Previews

If you’re among those who watch professional wrestling, but wish it were really cartoony, mark your calendar for March 23. That’s when WWE HEROES #1, Titan Publishing’s comic book featuring WWE superstars, hits stores. Here’s your preview.

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

THE INFORMER by Craig Nova — Berlin in 1930 is a city of dark paranoia and covert power struggles, where violence can erupt at any moment. The Brownshirts dominate the streets, but the Red Front is building its insurgence. Gaelle, a beautiful but desperate young prostitute with a scar across one side of her face, trades in something far more powerful — and dangerous — than sex: information. To possess her, men will do more than pay — they will tell her secrets. What Gaelle wants is protection. Felix, a 16-year-old boy with a lame foot, negotiates Gaelle’s price, accompanies her in limousines when she feels threatened, and reminds her to take care of herself. But can he really keep her from harm?

CAPITOL BETRAYAL by William Bernhardt — Kincaid is in a meeting with the president in the Oval Office when Washington suddenly explodes into chaos. Facing an imminent threat to the White House, Kincaid is whisked, along with the president and his advisors, to the underground PEOC — Presidential Emergency Operations Center — built to withstand a nuclear blast, but vulnerable to another kind of attack. Inside the bunker, defense specialists realize that a malevolent foreign dictator has hacked into the U.S. nuclear defense system and now has a finger on the trigger of America’s most dangerous weapons. The dictator’s message is clear: Heed his demands or suffer unfathomable destruction.

MARK TWAIN’S OTHER WOMAN: THE HIDDEN STORY OF HIS FINAL YEARS by Laura Skandera Trombley — Despite many Twain biographies, no one has ever determined exactly what took place during those final years after the death of Twain’s wife of 34 years and how those experiences affected him, personally and professionally. For nearly a century, it was believed that Twain went to his death a beloved, wisecracking iconoclastic American, undeterred by life’s sorrows and challenges. Trombley, the preeminent Twain scholar at work today, suspected that there had to be more to the story than the cultivated, carefully constructed version that had been intact for so long. She went in search of the one woman whom she suspected had played the largest role in Twain’s life during those final years and who possibly held the answers to her questions about his life and writings.

THE BEATLES ACROSS THE UNIVERSE: JOHN, PAUL, GEORGE AND RINGO ON TOUR AND ON STAGE by Andy Neill — Culturally, the Beatles were a global phenomenon, changing all facets of popular music for good, but not just because they were a band that made great recordings. How big a part did performing in concert play? Would they have achieved what they did without an early grounding in the dance halls and clubs of Liverpool and Hamburg? After their first year as a headline-grabbing attraction, why did The Beatles soon tire of the relentless pace of Beatlemania? Through print and images from the DAILY MIRROR archive, this book answers these questions, examining in detail the Beatles as a live act between the key Beatlemania years of 1963-1966.

Buy them at Amazon.

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

STAR WARS: FATE OF THE JEDI: BACKLASH by Aaron Allston — Repercussions from the dark side’s fatal seduction of Jacen Solo and the mysterious plague of madness afflicting young Jedi continue to wreak havoc galaxy-wide. Having narrowly escaped the deranged Force worshippers known as the Mind Walkers and a deadly Sith hit squad, Luke and Ben Skywalker are in pursuit of the now Masterless Sith apprentice. It is a chase that leads to the forbidding planet Dathomir, where an enclave of powerful dark side Force-wielders will give Vestara the edge she needs to escape — and where the Skywalkers will be forced into combat for their quarry and their lives.

REPO MEN by Eric Garcia — In a brave new world, you’ll never have to die … as long as you keep up with the payments. Thanks to the technological miracle of artiforgs, now you can live virtually forever. Nearly indestructible artificial organs, these wonders of metal and plastic are far more reliable and efficient than the cancer-prone lungs and fallible kidneys you were born with — and the Credit Union will be delighted to work out an equitable payment plan. But, of course, if you fall delinquent, one of their dedicated professionals will be dispatched to track you down and take their product back. This is the story of the making — and unmaking — of one of the best Repo Men in the extraction business, who finds his soul when he loses his heart … and then he has to run.

FRAME-UP by John F. Dobbyn — After graduating from Harvard Law with his closest friend John McKedrick, Michael Knight takes a job with his mentor, legendary trial attorney Lex Devlin, while John becomes sole associate of a notorious mob lawyer. Michael never lost hope that John would escape to “cleaner pastures,” until John is murdered in a car bombing bearing the signature of his questionable clientele. Matt Ryan, a priest, Dominic Santangelo, a mafia don, and Lex Devlin put the past aside to focus on a present concern: Dominic’s son has been charged with John’s murder. At Lex’s urging, Michael reluctantly agrees to represent the alleged bomber. In building a defense, Michael is drawn into a high-stakes art fraud and the inner sanctum of international crime.

ARCADIA FALLS by Carol Goodman — Meg Rosenthal is driving toward the next chapter in her life since the sudden death of her husband. Dire financial straits take Meg and her daughter, Sally, to a tucked-away hamlet in upstate New York: Arcadia Falls, where Meg has accepted a teaching position at a boarding school. The creaky, neglected cottage Meg and Sally are to call home feels like an ill portent of things to come. One of Meg’s folklore students, Isabel Cheney, plunges to her death in a campus gorge. Sheriff Callum Reade finds Isabel’s death suspicious, but then, he is a man with secrets and a dark past himself.

GIRL IN THE CELLAR: THE NATASCHA KAMPUSCH STORY by Alan Hall — On March 2, 1998, while on her way to school, 10-year-old Natascha Kampusch was abducted. More than eight years later, on August 23, 2006, she escaped with a story that shocked and horrified the entire world. She spent the most delicate years of her life hidden in a cellar underneath an ordinary Austrian suburban home. How was she able to survive? What sort of woman had emerged? What kind of man was Wolfgang Priklopil, her abductor — and what demands had he made of her? What exactly was the relationship between the abductor and the hostage? Why had Natascha waited so long to make her bid for freedom when it seemed she had earlier opportunities to do so?

A BRIEF HISTORY OF PIRATES AND BUCCANEERS by Tom Bowling — rom Captain Kidd to Johnny Depp, pirates have long captured the imagination, but behind the spectacle is an extraordinary story of bravery and adventure. In the age of discovery, many buccaneers acted on behalf of their nation, then became outlaws as huge wealth was transported across the oceans. Tom Bowling strips the legends away to reveal the true story of piracy and its legacy across the globe.

Buy them at Amazon.

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For Gail Carriger’s BLAMELESS, due in September, here’s a different kind of trailer: one that looks at the creation of the book’s cover. Even though it focuses on the creative process of graphic design, it still succeeds in whetting the appetite of fans of the series’ first fantasy, SOULLESS.

Buy it at Amazon.

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