willa Cather, Gertrude Atherton and John G. Neihardt, with art and adaptations by Trina Robbins, John Findley, Arnold Arre, George Sellas, Reno Maniquis, Ryan Huna Smith and yours truly. Get a glimpse of art from five tales after the jump. —Rod Lott

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She’s back each Tuesday, pimpin’ out notable new releases to place on your radar, so let the tempting, publisher-provided plot descriptions begin!

EYES WIDE OPEN by Andrew Gross — Jay Erlich’s nephew has been found at the bottom of a cliff at Morrow Bay. It’s all just a tragic suicide, until secrets from the past begin to rear up again. Did a notorious killer, jailed for many decades, have his hand in this? Years ago, Jay Erlich’s older brother, Charlie, a wayward child of the ’60s, set out for California, where he fell under the sway of a charismatic but deeply disturbed cultlike figure. Tragedy ensued and lives were destroyed, but as the decades passed, Charlie lived a quiet, secluded life under the radar. Yet the demons that nearly destroyed him never completely disappeared.

THE CONFESSION by John Grisham — In 1998, Travis Boyette abducted, raped and strangled a popular high school cheerleader. He buried her body so that it would never be found, then watched as police and prosecutors arrested and convicted Donté Drumm, a local football star, and marched him off to death row. Nine years later, Donté is four days away from his execution, and Travis suffers from an inoperable brain tumor. For the first time in his miserable life, he decides to confess. But how can a guilty man convince lawyers, judges and politicians that they’re about to execute an innocent man?

THE FALLING MACHINE: THE SOCIETY OF STEAM, BOOK ONE by Andrew Mayer — In 1880, women aren’t allowed to vote, much less dress up in a costume and fight crime. But 20-year-old socialite Sarah Stanton still dreams of becoming a hero. Her opportunity arrives in tragedy when the leader of the Society of Paragons, New York’s greatest team of gentlemen adventurers, is murdered right before her eyes. To uncover the truth behind the assassination, she joins forces with the amazing mechanical man known as The Automaton. Together, they unmask a conspiracy at the heart of the Paragons that reveals the world of heroes and high-society is built on a crumbling foundation of greed and lies.

THE TRAITOR’S EMBLEM by Juan Gómez-Jurado — After his family fall into disgrace, 15-year-old Paul Reiner and his mother work as servants in the palace of Baron Von Schroeder. Unhappy and full of despair, Paul dreams of the heroic father he never knew. But one night, seconds before committing suicide, Paul’s cousin reveals a terrible secret. Paul’s father didn’t die in the First World War, as he had always been told. He was killed by someone very close to him, and for unclear reasons. This discovery turns Paul’s world upside down and from that moment, Paul sacrifices everything to discover the truth behind his father’s death.

NO REST FOR THE DEAD by 26 writers — Alexander McCall Smith. Sandra Brown. Faye Kellerman. J.A. Jance. Jeffery Deaver. Kathy Reichs. Lisa Scottoline. Jeff Lindsay. R.L. Stine. Thomas Cook. T. Jefferson Parker. Michael Palmer. Matthew Pearl. Marcus Sakey. Jonathan Santlofer. These are only a handful of the names that make up the all-star lineup of this collaborative serial mystery surrounding the murder of Christopher Thomas, a ruthless curator at San Francisco’s McFall Art Museum, whose decaying body is found in an iron maiden in a Berlin museum.

THE PARADISE PROPHECY by Robert Browne — Agent Bernadette Callahan is a talented investigator at a shadowy government organization known only as Section, on the trail of a serial killer with nearly supernatural abilities. Sebastian “Batty” LaLaurie is a religious historian who knows far too much about the other side- and that hard-earned knowledge is exactly what Callahan needs. This unlikely duo pair up for a race across the globe, decoding clues left in ancient texts. In the process, they stumble upon a vast conspiracy — one beyond the scope of mankind’s darkest imagination.

THE SECRET OF CRICKLEY HALL by James Herbert — Would you stay in a haunted house for more than one night? Would you live in a place where ghostly things keep happening? Where a cellar door you know you locked the night before is always open the following morning? Where hushed whimpering is heard? Where white shadows steal through the darkness? Where the presence of evil is all around you? Would you?  Should you? The Caleighs did, but they had their reasons. They should have known better.

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She’s back each Tuesday, pimpin’ out notable new releases to place on your radar, so let the tempting, publisher-provided plot descriptions begin!

THE SWINGER by Michael Bamberger and Alan Shipnuck — The most famous athlete in the world has gotten himself into a bit of trouble. Maybe you heard? In this wild and deliciously mischievous novel, two veteran SPORTS ILLUSTRATED writers take us between the ropes and the sheets of the PGA Tour to chronicle the epic rise, astonishing collapse and uproarious comeback attempt of the greatest golfer of our time, Herbert X. “Tree” Tremont.

THE GUILTY PLEA by Robert Rotenberg — On the morning his high-profile divorce trial is set to begin, Terrance Wyler, the youngest son of Toronto’s Wyler Food dynasty, is found stabbed to death in the kitchen of his luxurious home. Detective Ari Greene arrives minutes before the press and finds Wyler’s 4-year-old son asleep upstairs. Hours later, when Wyler’s wife, Samantha, shows up at her lawyer’s office with a bloody knife wrapped in a towel, the case looks like a straightforward guilty plea. Instead, an open-and-shut case becomes a complex murder trial, full of spite and uncertainty.

DEAD IRON: THE AGE OF STEAM by Devon Monk — In steam-age America, men, monsters, machines and magic battle for the same scrap of earth and sky. In this chaos, bounty hunter Cedar Hunt rides, cursed by lycanthropy and carrying the guilt of his brother’s death. Then he’s offered hope that his brother may yet survive. All he has to do is find the Holder: a powerful device created by mad devisers, and now in the hands of an ancient Strange who was banished to walk this Earth. In a land shaped by magic, steam and iron, where the only things a man can count on are his guns, gears and grit, Cedar will have to depend on all three.

GRAVE DANCE by Kalayna Price — After a month of down time, Grave Witch Alex Craft is ready to get back to solving murders by raising the dead. With her love life in turmoil, Alex is eager for the distractions of work. But when her new case forces her to overuse her magic, it might be the last mystery the Grave Witch ever gets to solve …

CONAN THE BARBARIAN by Michael Stackpole — Born in the fires of battle, Conan of Cimmeria lost his father and village when they were slaughtered by the cruel warlord Khalra Zym. Wandering the world alone, Conan was forged into a peerless warrior by hardship and bloodshed. Years later, he crosses paths with Zym and his armies. But before Conan can exact vengeance, he must contend with the warlord’s daughter — the seductive witch, Marique — and a host of monstrous creatures. Only then will Conan’s quest bring him face to gave with Zym in an epic battle to avenge his people and save the world.

CITADELS OF THE LOST by Tracy Hickman — The fates of Drakis, former slave warrior of the elven empire of Rhonas, and Soen, former Inquisitor of the Iblisi, are inexorably tied to the magic of Aether, lifeblood of the elven empire and the cause of humanity’s fall. As each searches for the truth beyond legends, he must face his own destiny: Drakis amid the ruins of humanity’s Lost Citadels; Soen in a desperate race to seize control of the farthest Aether Well of the empire …

BETRAYAL OF TRUST by J.A. Jance — At first glance, the video appears to be showing a childish game: a teenage girl with dark wavy hair smiles for the camera, a blue scarf tied around her neck. All of a sudden things turn murderous, and the girl ends up dead. It’s as bad as a snuff film can get, and what’s worse, the clip has been discovered on a phone that belongs to the grandson of Washington State’s governor. However, the boy, who has a troubled background, swears that he’s never seen the victim before.

VINTAGE CONNOR: THE BLONDE IN THE LOTUS ELITE by Robert Baty — When Connor wore a badge, he drove a Crown Vic down Oakland’s meanest streets. Now he pilots a vintage Alfa Romeo and finds rare classic cars. Inevitably, he also finds trouble. The trouble starts when Evie, an old flame, wants Connor to learn the truth about her daughter, who was found dead in a motel during Monterey’s annual classic car weekend. The inquest said it was suicide. But Evie thinks it was murder. As his investigation proceeds, he finds himself caught between deception and desire, and knows that both are true.

CREEP by Jennifer Hillier — Ethan has plans for Sheila, plans that involve posting a sex video that would surely get her fired and destroy her career. Plans to make her pay for rejecting him. And as she attempts to counter his every threatening move without her colleagues or her fiancé discovering her most intimate secrets, a shattering crime rocks Puget Sound State University: a female student, a star athlete, is found stabbed to death. Someone is raising the stakes of violence, sex, and blackmail, and before she knows it, Sheila is caught in a terrifying cat-and-mouse game with the lover she couldn’t resist … who is now the monster who won’t let her go.

THE YEAR’S BEST SCIENCE FICTION: TWENTY-EIGHTH ANNUAL COLLECTION edited by Gardner Dozois — This venerable collection brings together award-winning authors and masters of the field such as Robert Reed, Alastair Reynolds, Damien Broderick, Carrie Vaughn, Ian R. MacLeod and Cory Doctorow. And with an extensive recommended reading guide and a summation of the year in science fiction, this annual compilation has become the definitive must-read anthology for all science-fiction fans and readers interested in breaking into the genre.

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She’s back each Tuesday, pimpin’ out notable new releases to place on your radar, so let the tempting plot descriptions begin!

THE 34TH DEGREE by Thomas Greanias — 1943: The supernatural alchemy for the ultimate weapon, encoded in an ancient biblical text, has fallen into the hands of the most ruthless secret society known to man: the Nazi SS. Present Day: Dishonorably discharged from the armed forces, Sam Deker is trying to build a new life in Los Angeles. But nightmares of the past continue to haunt his present, and Deker discovers that the unusual lightwave-induced torture he barely survived has changed him. The Pentagon, however, believes that change makes him the only one who can endure their top-secret neuro-simulation program known as the 34th Degree.

BIRTH OF THE KINGDOM by Jan Guillou — Exiled from his home and the woman he loves, Arn de Gotha became one of the fiercest and most feared warriors of the Knights Templar. But now that Jerusalem has been lost to the man who saved him — his longtime enemy and trusted friend, Saladin — the weary nobleman, ravaged by wounds and illness, can finally return to his beloved Sweden. During his 20 years of exile, warring clans have torn Arn’s homeland apart. Determined to reunite it, he sets off with a band of skilled craftsmen and doctors from the Holy Land whose talents and knowledge are unknown to the northern world.

THE COLLECTIVE by Jack Rogan — In a quiet community outside Fort Myers, Fla., a home invasion and murder draw a crowd of feds. No one is aware that this killing is part of a vast, chilling conspiracy. After all, the victims were just an ordinary family. Former FBI agents Josh Hart and Rachael Voss spearhead the investigation, following a trail of seemingly accidental deaths. Then, in a tranquil Boston suburb, someone comes after the 7-month-old daughter of Gulf War vet Caitlin McCandless. Cait has combat training and knowledge of a shocking secret — and she’ll need both to save her daughter’s life.

THE GENESIS KEY by James Barney — More than three decades ago, Dr. Kathleen Sainsbury’s archaeologist parents were murdered at an ancient excavation site in Iraq. Now the gifted biologist stands on the brink of a miraculous breakthrough: the discovery of a gene that could extend a human life by hundreds of years. But at the moment of her greatest triumph, a mysterious phone call reveals a hidden truth that draws chaos and violence once again into Kathleen’s world … and threatens to irreversibly alter the destiny of humankind.

MEN, WOMEN & CHILDREN by Chad Kultgen — Kultgen explores the sexual pressures at work on a handful of troubled, conflicted junior-high students and their equally dysfunctional parents. From porn-surfing fathers to WORLD OF WARCRAFT-obsessed sons, from competitive cheerleaders to their dissatisfied, misguided mothers, Kultgen clicks open the emotionally treacherous culture in which we live.

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She’s back each Tuesday, pimpin’ out notable new releases to place on your radar, so let the tempting plot descriptions begin!

AMONG THE MISSING by Morag Joss — When a bridge collapses in the Highlands of Scotland, dozens of commuters vanish into the freezing river below, and only an amateur video and the bridge’s security camera record their last moments. A woman tourist, whose car was filmed pulling onto the bridge seconds before it fell, is assumed to be among the missing. But she had sold the car only hours before. Now she can begin life over. Her path leads her to a spartan cabin on the bank of the river where, as Annabel, she is reborn, free from her past, clinging to hope against overwhelming evidence.

WATCH ME DIE by Erica Spindler — Before Hurricane Katrina struck, stained-glass restoration artist Mira Gallier had it all: a thriving business and an idyllic marriage. But the devastating storm stole her beloved husband — his body swept away by floodwaters, never to be found. Now, after years of pain and turmoil, it looks as if Mira is finally on the verge of peace and emotional stability. But her life, like the magnificent windows blown to bits by Hurricane Katrina, is about to be shattered once again. And this time, it’s not a killer storm she faces, but a psychopath who will stop at nothing until he possesses her, body and soul.

THE PLAIN MAN by Steve Englehart — Max August is not invulnerable, but he never ages — a gift he earned while studying under the legendary alchemist Cornelius Agrippa. August, now an alchemist himself, is using his magickal abilities to fight the right-wing conspiracy known as the FRC, which seeks to control all aspects of society. At the top of the FRC is a nine-member cabal, each member of which is a powerful force in one area of society, such as media, politics, finance … and wizardry.

