Richard Matheson’s BUTTON, BUTTON: UNCANNY STORIES may only exist because the title story soon will be a movie titled THE BOX – starring Cameron Diaz and James Marsden – but that’s okay. Any excuse for a Matheson release is a good one.

You’d best revisit 1970’s “Button, Button” beforehand, anyway. Its premise is classic: If a box appeared that would give you money for pushing its button, yet take away the life of a stranger, would you be tempted? It’s a chilling idea – one well-executed by the author, even if the last line merits a ba-dum-dum to drive home what is essentially a joke.

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We hit a milestone today, as this column marks the 100th in my never-ending run through old paperbacks. To celebrate, we’re covering three books from one certain author who also would be celebrating his 100th birthday. Regular BBB&B readers know I’ve taken many a potshot at Ian Fleming’s creation of James Bond, but actually, I’m a big fan of the books and films. So let’s don our tuxedos, get us some shaken-but-not-stirred martinis, and delve back into the world of 007.

FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE by Ian Fleming – I’ve replaced all my beat-up Bond books with Penguin’s recent reissues, and this 1957 novel – the fifth in the series – is my favorite of the whole run. Don’t just take my word for it; it’s considered one of the best by most fans of the series.

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Did you hear the one about LOLITA’s pedophiliac Humbert Humbert being confronted by DATELINE’s “To Catch a Predator” segment? If not, consult THE MCSWEENEY’S JOKE BOOK OF BOOK JOKES pronto. This slim but satisfying anthology pokes a number of holes into the often-inflated world of self-important literature and writing with dozens of brief biting bits.

From the start – namely, the introduction by John Hodgman – you can tell you’re in for a good time. “It is hilarious that Herman Melville wrote MOBY-DICK,” he writes. “It is hilarious that it has a tattooed cannibal in it named ‘Queequeg’ and also a guy with a peg leg, and what’s more, it’s GODDAMNED TITLE IS MOBY-DICK. Priceless. I know, as we all do, that MOBY-DICK is hilarious, and I HAVEN’T EVEN READ IT.”

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Who knew the works of H.P. Lovecraft would one day be so ripe for plundering by DIY filmmakers? Lurker Films has made a cottage industry out of primarily releasing compilations of these features and shorts onto DVD, and the fifth now is available in THE H.P. LOVECRAFT COLLECTION: VOLUME 5 - STRANGE AEONS: THE THING ON THE DOORSTEP.

The centerpiece of the disc is 2005’s feature-length STRANGE AEONS: THE THING ON THE DOORSTEP, based on Lovecraft’s well-known – but not always well-liked – 1937 story “The Thing on the Doorstep.” I was looking forward to seeing the adaptation, but that’s because I had it confused with “The Outsider,” for some reason.

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

About all I remember from the 1983 miniseries V of my childhood: 1) Faye Grant looked hot, 2) Freddy Krueger was in it, and 3) that lizard baby. V’s writer/director Kenneth Johnson revisits the loose ends of the resulting 1984 weekly series with the novel V: THE SECOND GENERATION. The reptilian alien “Visitors” have wrestled control of Earth by tricking its residents, except for the small splinter group of resistance fighters. Your enjoyment will help tremendously if you’ve revisited V on DVD, as several characters and storylines either are referenced or still in play. Everyone else may be working at a disadvantage, and may be better suited to awaiting the eventual screen adaptation, even if Johnson’s ever-thriving imagination is still in full force.

For THE FORTUNE COOKIE CHRONICLES: ADVENTURES IN THE WORLD OF CHINESE FOOD, Jennifer 8. Lee traveled the globe to find the very best Chinese restaurant. I won’t spoil the surprising winner for you, but the real charm of the book comes in the other chapters, in which she laments the dangers of being a Chinese food deliveryman, explores the origins of chop suey, visits the manufacturers of those white takeout boxes (a wholly American thing, by the way) and recounts a 2005 Powerball mishap when there were more payouts than usual because a fortune cookie string of lucky numbers actually was. Lee writes so friendly, you want to take her out for a bowl of hot-and-sour soup. This engaging buffet of travel, history and popular culture will put a smile on your face and a pang in your stomach. And no MSG!

Gonzo cruciverbalist Ben Tausig attempts to hook kids into pencil games instead of video games with MAD TAUSIG VS THE INTERPLANETARY PUZZLING PEACE PATROL. You’re supposed to stop madman Mad Tausig by doing crosswords, cracking codes, unscrambling words and tackling a variety of logic, word and other puzzles. The quasi-mystery is a lot of fun, with something to do on every page, and the cartoony illustrations by Goopymart – an alias, I’m assuming – help make the book irresistible. Buy one for your kids … and one for yourself. It’s not the most fiendishly clever puzzle book out there – that’d be Lemony Snicket’s THE PUZZLING PUZZLES – but it’s darn close.

