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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Buy it at Amazon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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