REVENGER by Rory Clements — Shakespeare is summoned by Elizabeth’s cold but deadly Privy Councillor Sir Robert Cecil and ordered to undertake two linked missions: to investigate the mystery of the doomed Roanoke colony in North America — Sir Walter Ralegh’s folly — and to spy on Cecil’s rival, the dashing Earl of Essex. When Shakespeare enters Essex’s dissolute world, he discovers not only that the Queen herself is in danger, but that he and his family are also targets.

THE CLOCKWORK ROCKET by Greg Egan — In Yalda’s universe, light has no universal speed and its creation generates energy. On Yalda’s world, plants make food by emitting their own light into the dark night sky. As a child, Yalda witnesses one of a series of strange meteors, the Hurtlers, that are entering the planetary system at an immense, unprecedented speed. It becomes apparent that her world is in imminent danger — and the task of dealing with the Hurtlers will require knowledge and technology far beyond anything her civilization has yet achieved!

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She’s back each Tuesday, pimpin’ out notable new releases to place on your radar, so let the tempting plot descriptions begin!

THE GLASS DEMON by Helen Grant — Teenager Lin Fox is a stranger in a strange land: Germany, where her father has come on a quixotic quest to locate a priceless artifact. The medieval (and possibly mythical) Allerheiligen stained glass is believed by some to be lost, by others to have been destroyed, and by virtually all to be haunted. A mysterious letter persuades Dr. Oliver Fox that he can be the one to find it, but someone else is determined to ensure that the glass stays hidden forever. As her life comes to resemble the grimmest of fairy tales, Lin realizes that what she must find is not only the truth about the legendary glass but a way to save the lives of those she loves.

THE PROFESSION by Steven Pressfield — Force Insertion is the world’s merc monopoly. Its leader is the disgraced former U.S. Marine General James Salter, stripped of his command by the president for nuclear saber-rattling with the Chinese and banished to the Far East. A grandmaster military and political strategist, Salter deftly seizes huge oil and gas fields, ultimately making himself the most powerful man in the world. His endgame is to take vengeance on those responsible for his exile and then come home … as Commander in Chief. The only man who can stop him is Gilbert Gentilhomme, his most loyal foot soldier.

HUSH by Nancy Bush — In the summer before their senior year, around a campfire on a foggy June night, Coby, Yvette and friends share their darkest secrets, before a tragic accident shatters the bond between them. Twelve years later, Coby attends a reunion that ends in horror when Yvette’s sister’s lifeless body is discovered in a hot tub. Soon, others in the original group of tale-tellers begin meeting similar fates — unfortunate “accidents” shrinking their numbers one by one. Coby races to unravel the mystery, but someone is watching her every move — someone prepared to kill again and again to protect the shocking truth.

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She’s back each Tuesday, pimpin’ out notable new releases to place on your radar, so let the tempting plot descriptions begin!

THE TRANSFORMATION OF BARTHOLOMEW FORTUNO by Ellen Bryson — Bartholomew Fortuno, the World’s Thinnest Man, believes that his unusual body is a gift. Hired by none other than P.T. Barnum to work at his spectacular American Museum — a modern marvel of macabre displays and live performances by Barnum’s cast of freaks and oddities — Fortuno has reached the pinnacle of his career. But after a decade of solid performance, he finds his contentment flagging. When a carriage pulls up outside the Museum in the dead of night, bearing Barnum and a mysterious veiled woman — rumored to be a new performer — Fortuno’s curiosity is piqued.

FOR HEAVEN’S EYES ONLY by Simon R. Green — After the murder of the Drood Matriarch, the family finds itself vulnerable to evil. This time, it’s a Satanic Conspiracy that could throw humanity directly into the clutches of the Biggest of the Bads. This is fifth Eddie Drood novel in the series.

TERMINAL WORLD by Alastair Reynolds — Spearpoint, the last human city, is an atmosphere-piercing spire of vast size. Clinging to its skin are the zones, a series of semi-autonomous city-states, each of which enjoys a different and rigidly enforced level of technology. Following an infiltration mission that went tragically wrong, Quillon has been living incognito, working as a pathologist in the district morgue. But when a near-dead angel drops onto his dissecting table, Quillon’s world is wrenched apart one more time, for the angel is a winged posthuman from Spearpoint’s Celestial Levels, and with the dying body comes bad news.

HEX by Allen Steele — The danui, a reclusive arachnid species considered the galaxy’s finest engineers, have avoided contact with the Coyote Federation. Until, that is, the danui initiate trade negotiations, offering only information: the coordinates for an unoccupied world suitable for human life-a massive sphere, composed of billions of hexagons. But when the Federation’s recon mission goes terribly wrong, the humans realize how little they know about their new partners.

THE STRONGER SEX by Hans Werner Kettenbach — Young lawyer Alexander Zabel has been pressured by the head of his law practice into defending the indefensible: a lying, power obsessed adulterer and ruthless industrialist accused of wrongfully dismissing his assistant and mistress. She is 34; he, 78: a despot who has always had his way, now wheelchair-bound and dying of cancer. Alex must deal with a hopeless case, his growing sympathy for a repulsive client, and his sexual attraction to Klofft’s elderly wife.

UNNATURAL ISSUE by Mercedes Lackey — Richard Whitestone is an Elemental Earth Master. Blaming himself for the death of his beloved wife in childbirth, he has sworn never to set eyes on his daughter, Suzanne. But when he finally sees her, a dark plan takes shape in his twisted mind-to use his daughter’s body to bring back the spirit of his long-dead wife.

YEAR’S BEST SF 16 edited by David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer — The finest selections from a banner year for short-form science fiction, this compilation from acclaimed, award-winning editors and anthologists David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer contains brilliant visions, both dark and hopeful, of what might await humankind over tomorrow’s horizon. Contributors include Gregory Benford, Joe Haldeman, Kay Kenyon, Alastair Reynolds, Michael Swanwick, Vernor Vinge and others.

SKINNERS: THE BREAKING by Marcus Pelegrimas — Shapeshifters, vampires and all manner of monstrosities are raining hell down on a small Western town, which is why Skinner Paige Strobel is headed there with a band of Old World Skinners who have been battling monsters for centuries using antiquated, yet oddly effective weaponry. Meanwhile, Paige’s sometime-partner/sometime-lover Cole Warnecki is being held prisoner by persons — or things — unknown: framed, tortured, and beaten for the slaughter of cops at a vampire warehouse in Denver.

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Just in time for summer, Kent Crowley’s SURF BEAT: ROCK ‘N’ ROLL’S FORGOTTEN REVOLUTION is out from Backbeat Books. Here’s the prologue.

HUNTINGTON BEACH, CA, WINTER 1998: Wet-suited surfers, bouncing surfboards off their skulls, dart between speeding cars and splash across Pacific Coast Highway toward the beach, as angry clouds boiling overhead spatter the sidewalks of Surf City with the first winter bursts of El Niño.

In the doorway of the Huntington Beach International Surfing Museum, located a short walk from the crashing storm surf, the cream of the three waves of surf bands, such as The Nomads, The Nocturnes, and The Wedge, cluster in the doorway. They part like the Red Sea as musicians shoulder their way through the throng and dash toward waiting vans, sheltering from the rain priceless vintage Fender amplifiers and guitars built before much of their audience was born.

Huddling in the doorway and regaling one another with tales of ancient surfer venues, older surf-rats pass on the lore of this strange, powerful, nearly forgotten music to younger acolytes. Some 35 years after the summer of surf, another tide of interest in surf music — instrumental or, the surfers argue, “real” surf music — had risen into a third wave after it was reported that filmmaker Quentin Tarantino had envisioned the plot to PULP FICTION while listening to a tape of instrumental surf-music classics in an Amsterdam hashish den. In the wake of PULP FICTION’s massive success, Hollywood and independent filmmakers had scrambled to inject long-forgotten surf classics into a new spate of urban films, and a new generation of musicians had discovered the sound.

The practitioners of this lost art find this new enthusiasm for instro surf music bittersweet. Over the decades, the coastal faithful have preserved the style as a genuine indigenous folk music, much as Chicago embraces electric blues or New Orleans preserves Dixieland. The PULP FICTION-inspired interest in the form, they agree, served to vindicate their passion for, and belief in, surf music. Yet, they view this latest influx of interest in the same manner as they would regard a crowd of neophyte surfers invading their secret surfing spots: as much violation as validation.

However, today in the Surf Museum in Surf City, all are among friends: different generations burying ancient hatchets to share a day of celebration. Kids who discovered this strange new music in air-conditioned suburban cineplexes are treated to dusty tales of underage aspiring guitarists turned away from the door of the old Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa, who then hunkered beneath cracked windows to feel the walls pulse and throb to the thunder of Dick Dale, Eddie & The Showmen, The Tornadoes, The Lively Ones, and others, while waves rumbled against the Balboa Pier in the distance.

They hear of the time before Hendrix and heavy metal, when The Challengers raided a Fender display at a teen fair to introduce Chuck Berry to the joys of power and volume by plugging him into the surfers’ choice: the granddaddy of stack amplifiers, the Fender Showman. In the midst of one long, impromptu blasting jam, Berry’s visage of childlike joy and abandon suddenly convulsed into cold fear. “What song,” the terrified Berry shouted to Challengers guitarist Ed Fournier and drummer Richard Delvy, “are we playing?”

They speak in hushed whispers of the magical, mysterious circuit the great music pioneer Leo Fender personally designed for Dick “The Showman” Dale’s amplifier; and of how Leo died before he could commit his design to paper, carrying his secret to the grave.

Original Chantays and Nocturnes saxophonist Jim Frias reveals the surf equivalent of photos of blues legend Robert Johnson: action shots and setlists of one of the rarest of rare surf groups, The Nocturnes. It was The Nocturnes’ 1963 impressionistic space odyssey, “Third Star to the Left,” some embittered surf rats insist, that inspired Jimi Hendrix’s 1967 impressionistic space odyssey, “Third Stone from the Sun,” in which Hendrix intones “you’ll never hear surf music again.”

The phrase still stings after three decades, more for its perceived treason than its disrespect. Many credit Jimi’s days spent hanging out with Dick Dale at Dale’s Del-Tone record shop in Balboa, during a pre-Experience stay, with his introduction to the surfers’ concept of amplifier-as-instrument.

One young surfer who stumbled onto instro surf by accident tells of angrily confronting his baby boomer parents. “Why,” he demanded, wide-eyed, “didn’t you tell me about this music?”

The voices wither to a hush. Necks crane to witness the emergence of Himself: the King Of The Surf Guitar, Dick Dale. Originally scheduled to make an appearance like a head of state, in a vintage woody, Dale instead casually strolls down Olive Avenue accompanied by his son, proudly announcing from a half-block away that the prince, five-year-old Jimmy (named after Dale’s father and producer James Monsour) bagged his first waves earlier that morning. “That’s waves,” Dale beams, emphasizing the plural.

In an adjacent parking lot, the patron saint of surf’s second wave quietly pulls his car into the lot and begins unloading his equipment. One shocked guitarist rushes to the side of the car and demands he be allowed to assist. John Blair — a distinguished writer and historian, the Jon of Jon & The Nightriders, and the man who discovered and first delivered instrumental surf music as a classical experience — shrugs. “Sure,” he says, gratefully.

The weather is unforgiving, and the erstwhile roadie gasps as he and Blair grapple and then gently wheel through the parking lot the same classic Dual Showman amplifier, Fender Reverb Unit, and ’57 Stratocaster guitar that grace nearly all of Blair’s award-winning LPs: the canon of work that demanded the world finally recognize its first electronic music revolution, and California its first modern indigenous folk music.

Inside, The Nightriders — a virtual supergroup of modern surf — quickly arrange their arsenal, ready to mark Blair’s quarter-century of proselytizing surf music, as his brother Richard commands the sound console. Richard, too, respects this music’s heritage. He resists the impulse to correct with electronic wizardry the acoustic nightmare that the Huntington Beach Surfing Museum becomes as it quickly absorbs the crush of humanity. He demands the bands recreate the music as it is meant to be heard: buck-naked and sweat-glistening, with slashing guitars and throbbing basses roaring through massive amplifiers cranked to maximum volume. He offers the band two microphones to announce their selections and no more. Jon & The Nightriders nod in agreement. The air is their canvas; they don’t need no stinkin’ mics.

When Blair ascends the ramp, armed with his beloved Stratocaster, the crowd tramples to the lip of the makeshift stage. Guitarists elbow their way to the front. The heat rises, and the condensation offers a slight flavor of an old-time ‘battle of the bands’ in a high-school gym.

Hearing the guitarists inside snap preliminary chords, a decidedly and unrepentantly heterosexual male crowd outside abandons the vaunted Hooters girls to their booth in the parking lot to indulge in a full set of the original experience. The Hooters girls, too, weave their way into the crowd to worship at the altar.

Blair nods to The Nightriders. Bassist Pete Curry nods to rhythm guitarist Dave Wronski. Drummer Dusty Watson snaps off the count: one, two, three … BAM! Sonic tsunamis rise, crest, and smash into the crowd, drenching the listeners with the drip, pop, and sizzle of old tube reverbs and tremolos, spraying them with the machine-gun licks that inspired the first generation of lightboard surfers to claim this music as their own. The Nightriders churn the modest museum into wild rides at Maverick’s followed by bone-crunching wipeouts at the Wedge.