The whole of our country’s cinema criticism is chronicled in AMERICAN MOVIE CRITICS: AN ANTHOLOGY FROM THE SILENTS UNTIL NOW – EXPANDED EDITION, edited by Phillip Lopate. Among its earliest entries are poet Carl Sandburg’s awkwardly phrased reviews (”Then it is for you this Caligari and his cabinet”) and Cecilia Ager’s take on KING KONG, which focuses solely on Fay Wray. Film criticism got better as the decades progressed, as Jonas Mekas’ all-question review of Andy Warhol’s SLEEP shows, or the rightfully praised works of Andrew Sarris, Pauline Kael and Vincent Canby. More recent pieces of note include J. Hoberman’s bad movies essay/tribute and screenwriter Paul Rudnick’s take on DANCES WITH WOLVES, albeit under the satricial guise of Libby Gelman-Waxner, the über-yuppie columnist from the late Premiere magazine. At more than 750 pages, there’s a wealth of material here for serious film enthusiasts.

THIS MAY HELP YOU UNDERSTAND THE WORLD, goes Lawrence Potter’s slim little volume, which serves as an FAQ for this current crazed earth of ours. It seeks to tackle – through both commentary and good ol’ hard facts – many of the trickiest hot-button issues of today, including “Is Bush actually stupid?,” “Is it possible that global warming is not taking place?” and “What is Iran up to?” (The short answers, respectively: His IQ equals John F. Kennedy’s, not likely, it ain’t pleasant.) Chapters are divided amongst topics like China, Darfur and Russia. That Potter offers concise, easy-to-follow explanations justifies the book’s title; unfortunately, those in most need of knowing the answers may not even care.

‘Tis easy to see why they call New York “the city that never sleeps”: Because when you have a thousand-plus-page book like WRITING NEW YORK: A LITERARY ANTHOLOGY, you’d better be planning on some long nights. Edited by Phillip Lopate, the book originally was published in 1998, but this 10th-anniversary edition from Library of America is much more relevant with the inclusion of post-9/11 material, like a chilling excerpt from Don DeLillo’s FALLING MAN novel. A wealth of classic writers are here – F. Scott Fitzgerald, William S. Burroughs, Henry Miller, Edgar Allan Poe, Tom Wolfe, O. Henry – paying tribute to (and sometimes knocking) the Big Apple. If you’re a fan of the metropolis, or a New Yorker subscriber, this belongs on your bedside table. –Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

Here’s how little I understood BEOWULF when I had to read it in English class in junior high and again in high school: I thought the title referred to the monster, and that the monster was a wolf. Laugh all you want, but Anglo-Saxon epic poems of the 8th century aren’t the easiest things to decipher.

Luckily, Robert Zemeckis’ BEOWULF is different, and I don’t just mean because it’s animated. It’s his “no-bullshit” version of the epic poem, as he promises on the making-of documentary featured on the DVD’s extra features: “This has nothing to do with the BEOWULF you were forced to read in junior high school. It’s all about eating, drinking, killing and fornicating.”

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

FIVE STROKES TO MIDNIGHT is a handsomely made and handsomely written hardcover edited by Gary Braunbeck and Hank Schwaeble, with an introduction by Tim Lebbon. Authors Tom Piccirilli, Deborah LeBlanc, Christopher Golden and both editors contribute fine pieces of horror, although not the category horror of too many anthologies. And since each writer has two or three stories included, the reader gets a range of forms and styles. Highlights for me include Piccirilli’s “Berveavement,” one of his most powerful pieces; Braunbeck’s cleverly conceived and perfectly executed “Afterward, There Will Be a Hallway,” about the mercurial and confusing elements of relationships; LeBlanc’s “Bottom Feeder,” a great old-fashoned/new-fashioned take on magic; and Schwaeble’s “Midnight Boogie Blues,” the barn-burner of the book, and a tough tale; and Golden’s extraordinary “Breathe My Name,” a fusion of fabulism and folk tale. This is a collectible and a keeper in all respects. –Ed Gorman

Personally, I’ve never cared for them (it’s a texture thing; you wouldn’t understand), but journalist Dan Koeppel is simply, er, bananas over bananas. He pays tribute to and explores the mysteries of the ap-peel-ing food in BANANA: THE FATE OF THE FRUIT THAT CHANGED THE WORLD. He chronicles their beginnings – they were the true “apple” in the biblical Garden of Eden, he suggests – to the subjects of science they are today. I wasn’t as interested in the country-by-country history he details as I was the various cultural aspects, such as the original Chiquita banana theme, whose lyrics appear here, or the 2001 suicide of a leading banana scientist. Even during the brown slow spots, the chapters are so short that each can be read in the time it takes to eat a … well, you know.