Dale, who had earlier held court in the parking lot to protect young Jimmy’s ears, ducks into the crowd through a back door and is swallowed by the throng as Blair pauses to dedicate Dale’s surf classic, “Shake ’N’ Stomp,” to his mentor.

Before the crowd sucks in another breath, Blair launches into an obscure nugget from his award-winning Fiberglass Rocket CD: “Hurricane,” a rare Conrad & The Hurricane Strings’ instrumental produced by a then-unknown Frank Zappa and his mentor Paul Buff. In the early ’60s, the transplanted Indonesian surf gods enraptured a teenage John Blair during sidewalk gigs at a music store near his home in Montclair, California, while their future producer Zappa watched on from his apartment across the street.

As The Nightriders blast from one selection to another, Blair makes it clear he is still more than rock’n’roll’s first classical guitarist. Guitar players huddle before the master, straining to divine his chord voicings and his picking and fingering techniques. He is the university of surf music and this is Modern Guitar 101. Each note, each beat inspires in the guitarists the same adoration as the flawless bikini-clad surfer girls of Brian Wilson’s fantasies.

Pausing one final time as the crowd laps up the last vestiges of unsullied air, the apostles of instro commit what would be heresy from any other surf band as Watson launches into the signature drum lick that The Beach Boys’ “Don’t Worry Baby” shares with Phil Spector’s “Be My Baby.” The Beach Boys are still a subject of controversy in the surfing community. This is the world of instro, where anthems are anathema and the music celebrates power, raw sexuality, and mystery. To many, The Beach Boys proffered the ‘Hollywood version’ of surf that encouraged a lemming-like invasion of dilettantes to beaches in the early 60s. Some feel it corrupted the sport forever, infesting the South and Orange coasts with what real surfers scorned as “rubes on tubes.”

Abandoning his Stratocaster, Blair rings in the celestial opening chords on his Rickenbacker 12-string. The band reclaims the two anthems from the carpeted studios of urban Hollywood to the shimmering beaches of California’s coast and the simmering southwestern deserts sprawling between the foothills of the Santa Ana, San Bernardino, Santa Monica, and San Gabriel mountain ranges, wastelands transformed by technology into a dubious Eden.

While a lesser surf band would now be smoothing tar to accommodate fresh layers of feathers, The Nightriders reveal a sacred music in these two teen anthems, with Blair and Wronski coaxing hosts of angels from the complex chord changes with their mastery of surf techniques. The interplay of the two guitars marries the melodies as surf mixes with jazz. Octaves, block chords, and streaming glissandos conjure up surreal aural images of Wes Montgomery in huarache sandals blasting a solid body through a stack. In the world of surf, this collision of old and new worlds unleashes new universes of beauty and, after 40-odd years, all is forgiven.

A final shimmering note withers in the air and The Nightriders abandon a crowd deliciously weak-kneed and spent from an afternoon of being engulfed by an idiom that was by all accounts a dead issue a third of a century earlier.

The murmur in the museum rises again as an invigorated Dick Dale snaps the switch on the amplifier that is the holy grail to modern electric guitarists. The audience watches as Dale clicks condemned picks into a plastic magazine affixed to the metal-flake gold Stratocaster whose image adorns the walls of a new generation of “aggro” guitarists — teenagers when they rediscovered The Godfather Of Heavy Metal via the opening scene of PULP FICTION. The gentle, beaming father, who helped his beloved son negotiate the waves only hours before, shows no quarter as his music transforms him into a merciless warlord. Blair’s unrelenting bombardment smashed all resistance; now it’s up to the king to reclaim his throne. Dale dons his metal-flake armor and snarls out the opening licks signaling the final assault, where he’ll abandon a stage littered with the debris of “melted” guitar picks.

As Dale’s patented machine-gun licks sputter though the din, spatter the walls, and roar into the street, old-timers, young converts, museum leaders, and historians gather under clearing skies outside. Bemoaning the fact that this music enjoys little cultural recognition except as an unexplained blip on popular music’s radar screen, they conspire a suitable recognition.

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In the acclaimed memoir WHERE’S MY WAND?: ONE BOY’S MAGICAL TRIUMPH OVER ALIENATION AND SHAG CARPETING (due in paperback June 7), media executive Eric Poole recalls his unusual upbringing in 1970s St. Louis. Here’s an excerpt about “the good china.”

A while back, a friend of mine told me that her mother’s aunt used to stand in front of the stove, cooking dinner, wearing a full-length mink coat and her best jewelry.

This is my kind of woman. Not just because she sounds slightly insane and obviously doesn’t care if somebody breaks a tooth on a diamond brooch in the meatloaf; but because this kind of behavior represents a “live for today” attitude that I pretty much suck at.

Don’t get me wrong, my furniture isn’t covered in clear plastic (yet). I don’t reuse toilet paper (yet). I do manage to have a little fun. But all too often in my life, I’ve “saved the good china.”

And then, I lost a work friend to diabetes. And another friend’s longtime partner to AIDS. And last week, my partner’s twin brother to liver disease. All of them in their 40s. All in the space of a few weeks.

And I began to think that life is waaay too short. So maybe I should just go crazy. Maybe I should take a trip around the world or try out for AMERICA’S GOT TALENT or blow all my money on a talking robot.

Of course, I can’t take months off of work to backpack the world. And it’s unclear exactly what talent I actually have. And I don’t really need one more person yelling at me on a daily basis.

Maybe I’m just too practical for my own good. I’ll probably end up in the spirit world going, “Damn, why didn’t I show up at Starbucks in my SpongeBob PJs? Why didn’t I hand out $100 bills at homeless shelters? Why didn’t I rent an Amish buggy to drive to a rave?

Which leads me to a question: What constitutes “living for today,” and what is just plain irresponsible?

Trying to balance having a life of No Regrets with the possibility that you might outlive both your money and your liver is not exactly easy. I’d kinda prefer not to hit my expiration date lying in some gulag nursing home staffed by Nurse Ratched and the guy from SAW.

So what’s the answer?

Maybe Controlled Crazy. Maybe I’ll travel as far around the world as I can get in two weeks. Maybe I’ll try out for a stand-up comedy class at the Improv. Maybe I’ll blow $100 on a talking pedometer.

Hey, baby steps.

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STAR WARS: FATE OF THE JEDI: CONVICTION by Aaron Allston — Chief of State Natasi Daala has been overthrown, and the Jedi Order has taken control of the Galactic Alliance. But while the new governors dismantle Daala’s draconian regime, forces still loyal to the deposed official are mobilizing a counterstrike. And even the Jedi’s new authority may not be enough to save Tahiri Veila, the former Jedi Knight and onetime Sith apprentice convicted of treason for the killing of Galactic Alliance officer Gilad Pellaeon. Meanwhile, Luke and Ben Skywalker are relentlessly pursuing Abeloth, the powerful dark-side entity bent on ruling the galaxy.

THE JEFFERSON KEY by Steve Berry — Four United States presidents have been assassinated — in 1865, 1881, 1901 and 1963 — each murder seemingly unrelated and separated by time. But what if those presidents were all killed for the same reason: a clause in the United States Constitution — contained within Article 1, Section 8 — that would shock Americans? This question is what faces former Justice Department operative Cotton Malone, when a bold assassination attempt is made against President Danny Daniels in the heart of Manhattan.

DEVIL’S PLAYTHING by Matt Richtel — We all keep secrets, but what if someone wasn’t just stealing our secrets but changing them … and our brains? Journalist Nat Idle is nearly gunned down in Golden Gate Park. He quickly learns it was no random attack. Suddenly, in pursuit of the truth, he’s running for his life through the shadows of Silicon Valley, a human lab animal caught in a deadly maze of neurotechnology and institutional paranoia. And his survival rests entirely in the hands of his 85-year-old grandmother, Lane, who’s suffering from dementia and can’t remember the secret at the heart of the world-changing conspiracy.

TIMECASTER by Joe Kimball — Chicago, 2064: Talon Avalon is a timecaster-one of a select few peace officers who can operate a TEV, the Tachyon Emission Visualizer, which records events (most specifically, crimes) that have already happened. With crime at an all-time low, Talon has little to do except give lectures to school kids and obsess on his wife’s profession as a licensed sex partner. Until one of her clients asks Talon to investigate a possible murder. When Talon uses the TEV to view the crime, the identity of the killer is unmistakable: It’s him, Talon Avalon.

DANCING WITH BEARS by Michael Swanwick — Notorious con men Darger and Surplus have lied and cheated their way onto the caravan that is delivering a priceless gift from the Caliph of Baghdad to the Duke of Muscovy. The only thing harder than the journey to Muscovy is their arrival in Muscovy. An audience with the Duke seems impossible to obtain, and Darger and Surplus quickly become entangled in a morass of deceit and revolution. The only thing more dangerous than the convoluted political web surrounding Darger and Surplus is the gift itself, the Pearls of Byzantium, and Zoesophia, the governess sworn to protect their virtue.

WICKED LIES by Lisa Jackson and Nancy Bush — For two years, Justice Turnbull has paced his room at Halo Valley Security Hospital, planning to escape. Justice has a mission — one that began with a vicious murder two decades ago. Laura Adderley didn’t plan to get pregnant by her soon-to-be ex-husband, though she’ll do anything to protect her baby. But now reporter Harrison Frost is asking questions about the mysterious group of women who live at Siren Song lodge. Harrison hasn’t figured out Laura’s connection to the story yet. But Justice knows. And he is coming.

Also coming within the week are mass-market-paperback reissues of four Karin Slaughter novels featuring medical examiner Dr. Sara Linton: KISSCUT, A FAINT COLD FEAR, INDELIBLE and BLINDSIGHTED.

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A TIME FOR PATRIOTS by Dale Brown — When murderous bands of militiamen begin roaming the western United States and attacking government agencies, it will take a dedicated group of the nation’s finest and toughest civilian airmen to put an end to the homegrown insurgency. U.S. Air Force Lieutenant-General Patrick McLanahan vows to take to the skies to join the fight, but when his son, Bradley, also signs up, they find themselves caught in a deadly game against a shadowy opponent.

THE FUND by H.T. Narea — U.S. defense intelligence operative Kate Molares is investigating a suspicious international money trail. Her instincts place her at the center of a plot involving a terrifying new kind of terrorism — financial terrorism — perpetrated by a suave, handsome Middle Eastern hedge fund mogul. His goal is to wreck the West by bringing the global economy to its knees. Kate’s mission takes her from the outskirts of Washington, D.C., to the site of a deadly Islamic conspiracy in the Iberian Peninsula.

PURGATORY CHASM by Steve Ulfelder — The job seems simple. Conway Sax, a no-nonsense auto mechanic with a knack for solving difficult problems, has never liked obnoxious blowhard Tander Phigg. But a promise is a promise. Tander’s a Barnburner, a member of the unique Alcoholics Anonymous group that rescued Conway, and when a Barnburner has a problem, Conway takes care of it. Besides, all Tander wants is to get back his baby, a vintage Mercedes that’s been in a shady auto shop far too long. But Conway soon discovers there’s much more to the problem than Tander first let on, especially when Tander turns up dead.

DUE DILIGENCE by Jonathan Rush — When CEO Mike Wilson needs to do a deal in a hurry, he turns to Wall Street investment bank Dyson Whitney. If they succeed in helping him buy transatlantic rival BritEnergy, there’ll be a $70 million fee. If they fail, there’s nothing. Rookie associate Rob Holding is thrown onto the team, doing due diligence at the investment bank. He quickly finds reason to suspect that there’s more to the urgency of this deal than Wilson has revealed. With their eyes on a huge fee, no one else wants to know if there are problems. But when a body turns up and Rob realizes it was meant to be him, he has no choice but to prove that he’s right … or die in the attempt.

CENTRAL PARK KNIGHT by C.J. Henderson — Professor Piers Knight is the Brooklyn Museum’s very own Indiana Jones. His specialties include lost civilizations, arcane cultures and more than a little bit of the history of magic and mysticism. Knight receives a chilling message from Tian Lu, a former lover and an agent for the Chinese government. Years ago, they made a frightening discovery at an archeological dig when out of the depths rose … a living, fire-breathing dragon. Now, the dragons are waking from their slumber before their scheduled time. And one particularly diabolical dragon is set on eliminating the others and taking over the world. 

THE CHAOS CRYSTAL by Jennifer Fallon — The magical Tide has turned and the Immortal Lords once again have their full power. The Immortal Lord Cayal welcomes this power as a means to an end — his end, preferably. Cayal has wanted to cease his existence for longer than human history and it looks like he might finally get his wish. Rumors swirl that the Chaos Crystal, the mysterious prism that brought the Immortals to the world, has been found. Cayal is determined to seize the gem.

TINY TERROR: WHY TRUMAN CAPOTE (ALMOST) WROTE ANSWERED PRAYERS by Todd Schultz — Drawing on an arsenal of psychological techniques, Schultz illuminates Capote’s early years in the South: no parents to speak of, no friends, no hope, no future. Out of this dark childhood emerged prominent dual life-scripts: neurotic Capote, anxious, vulnerable, hypersensitive, expecting to be hurt; and Capote the disagreeable destroyer, emotionally bulletproof, nasty and bent on revenge. Schultz shows how Capote would strike out when he felt hurt or taken for granted, engaging in caustic feuds with Gore Vidal, Tennessee Williams and many others.

THE HISTORY OF JAZZ: SECOND EDITION by Ted Gioia — THE HISTORY OF JAZZ has been hailed as a classic. Now Gioia brings his work completely up-to-date, revisiting virtually every aspect of the music, past and present. Here are the giants of jazz and the great moments of jazz history: Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington at the Cotton Club; cool jazz greats such as Gerry Mulligan, Stan Getz and Lester Young; Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie’s advocacy of modern jazz in the 1940s; Miles Davis’s 1955 performance at the Newport Jazz Festival; Ornette Coleman’s experiments with atonality; Pat Metheny’s visionary extension of jazz-rock fusion; the contemporary sounds of Wynton Marsalis; and the post-modernists of today.

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SHADOW RAIDERS by Margaret Weis and Robert Krammes — The known world floats upon the Breath of God, a thick gas similar to Earth’s oceans, with land masses accessible by airship. The largest of these land masses are ruled by the rival empires of Freya and Rosia. Magic is intrinsic to the functioning of these societies, and is even incorporated into their technological devices. But now a crucial scientific discovery has occurred that could destroy the balance of power … and change the empires forever.

WELL OF SORROWS by Benjamin Tate — Colin Harten and his parents fled across the ocean to escape the Family wars in Andover. But trouble follows them and their fellow refugees to this new land, forcing them to abandon the settled areas for unexplored territory. It is here that they face even more mysterious beings and dangers. Now Colin must use the powers of the Well of Sorrows to survive, and bring peace to this troubled land.

THE BURNING LAKE by Brent Ghelfi — Another prominent journalist is found murdered in Putin’s Russia, shot to death on the banks of the Techa River near the radioactive village of Metlino. Katarina Mironova, known around the world as Kato, could simply fade from the public eye, one more journalist killed during Putin’s war on the free press, one more statistic in a grim tally. But to Russian agent Alexei Volkovoy — aka Volk — Kato’s murder evokes far more emotion. It summons too many memories, haunts him in too many ways for him to allow her death go unavenged.

NIGHT ON FIRE by Douglas Corleone — Kevin Corvelli, a hotshot New York defense attorney who packed up his bags and hung his shingle in Hawaii, is deep in his mai tais at a resort when an argument erupts at the other end of the bar. It’s a pair of newlyweds, and since Corvelli doesn’t do divorces, he all but dismisses the argument. Until the fire breaks out later that night, and he barely escapes his hotel room. Most weren’t so lucky, including the new husband. His wife, Erin, becomes not only the police’s prime suspect for arson and murder but also Corvelli’s newest client. She has a lot working against her, like motive, opportunity and a history of starting fires.

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE BIKE: THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS ON TWO WHEELS by Robert Penn — Robert Penn has saddled up nearly every day of his adult life. In his late 20s, he pedaled 25,000 miles around the world. Today, he rides to get to work, sometimes for work, to bathe in air and sunshine, to travel, to go shopping, to stay sane, and to skip bath time with his kids. He’s no Sunday pedal pusher. So when the time came for a new bike, he decided to pull out all the stops. He would build his dream bike, the bike he would ride for the rest of his life: a customized machine that reflects the joy of cycling.

THE GENTLEMAN’S BEDSIDE COMPANION: A COMPENDIUM OF MANLY INFORMATION FOR THE LAST FIFTEEN MINUTES OF THE DAY by Tom Cutler — Have you ever found that once you are between the sheets, a book is too heavy, and magazines are too slippery? This is the answer: a bracing collection of information, humor and curiosities that will help every man make his mark on the world with panache. Spanning the arts, sciences, sports and the opposite sex, topics include: bananas as proof of God’s existence, useful foreign pickup lines, and an international swearing dictionary. Let the horizontal reading begin!

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THE MEDUSA AMULET by Robert Masello — What begins as a simple investigation quickly spirals into a twisting, turning tale of suspense and intrigue, a race against time that carries scholar David Franco across continents and centuries in a desperate search for the ultimate treasure — and an answer to a riddle that has puzzled mankind since the beginning of time. Aided only by a beautiful young Florentine with a conspirator’s mind and dark secrets, Franco is soon caught up in a life-and-death struggle from which there is no escape. Relentlessly pursued by deadly assassins and demons of his own, in the end he must confront an evil greater than anything conjured in his worst nightmares.

VAMPIRE MAKER by Michael Schiefelbein — Victor Decimus has been a vampire for over 2,000 years. Having left New York and his lover — the vampire he made then abandoned to escape the vengeance of the Dark Kingdom — Victor sets himself up again in New Orleans, where his thrall becomes the point of a new, larger conflict. On the one hand, a local priest seeks to break Victor’s hold over the thrall; on the other, the Dark Kingdom fears that Victor is going to become a Vampire Maker, one who continually creates new vampires, while refusing to take his place on the next plain of existence.

THE LOST FLEET: BEYOND THE FRONTIER: DREADNAUGHT by Jack Cambpell — The Alliance woke Captain John “Black Jack” Geary from cryogenic sleep to take command of the fleet in the century-long conflict against the Syndicate Worlds. Now Fleet Admiral Geary’s victory has earned him the adoration of the people-and the enmity of politicians convinced that a living hero can be a very inconvenient thing. Geary knows that members of the military high command and the government question his loyalty to the Alliance and fear his staging a coup, so he can’t help but wonder if the newly christened First Fleet is being deliberately sent to the far side of space on a suicide mission

THE UNINCORPORATED WAR by Dani Kollin and Eytan Kollin — Justin Cord created a revolution, and is now exiled from Earth to the outer planets, where he is a heroic figure. Corporate society, which is headquartered on Earth and rules Venus, Mars and the orbital colonies, wants to destroy Justin and reclaim hegemony over the outer planets. The first interplanetary war begins as the military fleet of Earth attacks. Justin remains both a logical and passionate fighter for the principles that motivate him, and the most dangerous man alive.

HOTEL NO TELL by Daphne Uviller — Now working as a junior detective with the New York City Special Investigations Commission, Zephyr’s gone incognito as a concierge to find out who laundered a hundred grand off the hotel books — and why. But the discovery of a prone, flush-faced guest gasping for air in room 502 only hints at the sinister goings-on inside this funky establishment. While the rapid response of the fire department leads to a sweaty date with a smooth-talking, rock-climbing rescue worker, Zephyr finds herself even more hot and bothered by an attempted murder on her watch. Could the smart-mouthed Japanese yenta across the hall know more than she’s telling? How are cryptic phone calls from a mysterious corporation linked to the victim in 502?

DEAD BY MORNING by Beverly Barton — He begins his work just before dawn, wielding a knife with the precision of a surgeon. Cunning and meticulous, he’s always in control. Mercy is not an option. Maleah Purdue is tough, outspoken, and completely dedicated to her work at the Powell Security Agency. But her fearless exterior shatters when a madman begins killing her colleagues one by one, mimicking a notorious serial killer already behind bars. Working alongside top profiler Derek Lawrence, Maleah will do anything to find the murderer, even if it means playing a psychopath’s twisted mind games.

ASCENSION by Sable Grace — Kyana is half Vampyre, half Lychen, and the last of her kind. Determined, dangerous and damned, she has no love for the mortals who have imprisoned and misused her. But when the Order of Ancients entrusts her with a mission — to find the key that will send the Dark Breed back into Hell for eternity — Kyana has no choice but to accept. She is furious to learn her assignment comes with an escort, Ryker, a demigod and fierce warrior who long ago found a way under her skin and stayed there. In a shaky alliance, they discover an ancient cult with dangerous motive and a god who seeks to destroy all others.

BORN OF SHADOWS by Sherrilyn Kenyon — For Caillen Dagan, a defiant soldier of fortune, survival isn’t a right, it’s a brutal daily battle. Moving through the Ichidaian universe like a wraith, his brushes with the law and death are legendary. But when an act of rare heroism reveals his hidden birthright, he’s forced into a world much more dangerous and cold-hearted than the bloody streets where he was raised-one of obscene wealth and lethal politics. Ferocious and determined, Desideria serves as an official bodyguard for her queen. But when she uncovers a ruthless plot to assassinate the queen and overthrow her country’s government, Desideria is caught in the crosshairs.

SUPERNATURAL: JOHN WINCHESTER’S JOURNAL by Alex Irvine — On Nov. 2, 1983, Sam and Dean Winchester lost their mother to a demonic supernatural force. In the wake of the tragedy, their father, John, set out to learn everything he could about the paranormal evil that lives in the dark corners and on the back roads of America … and how to kill it. In his personal journal, he not only compiled folklore, legend and superstition about all manner of otherworldly enemies but also recorded his experiences hunting the creature that killed his wife even as he raised his two sons: the exorcism, shapeshifters, a growing and deadly evil …

RANGER’S APPRENTICE: BOOK 10: THE EMPEROR OF NIHON-JA by John Flanagan — Months have passed since Horace departed for the eastern nation of Nihon-Ja on a vital mission. Having received no communication from him, his friends fear the worst. Unwilling to wait a second longer, Alyss, Evanlyn and Will leave their homeland behind and venture into an exotic land in search of their missing friend. When they finally catch up with him, they find Horace entangled in a military coup. Determined to protect the imperial throne, Will and his band of Araluens must piece together and train a force in order to fend off the master Senji warriors intent on overthrowing the emperor.

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A THOUSAND TIMES MORE FAIR: WHAT SHAKESPEARE’S PLAYS TEACH US ABOUT JUSTICE by Kenji Yoshino — Yoshino turns his attention to the broad question of what makes a fair and just society, and he delves deep into a surprising source to answer it: Shakespeare’s greatest plays. The book addresses fundamental questions we ask about our world today: Why is the rule of law better than revenge? How much mercy should we show a wrongdoer? What does it mean to “prove” guilt or innocence? As Yoshino argues, a searching examination of Shakespeare’s plays — and the many advocates, judges, criminals and vigilantes who populate them — can elucidate some of the most troubling issues in contemporary life.

KABOOM: EMBRACING THE SUCK IN A SAVAGE LITTLE WAR by Matt Gallagher — When Lt. Matt Gallagher began his blog with the aim of keeping his family and friends apprised of his experiences, he didn’t anticipate that it would resonate far beyond his intended audience. His subjects ranged from mission details to immortality, grim stories about Bon Jovi cassettes mistaken for IEDs, and the daily experiences of his platoon. When the blog was shut down in June 2008 by the U.S. Army, there were more than 25 congressional inquiries regarding the matter as well as reports through the military grapevine that many high-ranking officials and officers at the Pentagon were disappointed that the blog had been ordered closed.

I KNOW WHERE I’M GOING: KATHARINE HEPBURN, A PERSONAL BIOGRAPHY by Charlotte Chandler — Introduced by director George Cukor, the author socialized with Hepburn at the Cukor estate, where the star was then living in a cottage on the grounds. Hepburn allowed Chandler to tape their conversations, during which she spoke candidly about her personal and professional lives. She described finding the body of her adored older brother, an apparent suicide at 15, and assuming his birthday as her own. She told intimate details of her marriage and divorce from Ludlow Ogden Smith, who remained a friend, and of her affair with Howard Hughes. Her warmest recollections were of her 27-year affair with Spencer Tracy.

THE GATHERING by Kelley Armstrong — Strange things are happening in Maya’s tiny Vancouver Island town. First, her friend Serena, the captain of the swim team, drowns mysteriously in the middle of a calm lake. Then, one year later, mountain lions are spotted rather frequently around Maya’s home — and her reactions to them are somewhat … unexpected. Her best friend, Daniel, has also been experiencing unexplainable premonitions about certain people and situations. It doesn’t help that the new bad boy in town, Rafe, has a dangerous secret, and he’s interested in one special part of Maya’s anatomy: her paw-print birthmark.

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DEPARTMENT 19 by Will Hill — Jamie Carpenter’s life will never be the same. His father is dead, his mother is missing, and he was just rescued by an enormous man named Frankenstein. Jamie is brought to Department 19, where he is pulled into a secret organization responsible for policing the supernatural, founded more than a century ago by Abraham Van Helsing and the other survivors of Dracula. Aided by Frankenstein’s monster, a beautiful vampire girl with her own agenda, and the members of the agency, Jamie must attempt to save his mother from a terrifyingly powerful vampire.

RED GLOVE by Holly Black — Curses and cons. Magic and the mob. In Cassel Sharpe’s world, they go together. Cassel always thought he was an ordinary guy, until he realized his memories were being manipulated by his brothers. Now he knows the truth: He’s the most powerful curse worker around. A touch of his hand can transform anything — or anyone — into something else. That was how Lila, the girl he loved, became a white cat. Cassel was tricked into thinking he killed her, when actually he tried to save her. Now that she’s human again, he should be overjoyed. Trouble is, Lila’s been cursed to love him.

ALIEN IN THE FAMILY by Gini Koch — Super-Being Exterminator Kitty Katt and the Alpha Centaurian she loves, Jeff Martini, should be finalizing their wedding plans. But that was before she discovers Jeff is in line to become Emperor back on his home world. Kitty knows she is everything a royal family wouldn’t approve of, and is bracing herself for the worst. As it turns out, the royal family is just the beginning. Especially when extraterrestrial Amazonian terrorists are determined to start and end Kitty and Jeff’s nuptial festivities with a bang.