Lower those expectations for THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN: BLACK DOSSIER, kids. Although it’s not bad, it’s nowhere near the kick offered by its pair of predecessors. More of a transitionary tale, it follows younger versions of Allan Quatermain and Mina Harker as they play spy games, struggling to keep possession of a folder full of files on the League’s history. This includes pieces of rambling period fiction that utterly bore (yes, Alan Moore, we get it – you’re oh-so-clever), but also the occasional spark, such as a stitched-in Tijuana bible with Orwellian overtones. The end is in 3-D for no good reason, other than maybe to disguise the fact that the narrative has gone completely off the rails. Kevin O’Neill’s art still astounds, however.

After FANTÔMAS and ARSÈNE LUPIN, GENTLEMAN-THIEF, Penguin Classics continues to show it’s open-minded when it comes to determining what’s a classic by issuing the anthology DASHING DIAMOND DICK AND OTHER CLASSIC DIME NOVELS. Forerunners to the pulps, the late-19th-century dime novels were serial-style publications covering a wide variety of genres. As compiled by J. Randolph Cox – who provides an informative intro – so does this collection of five short novels. The titular Dick tale is a cross between a Western and a swashbuckler, but also included are a baseball story, an airship adventure, a historical war story and an early mystery featuring detective Nick Carter. While some are clearly better than others, none are that particularly well-written. But that’s not the point; this one’s all about having it for posterity. Bonus points for including the original covers. –Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THESE AUTHORS:
• ALBION by Alan Moore, Leah Moore and John Reppion
• BERSERK by Tim Lebbon
• BLOODSTAINED OZ by Christopher Golden and James A. Moore
• THE EVERLASTING by Tim Lebbon
• THE FEVER KILL by Tom Piccirilli
• FOUR DARK NIGHTS by Bentley Little, Douglas Clegg, Christopher Golden and Tom Piccirilli
• KEEPERS by Gary A. Braunbeck
• THE MIDNIGHT ROAD by Tom Piccirilli
• MR. HANDS by Gary A. Braunbeck
• THE MYTH HUNTERS: BOOK ONE OF THE VEIL by Christopher Golden

Michael Dirda is a book critic after my own heart. In his one-hair-shy-of-joyous tour of lit CLASSICS FOR PLEASURE, he sympathizes with the commonly held view that classics are “difficult, esoteric, and a little boring. … Really, after a hard day’s work, who wants to settle down with more … work?”

Exactly. But some classics aren’t work. Some can be enjoyed as much as a speedily paced thriller. Heck, some could be classified as speedily paced thrillers, at least comparatively for their time. And it’s these enduring books that Dirda revisits, hoping to introduce old-tome-shy readers to new-for-them stories, like BEOWULF, Jules Verne’s TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA and Philip K. Dick’s THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE.

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Will Smith’s latest paycheck has made a bestseller out of Richard Matheson’s classic 1954 novel I AM LEGEND, so whether the movie is awful or awesome, at least one good thing has come from it.

Even most who’ve never read it or seen the various movies are at least familiar with its now-famous plot: Robert Neville leads a structured but solitary life, since he is – as far as he knows – the last man on earth. Oh, but there are vampires, and every night they surround his home and yell at him to come out, to give up, to become one of them. It’s enough to drive a man insane.

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According to S.T. Joshi, editor of Penguin Classics’ AMERICAN SUPERNATURAL TALES, the genre has its roots in Greek mythology. Sounds logical. He also claims that H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe and Ambrose Bierce sit atop the pinnacle of its practitioners. Sounds reasonable. And he compares Dean Koontz to Judith Krantz and Danielle Steel, “whose work will be deservedly forgotten in the next generation.” I disagree … on the Koontz part, that is.

That left-field slam aside, Joshi is as good a guide as any to trace the history of the supernatural short story in these United States, and this volume 26 examples in a mix of classics and lesser-known gems, arranged chronologically from 1824 to 2000.

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Ever since the 1940s, there have been discussions about which collection of stories best gives a real idea of what pulp magazines were like in breadth and scope. THE HARD-BOILED OMNIBUS edited by Joseph “Cap” Shaw has always been the most prestigious because Shaw was for years the editor of Black Mask, the magazine both Hammett and Chandler called home.

There since have been many others; I’ve even co-edited a few pulp collections myself. Each book has its own merits – particuarly Ron Goulart’s THE HARDBOILED DICKS– but nothing, nothing even approximates the just-released THE BLACK LIZARD BIG BOOK OF PULPS, edited by Otto Penzler.