BETRAYER by C.J. Cherryh — The civil war among the alien atevi has ended. Tabini-aiji, powerful ruler of the Western Association, along with Cajeiri his son and heir, and his human paidhi, Bren Cameron, have returned to the Bujavid, their seat of power. But factions that remain loyal to the opposition are still present, and the danger these rebels pose is far from over.

THE SHINING CITY by Fiona Patton — With the three children of prophecy-the seers Spar and Graize, and the warrior Brax now grown, and the young God Hisar ready to stake his claim to a place in the pantheon of Anavatan, a time of chaos and change is fast approaching. For only if sworn enemies Spar and Graize can come together as Hisar’s priests will the God stand any chance of surviving the coming battles with both the hungry spirits seeking to devour him, and the war with the mortal invasion fleet, which is even now sailing for Anavatan.

AMONG THIEVES by Douglas Hulick — Drothe has been a member of the Kin for years, rubbing elbows with thieves and murderers in the employ of a crime lord while smuggling relics on the side. But when an ancient book falls into his hands, Drothe finds himself in possession of a relic capable of bringing down emperors-a relic everyone in the underworld would kill to obtain.

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MYSTERY by Jonathan Kellerman — The closing of their favorite romantic rendezvous, the Fauborg Hotel in Beverly Hills, is a sad occasion for longtime patrons Alex Delaware and Robin Castagna. Even more poignant is a striking young woman — alone and enigmatic among the Fauborg revelers — waiting in vain in elegant attire and dark glasses that do nothing to conceal her melancholy. Alex can’t help wondering what her story is, and whether she’s connected to the silent, black-suited bodyguard lingering outside the hotel. Two days later, Alex has even more to contemplate when the police seek his insights about a grisly homicide. To Alex’s shock, the brutalized victim is the same woman whose lonely hours sipping champagne may have been her last.

THE ROAD TO ROME by Ben Kane — In 48 B.C., having survived a disastrous campaign in Pythia as part of the Forgotten Legion and spent years fighting their way back to Rome, Romulus and Tarquinius have finally made it as far as Alexandria. On arrival, though, they find themselves in the midst of the Roman Civil War, are press-ganged into Caesar’s thinning legions and greatly outnumbered and fighting for their lives against the Egyptian army. Meanwhile in Rome, Romulus’ twin sister Fabiola, having caught only a glimpse of her long-missing twin before being forced to flee Egypt for Rome, lives in fear for her life, loved by Brutus, but wooed by Marcus Antonius, his deadly enemy.

THRESHOLD by Jeremy Robinson — After a terrorist attack on a reservation in Oregon leaves thousands dead, Jack Sigler, call sign King and his Chess Team — Queen, Rook, Bishop and Knight — must protect the only survivor, 13 year-old Fiona Lane. When a death in the family pulls King away, and the rest of the team is sent on a mission, Fort Bragg is attacked by a strange and overwhelming force. When the dust settles, Fiona is gone. But the attack is part of a larger offensive. Around the world the last speakers of ancient languages are being systematically exterminated. As they fight to find the mastermind behind the killings, and Fiona, the team is hunted by strange creatures that defy explanation sent by an enemy from their past.

CHILDREN OF SCARABAEUS by Sara Creasy — Edie Sha’nim believes she and her bodyguard lover, Finn, could find refuge from the tyranny of the Crib empire by fleeing to the Fringe worlds. But Edie’s extraordinary cypherteck ability to manipulate the ecology of evolving planets makes her far too valuable for the empire to lose. Recaptured and forced to cooperate — or else she will watch Finn die — Edie is shocked to discover the Crib’s new breed of cypherteck: children. She cannot stand by while the oppressors enslave the innocent, nor can she resist the lure of Scarabaeus, the first world she tried to save, when researchers discover what appears to be an evolving intelligence.

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She’s back each Tuesday, pimpin’ out notable new releases to place on your radar, so let the tempting plot descriptions begin!

STAR WARS: THE OLD REPUBLIC: DECEIVED by Paul S. Kemp — Malgus brought down the Jedi Temple on Coruscant in a brutal assault that shocked the galaxy. But if war crowned him the darkest of Sith heroes, peace would transform him into something far more heinous — something Malgus would never want to be, but cannot stop, any more than he can stop the rogue Jedi fast approaching. Her name is Aryn Leneer, and the lone Knight that Malgus cut down in the fierce battle for the Jedi Temple was her Master. And now she’s going to find out what happened to him, even if it means breaking every rule in the book.

COME AND FIND ME by Hallie Ephron — Computer security expert and reformed hacker Diana Highsmith has not ventured beyond her home for more than a year — not since that fateful climbing vacation in Switzerland took Daniel’s life. Haunted by the sound of Daniel’s cries echoing across the gorge as he fell, Diana cannot stop thinking about the life they’ll never have — grief that has transformed her into a recluse. Diana doesn’t have to shut herself off com­pletely from the world, though; she and Daniel’s best friend run a thriving Internet security company. From her home, in her pajamas, Diana assesses security breaches, both potential and real, and offers clients a way to protect themselves from hackers — the kind of disruptions Diana herself used to create.

RUNESCAPE: RETURN TO CANIFIS by T.S. Church — Varrock is the greatest human city in the world, yet it is filled with dangerous secrets. People are being taken by an inhuman abductor. Its victims are murdered … or worse, spirited away to Morytania, where vampires rule. As unrest against the crown grows, the King chooses to send the now-famous Kara-Meir and her friends across the holy river into Morytania, the land of the dead. 

BREAKING THE RULES by Suzanne Brockman — Izzy Zanella wasn’t looking for another reason to butt heads with his Navy SEAL teammate and nemesis, Danny Gillman. But then he met Danny’s beautiful younger sister, Eden. When she needed it most, he offered her a place to stay, a shoulder to cry on — and more. And when she got pregnant with another man’s child, he offered her marriage. But Eden’s devastating miscarriage shattered their life together — and made the intense bad blood between Izzy and Danny even worse. Now Eden’s back, and she’s on a mission to rescue her teen brother, Ben, from their abusive stepfather. Even if she and Izzy can prove that their broken marriage is still in one piece, winning legal custody of Ben is a long shot. But they’re not alone: Danny and his girlfriend offer to help, and he and Izzy agree to bury the past and fight for Ben’s future.

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What book does the legendary Lynda Barry call ““the best book ever written … the best book I’ve ever read on cartooning”? Ivan Brunetti’s CARTOONING: PHILOSOPHY AND PRACTICE, which Yale University Press will publish on March 29. Until then, here’s the trailer:

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She’s back each Tuesday, pimpin’ out notable new releases to place on your radar, so let the tempting plot descriptions begin!

HELLHOLE by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson — Only the most desperate colonists dare to make a new home on Hellhole. Reeling from a recent asteroid impact, tortured with horrific storms, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, and churning volcanic eruptions, the planet is a dumping ground for undesirables, misfits, and charlatans … but also a haven for dreamers and independent pioneers. Against all odds, an exiled general named Adolphus has turned Hellhole into a place of real opportunity for the desperate colonists who call the planet their home, forming a clandestine coalition against the tyrannical, fossilized government.

THE GERMAN by Lee Thomas — A killer preys on the young men of Barnard, Texas, leaving cryptic notes written in German. As the panic builds all eyes turn toward a quiet man with secrets of his own, who is trying to escape a violent past. Ernst Lang fled Germany in 1934. Once a leader of the Nazi party, he has renounced aggression and embraces a peaceful obscurity. But Lang is haunted by an impossible past. He remembers his own execution and the extremes of sex and violence that led to it. He remembers the men he led into battle, the men he seduced, and the men who betrayed him. But are these the memories of a man given a second life, or the delusions of a lunatic?

SILENT MERCY by Linda Fairstein — Prosecutor Alexandra Cooper is called to Harlem’s Mount Neboh Baptist Church, a beautiful house of worship originally built as a synagogue. But the crowd gathered there isn’t interested in architecture, or even prayer. They’ve come for the same reason Alex has: to find out why the body of a young woman has been decapitated, set on fire, and left burning on the church steps. The only identifiable artifact on the charred remains is the imprint of a Star of David necklace seared into the victim’s flesh. Alex wonders if the fire was meant to destroy this woman’s body, or to draw attention to it.

SO MUCH PRETTY by Cara Hoffman — Wendy White has strong roots in Haeden, a late-blooming young woman, mindful of family and home. Her story has a beginning and an end, but is missing the most important piece the middle. What happened to Wendy White? Stacey Flynn is a reporter, both a seeker and a teller of stories. It is gritty, relentless and ultimately reckless Flynn who will chronicle Wendy White’s existence from all the fragments she can find, and forge a path toward the end.

THE RISE OF THE IRON MOON by Stephen Hunt — Born into captivity as a product of the Royal Breeding House, friendless orphan Purity Drake suddenly finds herself on the run with a foreign vagrant after accidentally killing one of her guards. Her strange rescuer claims he is on the run himself from terrible forces who mean to enslave the Kingdom of Jackals as they conquered his own nation. Purity doubts his story, until reports begin to filter through from Jackals’ neighbours of the terrible Army of Shadows, marching across the continent and sweeping all before them. But there’s more to Purity than meets the eye.

THE SILVER EAGLE by Ben Kane — In the 1st century B.C., trapped in Parthia by Crassus’ failed invasion, the legionaries that survived are captured and marched to the edge of the known world. Abandoned by Rome, these men are the Forgotten Legion. Among them are three friends, Brennus the Gaul, Tarquinun the Etruscan soothsayer and Romulus, a runaway slave and the bastard son of a Roman nobleman. All men with troubled pasts and united in their hatred of Rome, they never stop dreaming of Freedom. Together they must face the savage tribes that surround them as well as the more treacherous enemies within the ranks of the legion itself.

LADY-PROTECTOR by L.E. Modesitt Jr. — Though a bloody coup has made Mykella ruler of her land, it has left her and her two sisters bereft of family and uncertain of their friends. Worse, an examination of the nation’s accounts reveals that their country is almost destitute. Plus, there are rumblings of war along the borders. With no money and few allies, Mykella is faced with the difficult prospect of rebuilding her nation while trying to hold off a potentially devastating invasion.

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She’s back each Tuesday, pimpin’ out notable new releases to place on your radar, so let the tempting plot descriptions begin!

THE BONE YARD by Jefferson Bass — The onset of summer brings predictably steamy weather to the Body Farm, Dr. Bill Brockton’s human-decomposition research facility at the University of Tennessee. But Brockton’s about to get more heat than he’s bargained for when Angie St. Claire, a forensic analyst with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, asks him to help prove that her sister’s death was not suicide, but murder. Bones begin turning up amid the pines and live oaks of the Florida panhandle, including two adolescent skulls — ravaged by time and animals, but bearing the telltale signs of lethal fractures — that send Brockton, Angie and Special Agent Stu Vickery on a search for the long-lost victims.

LOVE YOU MORE by Lisa Gardner — One question, a split-second decision, and Brian Darby lies dead on the kitchen floor. His wife, state police trooper Tessa Leoni, claims to have shot him in self-defense, and bears the bruises to back up her tale. For veteran detective D.D. Warren it should be an open-and-shut case. But where is their 6-year-old daughter? As the homicide investigation ratchets into a frantic statewide search for a missing child, Warren must break through the blue wall of police brotherhood, seeking to understand the inner workings of a trooper’s mind while also unearthing family secrets. Would a trained police officer truly shoot her own husband? And would a mother harm her own child?

THE INFORMATIONIST by Taylor Stevens — Vanessa “Michael” Munroe deals in information, working for corporations, heads of state, private clients and anyone else who can pay for her unique brand of expertise. A Texas oil billionaire has hired her to find his daughter who vanished in Africa four years ago. It’s not her usual line of work, but she can’t resist the challenge. Pulled deep into the mystery of the missing girl, Munroe finds herself back in the lands of her childhood, betrayed, cut off from civilization, and left for dead. If she has any hope of escaping the jungle and the demons that drive her, she must come face-to-face with the past that she’s tried for so long to forget.

IMMORTAL WITH A KISS by Jacqueline Lepore — Born by blood to be a vampire hunter, Emma Andrews nearly lost her life and everyone she loves at Dulwich Manor. Now something evil is preying on students at a northern Lake District girls’ school, where Emma’s mother attended years ago. Drawn as much by the desire to learn more about her family’s secrets as the possibility of vampires, Emma finds the schoolgirls in the grip of a terrible legacy — the ageless evil of the Cyprian Queen, a dark goddess of ancient legend. Now Emma must tread a careful path, deeper into the darkness to face her most paralyzing fears … and perhaps come one step closer to the Dracula himself.

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She’s back each Tuesday, pimpin’ out notable new releases to place on your radar, so let the tempting plot descriptions begin!

SHADOW PASS by Sam Eastland — He operates in the shadows of one of history’s most notorious regimes. He seeks the truth in a nation where finding it can mean death — or worse. His name his Inspector Pekkala, and this time he’s taking on a case with implications far deadlier than anything he can imagine: a shattering revelation that was never meant to be unearthed. Its official name is T-34, and this massive and mysterious new weapon is being developed in total secrecy in the Russian countryside, a 30-ton killing machine. Its inventor, Col. Rolan Nagorski, is a rogue genius whose macabre death is considered an accident only by the innocent. And Josef Stalin is no innocent.

THE NIGHT SEASON by Chelsea Cain — With the Beauty Killer Gretchen Lowell locked away behind bars once again, Archie Sheridan — a Portland police detective and nearly one of her victims — can finally rest a little easier. Meanwhile, the rest of the city of Portland is in crisis. Heavy rains have flooded the Willamette River, and several people have drowned in the quickly rising waters. Or at least that’s what they thought until the medical examiner discovers that the latest victim didn’t drown: She was poisoned before she went into the water. Soon after, three of those drownings are also proven to be murders. Portland has a new serial killer on its hands, and Archie and his task force have a new case.

PALE DEMON by Kim Harrison — Condemned and shunned for black magic, Rachel Morgan has three days to get to the annual witches’ conference and clear her name, or be trapped in the demonic ever-after … forever after. But a witch, an elf, a living vampire and a pixy in one car going across the country? Talk about a recipe for certain disaster, even without being the targets for assassination. For after centuries of torment, a fearsome demon walks in the sunlight — freed at last to slay the innocent and devour their souls. But his ultimate goal is Rachel, and in the fight for survival that follows, even embracing her own demonic nature may not be enough to save her.

CENTER OF GRAVITY: STAR CARRIER — BOOK TWO by Ian Douglas — On the far side of known human space, the Marines are under siege, battling the relentless servant races of the Sh’daar aggressor. With a task force stripped to the bone and the Terran Confederation of States racked by dissent, rogue Admiral Alexander Koenig must make the momentous decision that will seal his fate and the fate of humankind. A strong defensive posture is futile, so Koenig will seize the initiative and turn the gargantuan Star Carrier America toward the unknown. For the element of surprise is the only hope of stalling the Sh’daar assault on Earth’s solar system — and the war for humankind’s survival must be taken directly to the enemy.

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She’s back each Tuesday, pimpin’ out notable new releases to place on your radar, so let the tempting plot descriptions begin!

A HEARTBEAT AWAY by Michael Palmer — On the night of the State of the Union address, President James Allaire expects to give the speech of his career. But no one anticipates the terrifying turn of events that forces him to quarantine everyone in the Capitol building. A terrorist group calling itself “Genesis” has unleashed WRX3883, a deadly, highly contagious virus, into the building. No one fully knows the deadly effect of the germ except for the team responsible for its development — a team headed by Allaire, himself. The only one who might be able to help is virologist Griffin Rhodes, currently in solitary confinement in a maximum security federal prison for alleged terrorist acts, including the attempted theft of WRX3883 from the lab where he worked.

CODENAME PRAGUE by D. Harlan Wilson — Since he assassinated the Nowhere Man, Vincent Prague hasn’t been the same. His celebrity status has skyrocketed and everybody wants a piece of him. The Ministry of Applied Pressure promotes him to Anvil-in-Chief, the catbird’s seat of special agents, and he works a case that leads him to the Former Czech Republik’s Prague, a dark cirque du city where androids run wild, femme fatales chronically manhandle him, and a mad chef named Doktor Teufelsdröckh has created a Hitler/Keats/Daikaiju hybrid that would make Frankenstein’s monster sing like a Von Trapp. In an overtechnologized world of constant reckoning, all Vincent has are his wits, his weapons and a briefcase full of replaceable extremities.

THE DESERT OF SOULS by Howard Andrew Jones — In 8th-century Baghdad, a stranger pleads with the vizier to safeguard the bejeweled tablet he carries, but he is murdered before he can explain. Charged with solving the puzzle, the scholar Dabir soon realizes that the tablet may unlock secrets hidden within the lost city of Ubar, the Atlantis of the sands. When the tablet is stolen from his care, Dabir and Captain Asim are sent after it, and into a life and death chase through the ancient Middle East. Stopping the thieves — a cunning Greek spy and a fire wizard of the Magi — requires a desperate journey into the desert, but first Dabir and Asim must find the lost ruins of Ubar and contend with a mythic, sorcerous being that has traded wisdom for the souls of men since the dawn of time. 

ON BORROWED TIME by David Rosenfelt — Richard Kilmer is head over heels in love with Jennifer Ryan, who takes him home to meet her parents, where she accepts his marriage proposal. While visiting, they set out on a nostalgic drive up to Kendrick Falls. On their way there, a freak storm rolls in, Richard loses control of his car, and it rolls. When the storm clears in a matter of seconds, Jen is gone. Richard can’t find her, and neither can the police who respond to the scene. More horrifying is that no one in Richard’s life will even confirm Jen’s existence, and all traces of her have disappeared. Where could she be? Has Richard lost his mind, or has something far worse happened?

THE RAVEN’S BRIDE by Lenore Hart — When 8-year-old Virginia “Sissy” Clemm meets her handsome cousin, Edgar Allan Poe, he’s 13 years her elder, but kind, soft-spoken, brooding and handsome. Eddy floats in and out of her life, but each time he returns to Baltimore, their odd friendship grows, and her understanding of the moody, troubled writer deepens. As Sissy prepares for a career on the musical stage, her childhood crush turns to love. When she is 13, Eddy proposes marriage. Yet even child brides eventually grow up, and it’s really Eddy who needs caring for, who leans on her. She gains his complete devotion, yet also must endure his abrupt disappearances, strange moods and the aftermath of alcoholic binges. Then, when she falls ill, Poe’s greatest fear drives him to near-madness.

SECRETS AND SHADOWS by Shannon Delany — Nothing’s simple when you run with werewolves. Jess Gillmansen thinks she’s seen it all but her eyes are about to be opened to even more danger and a reality far more paranormal than she’s suspected. With Jess’s realization that the Rusakovas’ mother is still alive and imprisoned, the group’s choices become harder and trust more important. Lines are drawn and relationships change as the broken Rusakova family struggles to reunite long enough to free their mother and people who Jess always just took to be normal people show themselves to be much, much more.

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After writing many a DUNE novel together, Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson have collaborated on another book, but this one being set in a world of their own creation: HELLHOLE. Due March 15, the start of a new trilogy promises to be an “epic, panoramic story on a galactic scale packed with nonstop adventure, fascinating characters, and wondrous concepts.” Here’s your first look:

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She’s back each Tuesday, pimpin’ out notable new releases to place on your radar, so let the tempting plot descriptions begin!

HERESY by S.J. Parris — When fugitive Italian monk Giordano Bruno — philosopher, magician and heretical scientist — arrives in London, he’s only one step ahead of the Inquisition. An undercover mission for Queen Elizabeth I and her spymaster provides added protection. Officially, Bruno is to take part in a debate on the Copernican theory of the universe at Oxford University; unofficially, he is to find out whatever he can about a Catholic plot to overthrow the queen. But when his mission is dramatically thrown off course by a series of grisly deaths and the charms of a mysterious but beautiful young woman, he realizes that somewhere within Oxford’s private chambers lurks a brutal killer.

ANGEL OF VENGEANCE by Trevor O. Munson — The novel that inspired the TV series MOONLIGHT puts a twist on the classic Dracula vampire tale and blends it with Chandler-hardboiled P.I. detective fiction. L.A.-based P.I. and vampire Mick Angel has been hired by a beautiful redheaded burlesque dancer to find her missing sister. But the apparently simple case of a teenage runaway is soon complicated by drug dealers, persistent cops, murder and Mick’s own past. Mick must learn the hard way what every vampire should know: Nothing stays buried forever, especially not the past.

FADEAWAY GIRL by Martha Grimes — Twelve-year-old Emma Graham continues her investigation into the strange disappearance of the 4-month-old Slade baby from the Belle Ruin Hotel more than 20 years before. The sudden appearance in town of the baby’s father, Morris Slade, makes her even more determined to learn the truth. Then a mysterious drifter named Ralph Diggs appears at the Hotel Paradise, looking for work, ingratiating himself with everyone there. Everyone, that is, except Emma.

OTHER EYES by Barbara D’Amato — Blue Eriksen is a famous forensic archaeologist based at Northwestern University. She and her team are traveling the globe, testing mummies to research the use of hallucinogens in the development of ancient religions. Armed with evidence from ancient peoples, Blue has become convinced that psilocybin — a hallucinogen derived from mushrooms — can prevent or cure drug addiction. Leeuwarden Associates is the cover name for a deeply secret international organization that facilitates the production, delivery and sale of illegal drugs worldwide. Leeuwarden considers Blue a long-term threat and sends Felix Hacker — one of their enforcers — to kill her.

THE SEA THY MISTRESS by Elizabeth Bear — Beautiful Cathoair, now an immortal warrior angel, has been called back to the city of Eiledon to raise his son — Muire’s son as well, cast up on shore as an infant. It is seemingly a quiet life. But deadly danger approaches … the evil goddess Heythe, who engineered the death of Valdyrgard, has travelled forward in time on her rainbow steed. She came expecting to gloat over a dead world, the proof of her revenge, but instead she finds a Rekindled land, renewed by Muire’s sacrifice. She will have her revenge by forcing this new Bearer of Burdens to violate her oaths and break her bounds and thus bring about the true and final end of Valdyrgard. But Mingan, the gray wolf, sees his old enemy Heythe’s return. He will not allow it to happen again.

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She’s back each Tuesday, pimpin’ out notable new releases to place on your radar, so let the tempting plot descriptions begin!

JOURNAL OF A UFO INVESTIGATOR by David Halpern — In the 1960s, Danny Shapiro is an isolated teenager without friends, living with a dying mother and a hostile father. To cope, Danny forges a reality of his own, which includes the sinister “Three Men in Black,” mysterious lake creatures with insectlike carapaces, a beautiful young seductress and thief with whom Danny falls in love, and an alien/human love child who — if only Danny can keep her alive — will redeem the planet. Danny’s fictional world blends so seamlessly with his day-to-day life that profound questions about what is real and what is not, what is possible and what is imagined begin to arise.

JANE GOES BATTY by Michael Thomas Ford — Life was a lot easier for Jane when she was just an unknown, undead bookstore owner in a sleepy hamlet in upstate New York. But now the world embraces her as Jane Fairfax, author of the bestselling novel CONSTANCE, and she’s having a killer time trying to keep her true identity as the Jane Austen a secret. Even the ongoing lessons in “How to Be a Vampire,” taught by her former lover Lord Byron, don’t seem to be helping much. Jane can barely focus on her boyfriend, Walter, while keeping him in the dark about her more sanguine tastes.

THE DREAM OF PERPETUAL MOTION by Dexter Palmer — Imprisoned for life aboard a zeppelin that floats high above a fantastic metropolis, greeting-card writer Harold Winslow pens his memoirs. His only companions are the disembodied voice of Miranda Taligent, the only woman he has ever loved, and the cryogenically frozen body of her father, Prospero, the genius and industrial magnate who drove her insane. As Harold heads toward a last desperate confrontation with Prospero to save Miranda’s life, he finds himself an unwitting participant in the creation of the greatest invention of them all: the perpetual motion machine.

MIRACLES, INC. by T.J. Forrester — Vernon L. Oliver lives in a Florida prison. He has chosen the needle over the chair, has no desire to smell burned flesh on the day the state snuffs out his life. When his attorney suggests he write an autobiography to generate funds to cover legal fees incurred during the appeals process, Vernon sits down to pencil and paper and begins his narrative. It tells the story of a charismatic slacker in love with Harley Davidson motorcycles and Rickie Terrell, a beautiful woman who quotes poetry and will not discuss her past. They live in an RV, smoke weed and drink beer, play Scrabble late into the night.

FACES OF THE GONE by Brad Parks — Four bodies, each with a single bullet wound in the back of the head, stacked like cordwood in a weed-choked vacant lot: That’s the front-page news facing Carter Ross, investigative reporter. Immediately dispatched to the scene, Carter learns that the four victims — an exotic dancer, a drug dealer, a hustler and a mama’s boy — came from different parts of the city and didn’t seem to know one another. The police, eager to calm jittery residents, leak a theory that the murders are revenge for a bar stickup, and Carter’s paper, hungry for a scoop, hastily prints it. But he knows there are no quick answers when dealing with a crime like this.

ELECTRIC BARRACUDA by Tim Dorsey — Serge Storms, that loveable thermonuclear vigilante and one-stop-Florida-trivia-shop, has been leaving corpses strewn across the Sunshine State for more than a decade. The authorities have begun to notice the exponential body count, and send a police task force to track down Serge. Meanwhile, armed with his perpetually baked sidekick, Coleman, Serge decides to blitz the state and resurrect his Internet travel-advice website. To up the ante, Serge concocts a theme vacation for his cyberspace audience. And that theme? You, too, can experience Florida through the eyes of a fugitive.

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She’s back each Tuesday, pimpin’ out notable new releases to place on your radar, so let the tempting plot descriptions begin!

HEARTSTONE by C.J. Sansom — Summer, 1545. England is at war, and Matthew Shardlake is about to encounter the most politically dangerous case of his career. While a massive French fleet prepares to attack, every able-bodied man is being pressed into military service. Meanwhile, an old servant of Queen Catherine Parr asks Shardlake to investigate claims of “monstrous wrongs” committed against a young ward of the court. Shardlake’s inquiries take him and his loyal assistant, Jack Barak, to Hoyland Priory and Portsmouth, where the English fleet is gathering. There they uncover a startling link between the ward and a woman incarcerated in Bedlam.

INVASION by Jon S. Lewis — Colt McAlister is drawn into a war against things he thought only existed in comic books. After a car wreck takes the lives of his parents, Colt moves to Arizona to stay with his grandfather. There, an informant tells him that his parents were actually murdered because his mom, a journalist, was getting ready to write a story exposing Trident Industries. Along with his new comrades at Chandler High, Colt vows to uncover the truth. But the more they learn, the more bizarre reality becomes. Mind control, jet packs and flying motorcycles only scratch the surface of what they discover. Colt is recruited by a secret organization called the Central Headquarters Against the Occult and Supernatural.

THE WITCH’S DAUGHTER by Paul Brackston — In the spring of 1628, the Witchfinder of Wessex finds himself a true Witch. As Bess Hawksmith watches her mother swing from the Hanging Tree she knows that only one man can save her from the same fate at the hands of the panicked mob: the Warlock Gideon Masters, and his Book of Shadows. Secluded at his cottage in the woods, Gideon instructs Bess in the Craft, awakening formidable powers she didn’t know she had and making her immortal. She couldn’t have foreseen that even now, centuries later, he would be hunting her across time, determined to claim payment for saving her life.

SOUL TRAPPER by F.J. Lennon — Kane Pryce is a 27-year-old Hollywood native, dabbling musician and occasional substance abuser with a distrustful nature and self-destructive streak. Like a lot of down-on-their-luck slackers, he is also a hopeless romantic. But unlike all the rest of them, he possesses a treasure of otherworldly power: a supernaturally charged object called the Soul Trap that allows him to hunt down, capture and send ghosts from the earthly realm to the afterlife. As an underground ghost-hunting legend, Kane attracts the attention of Eva Kells, a crack reporter intent on breaking his story. Risking his heart on a snooping journalist is the least of Kane’s worries, however, after he receives a call from a terrified priest desperate to rid his church of a deceased little boy’s soul who won’t pass on.

IT’S NOT REALLY ABOUT THE HAIR: THE HONEST TRUTH ABOUT LIFE, LOVE, AND THE BUSINESS OF BEAUTY by Tabatha Coffey with Richard Buskin — Star of the hit Bravo show TABATHA’S SALON TAKEOVER shares the experiences of her own life to encourage you to get in touch with your own inner bitch. Tabatha reveals how she used her strength and openness to help define her signature look, personal relationships, life choices and tenacious work ethic — one that in her own words likens her to “a pit bull with a bone.” Here are the people and the circumstances that have led her to a place of honesty, self-assurance, satisfaction, and success — from her tough-minded mum to her famous mentors, her peers and clients.

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Fresh off the funny SEX: OUR BODIES, OUR JUNK, humorist Mike Sacks returns with YOUR WILDEST DREAMS, WITHIN REASON, a collection of his essays, due March 1. Here’s your (literally) laugh-filled trailer.

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She’s back each Tuesday, pimpin’ out notable new releases to place on your radar, so let the tempting plot descriptions begin!

STAR WARS: RED HARVEST by Joe Schreiber — The era of the Old Republic is a dark and dangerous time, as Jedi Knights valiantly battle the Sith Lords and their ruthless armies. But the Sith have disturbing plans — and none more so than the fulfillment of Darth Scabrous’ fanatical dream, which is about to become nightmarish reality. Unlike those other Jedi sidelined to the Agricultural Corps whose abilities have not proved up to snuff, Hestizo Trace possesses one extraordinary Force talent: a gift with plants. Suddenly, her quiet existence among greenhouse and garden specimens is violently destroyed by the arrival of an emissary from Darth Scabrous. For the rare black orchid that she has nurtured and bonded with is the final ingredient in an ancient Sith formula that promises to grant Darth Scabrous his greatest desire.

BOILING POINT by K.L. Dionne — Two microbiologists monitor the effects of global warming in the shadow of the long-dormant volcano Chaitén. A celebrity scientist and his film crew arrive at the caldera to capture Chaitén’s spectacular scenery for a television audience. And a Nobel Prize-winning scientist sits in his apartment in Paris, monitoring data on 56 volcanoes around the world — waiting for the one sign that his diabolical plan is about to be put into motion. Soon, their destinies will converge. For the Earth has become a pawn in the biggest gamble ever played with humanity’s future … and Chaitén is about to blow.

NAKED CRUELTY by Colleen McCullough — America in 1968 is in turmoil and the leafy Holloman suburb of Carew is being silently terrorized by a series of vicious and systematic rapes. When finally one victim finds the courage to speak out and go to the police, the rapist escalates to murder. For Capt. Carmine Delmonico, it seems to be a case with no clues. And it comes as the Holloman Police Department is troubled: a lieutenant is out of his depth, a sergeant is out of control, and into this mix comes the beautiful, ruthlessly ambitious new trainee, Helen MacIntosh, daughter of the influential president of Chubb University. As the killer makes his plans, Carmine and his team must use every resource at their disposal, including a highly motivated neighborhood watch, the Gentlemen Walkers.

SOUL HUNT by Margaret Ronald — Without even realizing what she was doing, Genevieve Scelan has made a bad bargain. The Red Sox fanatic and supernatural tracker known as “Hound” for her extraordinary power of scent wishes she could leave magic behind now that she’s eradicated the evil cabal that oppressed Boston’s undercurrent for centuries. But now her talent’s fading, the local adepts’ squabbles are turning ugly, and worse, she’s just discovered that she owes a very large debt to someone … or some thing. And in the undercurrent, debts are taken very seriously. Evie has until midwinter to pay up … or else.

SCARED TO DEATH by Wendi Corsi Staub — Elsa Cavalon and Marin Quinn are perfect strangers whose once-perfect lives were cruelly shattered, they’re bound by a long-lost child, a fragile strand of newfound maternal hope, and mutual loneliness. Yet Elsa and Marin are never truly alone. Someone is always nearby, watching them and their children. Someone driven by vengeance and the simple poetry of nursery rhymes. Someone who must satisfy a dark need with innocent blood. And now time is running out for two mothers stalked by a cunning mastermind who wants to leave them.

THE SECRET HISTORY OF ELIZABETH TUDOR, VAMPIRE SLAYER by Lucy Weston — On the eve of her coronation, Elizabeth Tudor is summoned to the tomb of her mother, Anne Boleyn, to learn the truth about her bloodline and her destiny as a Slayer. Born to battle the bloodsucking fiends who ravage the night, and sworn to defend her beloved realm against all enemies, Elizabeth soon finds herself stalked by the most dangerous and seductive vampire of all. He is Mordred, bastard son of King Arthur, who sold his soul to destroy his father. After centuries in hiding, he has arisen determined to claim the young Elizabeth as his Queen. Luring her into his world of eternal night, Mordred tempts Elizabeth with the promise of everlasting youth and beauty, and vows to protect her from all enemies.

KING, SHIP, AND SWORD by Dewey Lambdin — December 1801. The Peace of Amiens end the long war with Napoleon Bonaparte’s France, but Capt. Alan Lewrie, Royal Navy, is appalled by its consequences. First, he’s been in the Navy since 1780 (most unwillingly, most of the time!) and at sea for the better part of nine years, since 1793, so what is a dashing and successful frigate captain to do with himself, if he’s ashore on half-pay, and if so, for how long? Second, and even worse, is where will Lewrie twiddle his thumbs and be bored to death until the war begins again, as he’s sure it will? Will he idle in expensive, exciting London, or go home to his rented farm in Anglesgreen in Surrey, and rejoin his wife and in-laws who (mostly) despise him like the Devil hates Holy Water, where he knows as much of agriculture and animal husbandry as his two pet cats do of celestial navigation?

RIZZO’S WAR by Lou Manfredo — “There’s no wrong, there’s no right, there just is.” This is the refrain of Joe Rizzo, a decades-long veteran of the NYPD, as he passes on the knowledge of his years of experience to his ambitious new partner, Mike McQueen, over a year of riding together as detectives in the 62nd Precinct in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. McQueen is fresh from the beat in Manhattan, and Bensonhurst might as well be China for how different it is. They work on several cases, some big, some small, but the lesson is always the same. Whether it’s a simple robbery or an attempted assault, Rizzo’s saying always seems to bear out.

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BITTER LEGACY by Terrell Griffin — After a week away, Matt Royal comes back to bad news: A sniper tried to kill one of his best friends. Even worse, now that Matt’s back, someone’s trying to kill him. With no clue who’s after him or why, Matt finds he’s at the center of a mystery involving a lawyer’s murder, a tourist left for dead, a ruthless biker gang, a reclusive billionaire with nothing to lose and an ancient document that could bring ruin to some of the most entrenched financial interests in Florida. Matt better watch out or his hard-charging ways could get him sideways with the newest member of Longboat Key’s police force, the undeniably attractive Jennifer Duncan. For Matt, it’s shaping up to be a really long week.

DARKWAR by Glen Cook — The world grows colder with each passing year, the longer winters and ever-deepening snows awaking ancient fears within the Dengan Packstead, fears of invasion by armed and desperate nomads, attack by the witchlike and mysterious Silth, able to kill with their minds alone, and of the Grauken, that desperate time when intellect gives way to buried cannibalistic instinct, when meth feeds upon meth. For Marika, a young pup of the Packstead, loyal to pack and family, times are dark indeed, for against these foes, the Packstead cannot prevail. But awakening within Marika is a power unmatched in all the world, a legendary power that may not just save her world, but allow her to grasp the stars themselves.

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SONGS OF THE DYING EARTH: STORIES IN HONOR OF JACK VANCE edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois — Half a century ago, Jack Vance created the world of the Dying Earth, and fantasy has never been the same. Now, for the first time ever, Jack has agreed to open this bizarre and darkly beautiful world to other fantasists, to play in as their very own. To honor the magnificent career of Jack, one unparalleled in achievement and impact, this book contains original stories from George R. R. Martin, Neil Gaiman, Dan Simmons, Elizabeth Moon, Tanith Lee, Tad Williams,  Kage Baker, and Robert Silverberg, along with 15 others, as well as an introduction by Dean Koontz.

THE GORDIAN KNOT by Bernhard Schlink — Georg Polger ekes out a lonely living as a freelance translator in the south of France, until he is approached by a certain Mr. Bulnakov, who has a intriguing proposition: Georg is to take over a local translation agency and finish a project left by the previous owner, who died in a mysterious accident. The money is right and then there is the matter of Bulnakov’s secretary, Francoise, with whom Georg has fallen hopelessly in love. Late one night, however, Georg discovers Francoise secretly photographing a sensitive military project. Then, her eventual disappearance leaves him not only bereft, but suspicious of the motivations behind Mr. Bulnakov’s offer. To make matters worse, Georg’s every move is being watched.

SHADOWHEART by Tad Williams — Southmarch Castle is about to be caught between two implacable enemies, the ancient, immortal Qar and the insane god-king, the Autarch of Xis. Meanwhile, its two young defenders, Princess Briony and Prince Barrick, are both trapped far away from home and fighting for their lives. And now, something is awakening underneath Southmarch Castle, something powerful and terrible that the world has not seen for thousands of years. Can Barrick and Briony, along with a tiny handful of allies, ordinary and extraordinary, find a way to save their world and prevent the rise of a terrible new age-an age of unending darkness?

DEAD LIKE YOU by Peter James — Detective Superintendent Roy Grace is forever haunted by the unexplained disappearance of his wife, Sandy, nearly 10 years ago. Finally, he may be moving on. He has fallen in love and is going to marry his girlfriend, Cleo, who is pregnant with their child. But his life is put on hold when a woman is brutally raped as she returns to her hotel room. A week later, another woman is attacked. Both victims’ shoes are taken by their attacker. Grace soon realizes that these new cases bear remarkable similarities to an unsolved series of crimes in the city back in 1997. The perpetrator had been dubbed “Shoe Man” and was believed to have raped four women before murdering his fifth victim and vanishing. Could this be a copycat, or has Shoe Man resurfaced?

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STAR WARS: FATE OF THE JEDI: VORTEX by Troy Denning — In a stunning turn of events, Luke Skywalker and his son, Ben, joined forces with members of the Sith armada sent to kill them — and turned their combined might against the monstrous being Abeloth. But with one menace dealt with, a new and even more insidious threat looms. Now Luke and Ben must go on the run, taking along the inscrutable — and ever dangerous — Sith apprentice Vestara Khai. With a host of Sith warriors in hot pursuit, the Skywalkers soon find themselves trapped on the moon Pydyr, caught between their former allies and a mob of angry Fallanassi. A new truce may be their only hope. But can a Sith ever be trusted?

THE CASTINGS TRILOGY by Pamela Freeman — A thousand years ago, the Eleven Domains were invaded and the original inhabitants were driven onto the road as Travelers, belonging nowhere, welcomed by no one. Now the Domains are governed with an iron fist by the Warlords, but there are wilder elements in the landscape that cannot be controlled and that may prove the Warlords’ undoing. Some are spirits of place — of water and air and fire and earth. Some are greater than these. And some are human. This 1,280-page omnibus edition includes all three novels — BLOOD TIES, DEEP WATER and FULL CIRCLE together for the first time.

BLACK WOLF by Dale Brown and Jim DeFelice — The warriors of Dreamland have moved on. Some, like Breanna and Zen Stockard, to positions of power and influence; others, like Danny Freah and Nuri Lupo, into Whiplash, a cutting-edge combination of brain and brawn. Tasked by the President to handle the country’s most deadly and sensitive jobs, the elite SpecWarfare unit marries muscle to technological prowess.
But can even Whiplash stand up to a covert Russian army of genetically enhanced assassins known only as the Wolves? Danny stumbles on an even darker and deadlier secret: One Wolf, the most ferocious of all, comes from the heart of Dreamland itself. And Danny saw him die more than a decade before.

THE SENTINELS: STONE OF TYMORA, BOOK III by R.A. Salvatore and Geno Salvatore — After dueling with a dragon and a demon, Maimun knows he must destroy the stone that has kept him on the run for most of his life. The question now is how. With Joen by his side, Maimun journeys to the Tower of Twilight to beg famed wizard Malchor Harpell for answers. But Harpell’s help comes at a steep price. Friends become enemies. Lost secrets come to light. And deep in the shadows, the sentinels are watching, scheming to save the stone — even if it means someone must die. This is the conclusion to the “Stone of Tymora” trilogy by best-selling author R.A. Salvatore and his son.

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Check out Orbit Books’ sharp-looking machinima-inspired trailer for Greg Bear’s newest sci-fi novel, HULL ZERO THREE. Because the book has much in common with first-person shooters, the clip echoes the feel of such video games.

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Who has time to read? Denis Leary promises it will take you a total of 12 minutes to absorb his latest “comedy pamphlet,” SUCK ON THIS YEAR: LYFAO @ 140 CHARACTERS OR LESS, out Dec. 2. Don’t believe me? Watch the trailer. (Unless you’re the Pope, in which case you may want to skip it.)

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THE GROVE by John Rector — The last time farmer Dexter McCray went off his medication, someone wound up dead. So, after waking from an alcoholic blackout to discover his tractor stuck in a ditch and the body of a teenage girl in the cottonwood grove bordering his cornfield, things look worryingly familiar. With no alibi and a creeping suspicion that he might indeed be guilty, Dexter decides to investigate the crime himself. He can’t tell anybody. Not his friend, the sheriff, who keeps offering to help him winch his tractor out of the ditch. Nor his estranged wife, whose love he’s desperate to win back. And certainly not the Tollivers, his redneck neighbors. Fortunately, Dexter’s not entirely alone. He has some help. In the shape of the dead girl herself.

WICKED CITY: THE SCARLET CLAN by Hideyuki Kikuchi — The child conceived by the mortal Taki and the demoness Makie, fellow Black Guard agents whose job it is to preserve the peace between human and demonkind, is about to be born. Many see the upcoming birth as a sign of hope that the child will bring together the demon and human worlds in a new era of lasting peace. For the Shu family, however, which thrives on chaos and destruction, this is the last thing they desire. The infamous demon mob, silent for thousands of years, will stop at nothing to prevent this child from entering the world. With magic snake handlers and fire-spitting demons at their beck and call, the Shus throw everything they have at Taki and the Black Guard in order to stop an event that has been predicted for centuries.

OK: THE IMPROBABLE STORY OF AMERICA’S GREATEST WORD by Allan Metcalf — Metcalf, a renowned popular writer on language, here traces the evolution of America’s most popular word, writing with brevity and wit, and ranging across American history with colorful portraits of the nooks and crannies in which OK survived and prospered. He describes how OK was born as a lame joke in a newspaper article in 1839 — used as a supposedly humorous abbreviation for “oll korrect” (i.e., “all correct”) — but should have died a quick death, as most clever coinages do. But OK was swept along in a 19th-century fad for abbreviations and finally picked up by operators of the telegraph. Over the next century and a half, it established a firm toehold in the American lexicon, and eventually became embedded in pop culture.

BOB MARLEY AND THE GOLDEN AGE OF REGGAE by Kim Gottlieb-Walker — The book features candid and intimate photographs of all of the musicians, artists and producers who brought the reggae sound to the international stage, including Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer, Toots Hibbert, Burning Spear, Jacob Miller, Third World, Lee “Scratch” Perry and, of course, Bob Marley. Kim’s photographs include never-before-seen performance shots, candid behind-the-scenes footage of Bob’s home in Jamaica, and exclusive records of key moments in reggae history, such as Bob’s first U.S. television appearance, the historical Dream Concert with Stevie Wonder in Jamaica, and Bob meeting George Harrison backstage at the Roxy in 1975.

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Miss the EC comics of the 1950s? Weep for the loss of the Warren publications of the 1970s? Then Jason Paulos’ EEEK! is just for you!

Published by Asylum Press, the 176-page horror anthology is a blast of retro horror paying homage to the time “when the world was a bloodier, more ironic place and justice came for you whether you wanted it or not.”

Collecting the first four issues of the EEEK! comic, originally available only as an e-book, the paperback sports new four-color covers and pinup art inside. For a preview of the pages inside, feast your eyes after the jump!

She’s back each Tuesday, pimpin’ out notable new releases to place on your radar, so let the tempting plot descriptions begin!

KIND OF BLUE by Miles Corwin — When a legendary ex-cop is mudered in L.A, the pressure’s on to find the killer. Lt. Frank Duffy needs his best detective on the case, but obsessive detective Ash Levine resigned after Latisha Patton, the witness in a homicide case he was working, was murdered. Without his job, Ash is consumed with guilt that he somehow caused Latisha’s murder. When he’s asked to rejoin the force, Ash reluctantly agrees. He dives headfirst into the shadowlands of Southern California to investigate the ex-cop’s murder. But even when he has a suspect in custody, something about this case doesn’t sit right with Ash, and he continues working the increasingly dangerous investigation while quietly chasing leads in Latisha’s murder.

READ THIS NEXT: 500 OF THE BEST BOOKS YOU’LL EVER READ by Sandra Newman and Howard Mittelmark — Ever been betrayed by a pretty cover and a pair of alluring blurbs?
The 500 book recommendations contained within these pages have all been carefully vetted and approved by two literary professionals with discerning taste and witty wit. Arranged into delightful thematic lists, these suggestions cover the best of literature high and low, from page-turning classics to mind-expanding fluff; from murder mysteries and post-apocalyptic visions to historical fiction and bathroom books. Each book is paired with deeply insightful, deeply hilarious discussion questions, perfect for book groups or for readers who just enjoy talking to themselves.

THE HUCKLEBERRY MURDERS by Patrick F. McManus — Sheriff Bo Tully is following up on one of his famous hunches: He suspects the murder of local retiree Orville Poulson by his ranch caretaker, Ray Crockett, a sociopath with a criminal record. The only problem is, Tully has no evidence or body to prove that a crime has been committed. Meanwhile, a far more alarming case emerges: Three young men have been shot, each in the back of the head, execution-style, in a huckleberry patch on Scotchman Mountain, leaving behind no identification. With the help of confident and beautiful FBI agent Angela Phelps, Tully tries to connect the dots between Poulson’s disappearance, the sudden spate of murders occurring in Blight County, and a big white pickup truck with dual tires causing havoc and crime.

THE BROKEN KINGDOMS by N.K. Jemisin — In the city of Shadow, beneath the World Tree, alleyways shimmer with magic and godlings live hidden among mortalkind. Oree Shoth, a blind artist, takes in a strange homeless man on an impulse. This act of kindness engulfs Oree in a nightmarish conspiracy. Someone, somehow, is murdering godlings, leaving their desecrated bodies all over the city. And Oree’s guest is at the heart of it …

RUSSELL WILEY IS OUT TO LUNCH by Richard Hine — Russell Wiley is in deep trouble. A media executive for the failing Daily Business Chronicle, his career is teetering on the brink of collapse, and his sexless marriage is fast approaching its expiration date. With his professional and personal lives floundering, it’s no wonder Russell is distracted, unhappy and losing faith in himself. Making matters worse are his scheming boss, a hot-shot new consultant determined to see Russell ousted, and the beguiling colleague whose mere presence has a disconcerting effect on Russell’s starved libido. Disaster seems imminent … and that’s before he makes a careless mistake that could cost the paper millions.

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AUTUMN by David Moody — AUTUMN chronicles the struggle of a small group of survivors forced to contend with a world torn apart by a deadly disease. After 99% of the population of the planet is killed in less than 24 hours, for the very few who have managed to stay alive, things are about to get much worse. Animated by “phase two” of some unknown contagion, the dead begin to rise. At first slow, blind, dumb and lumbering, quickly the bodies regain their most basic senses and abilities, as well as the instinct toward aggression and violence.  Held back only by the restraints of their rapidly decomposing flesh, the dead have the goal to lumber forth and destroy the sole remaining attraction in the silent, lifeless world: those who have survived the plague, who now find themselves outnumbered 1,000,000 to 1.

THE TRACK OF SAND by Andrea Camilleri — Inspector Salvatore Montalbano wakes from strange dreams to find a gruesomely bludgeoned horse carcass in front of his seaside home. When his men came to investigate, the carcass has disappeared, leaving only a trail in the sand. Then his home is ransacked and the inspector is certain that the crimes are linked. As he negotiates both the glittering underworld of horseracing and the Mafia’s connection to it, Montalbano is aided by his illiterate housekeeper, Adelina, and a Proustian memory of linguate fritte.

STARS’ END by Glen Cook — At the edge of the galaxy lay the Fortress known as Stars’ End, a mysterious planet bristling with deadly automated weapons systems, programmed to slaughter anyone fool enough to come within range. But who built this strange planet of death, placing it within view of the Milky Way’s great lens … and tantalizingly close to the hydrogen-filled feeding grounds of the interstellar dragons known as Starfish and the priceless ambergris they create?

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AMERICAN ASSASSIN by Vince Flynn — Six months of intense training has prepared Mitch Rapp to bring the war to the enemy’s doorstep, and he does so with brutal efficiency. He starts in Istanbul, where he assassinates the Turkish arms dealer who sold the explosives used in the Pan Am attack. Rapp then moves onto Hamburg with his team and across Europe, leaving a trail of bodies. All roads lead to Beirut, though, and what Rapp doesn’t know is that the enemy is aware of his existence and has prepared a trap. The hunter is about to become the hunted, and Rapp will need every ounce of skill and cunning if he is to survive the war-ravaged city and its various terrorist factions.

BETRAYER OF WORLDS by Larry Niven and Edward Lerner — Fleeing the supernova chain reaction at the galactic core, the cowardly Puppeteers of the Fleet of Worlds have — just barely — survived. They’ve stumbled from one crisis to the next: The rebellion of their human slaves. The relentless questing of the species of Known Space. The spectacular rise of the starfish-like Gw’oth. The onslaught of the genocidal Pak. Catastrophe looms again as past crises return — and converge. Who can possibly save the Fleet of Worlds from its greatest peril yet? Their hopes and fears, dreams and ambitions are about to collide. And the winner takes … worlds.

TOO MANY MURDERS by Colleen McCullough — The year is 1967, and the world teeters on the brink of nuclear holocaust as the Cold War goes relentlessly on. But the little city of Holloman, Connecticut, home to prestigious Chubb University and armaments giant Cornucopia, has its own crisis: 12 murders have taken place in one day. As chief of detectives Captain Carmine Delmonico investigates, he finds himself drawn into a gruesome web of secrets and lies. And as if 12 murders were not enough, Carmine must match wits with the mysterious Ulysses, a spy giving Cornucopia’s armaments secrets to the Russians. Are the murders and espionage different cases, or are they somehow linked?

BOOKY WOOK 2: THIS TIME IT’S PERSONAL by Russell Brand — Russell Brand charts his rise from crack-house junky to Hollywood star, indulging in sexual excesses that make Caligula seem like a prudish spinster. On his quest to find true love, Russell encountered thousands of women, often three or four at a time (for efficiency), and his dizzying ambition led to chaos and controversy that could have landed him in prison and left the BBC in ruins. This is the story of what happens when insatiable desire meets limitless opportunity and when a punk from the wrong side of the tracks is given the keys to the palace.

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CROOKED LETTER, CROOKED LETTER by Tom Franklin — Amos, Miss., is a quiet town. Silas Jones is its sole law enforcement officer. The last excitement here was nearly twenty years ago, when a teenage girl disappeared on a date with Larry Ott, Silas’ one-time boyhood friend. The law couldn’t prove Larry guilty, but the whole town has shunned him ever since. Then the town’s peace is shattered when someone tries to kill the reclusive Ott, another young woman goes missing, and the town’s drug dealer is murdered. Woven through the tautly written murder story is the unspoken secret that hangs over the lives of two men – one black, one white.

RED HERRING by Archer Mayor — Vermont Bureau of Investigation head Joe Gunther and his team are called in to investigate a series of violent deaths that appear unrelated until telltale clues reveal a linkage between them and that all of the deaths are, in fact, murders. However, apart from a single drop of unexplained blood left at each crime scene, there are no obvious connections between the victims or the cases. The police are faced with more questions than answers including what do the mysterious deposits of blood mean, coming as they do from three additional unknown people. In their search for the elusive truth, the VBI must plumb the depths of every suspect’s past, every victim’s most intimate details, and examine each piece of evidence down to the smallest detail.

AND THEN THERE WAS ONE by Patricia Gussin — Nine years ago, Katie and Scott Monroe were blessed beyond their wildest dreams with identical triplets, Sammie, Alex, and Jackie. Three beautiful daughters and two adoring parents formed the picture-perfect party of five. But this tight-knit family unravels when the three little girls go to see a movie, but only one emerges from the darkness of the theatre. How could Sammie and Alex vanish without a trace? Plunged into the abyss of a parent’s worst fear, Katie and Scott hang by a thread-waiting, worrying, not knowing, and confronting the terrifying realization that the kidnapping may not have been a random act.

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