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Welcome to the super-sized version of BBB&B. What looks like three books are really some old two-in-one editions, all written by great authors, including the return of a pulp hero and two from the tag team that is Ellery Queen. But to start it all off is one from that ’60s-looking garage rocker.

TOUGH TENDER by Max Allan Collins – There is only one Hard Case Crime book that’s sat on my shelf for a long time because its girth scares me – which is pretty funny since this 1991 book is about the same length. Also it’s a continuation of those characters. Yes, if you’ve read TWO FOR THE MONEY, here’s the follow-up.

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The damned thing is that MASTERS OF HORROR: THE DAMNED THING has the nerve to call itself an adaptation of Ambrose Bierce’s classic short story. In that 1894 tale, a group of men in a cabin hear a chilling account of the death of a man by an unseen force in the forest that ripped him to shreds. In this one-hour episode … well, at least someone gets ripped to shreds. Similarities, you end there.

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In Mary Shelley’s classic FRANKENSTEIN, there’s a scene in which Victor Frankenstein begins making a mate for his monster, before wising up and destroying it. But what, asks Hilary Bailey’s FRANKENSTEIN’S BRIDE, if he didn’t put a stop to his own experiment?

First published in the UK in 1995 and new to these shores from Sourcebooks, BRIDE is an unofficial sequel that finds Victor remarried and a father, following the tragic events of the original. As narrated by Jonathan Goodall – a young man of means whom Victor befriends – the story notes that Victor harbors an unnatural interest in a girl named Maria, even though he’s devoted to another.

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

In Camille DeAngelis’ debut novel, the character of MARY MODERN is the carbon copy of Lucy’s grandmother from the 1920s, brought to life in modern times. The story really isn’t Mary’s at all, but Lucy’s – a 20something researcher who decides to impregnate herself using the DNA of her grandmother in the basement of the mansion where Mary once lived. When she gives birth to Gramma – albeit in the form of a 4-year-old toddler – you have solid proof that what you’re reading is certainly original. The book is part science fiction with soft suspense and the feel of a time-travel story, due to Mary trying to get used to all the technology and modern conveniences of today, such as the “upright coffin” we call a refrigerator. Initially, there are too many details and Lucy is not a likable character – purposely, I believe – but midway through, it picks up greatly and keeps you going with one great plot twist after another. The novel doesn’t given an answer as to whether cloning is good or evil, but it does hint at the problems it can create for love and the history of a family, a la FRANKENSTEIN. Prepare yourself for a big shock at the eerie but satisfying end. Comparisons to THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE are not out of the question. –Malena Lott

Six previously published short stories by Stephen King collected in an oversized hardcover with large print – so what’s the big deal? Well, quite a bit, actually. In Cemetery Dance’s THE SECRETARY OF DREAMS: VOLUME ONE, illustrator Glenn Chadbourne (BLOODSTAINED OZ) supplements King’s chilling text with gruesomely detailed, black-and-white ink drawings. Three of the six stories carry these generous spot illustrations, which wouldn’t be all that special … until you hit the full two-page spread of an astronaut in space disintegrating into maggots. But it’s the three other stories that make this SECRETARY worth the attention, as they’re rendered in comic-book form. Every. Single. Word. Chadbourne’s lettering leaves a lot to be desired, but his art is über-creepy, especially in “The Road Virus Heads North,” with the carnage in “Uncle Otto’s Truck” meriting a close second. The non-comic stories are such favorites as “The Reach,” the zombie-fied “Home Delivery” and the precursor to ‘SALEM’S LOT. With the slipcased packaging, this one is for collectors, and will be highly valued by such, impressive as it is.

I’ve now moved my bowels enough to finish THE AREAS OF MY EXPERTISE by “professional writer” John Hodgman, perhaps best known representing PC computers in that series of Mac ads. It’s a parody of an almanac that’s so tongue-in-cheek, the tongue has broken through. Separated into section dealing with the future, the past, the present and hoboes – each prefaced with a handy timetable for seasonal werewolf transformations – the book tackles such gripping topics as alternatives for asthmatic kids who can’t play in the snow like other children, terrible haircuts throughout history, and nine presidents who had hooks for hands. The list of 700 hobo names – yes, 700 – is much more digestible than you’d think, but the state-by-state section on America gets to be tiresome. Pick a page at random, and you’re bound to find a gag that makes you laugh out loud. With photos, charts and graphs that recalls a heavy Spy magazine influence, this book is best read in, um, short sittings.

Two or three times in my childhood, I started Ellen Raskin’s kid-lit novel THE WESTING GAME, only to never finish it. Since it recently was reissued in a Puffin Modern Classics edition, I thought I’d give it a final shot, nearly three decades later. I can see why I never stuck with it so long ago: too many characters, too-precious dialogue. The setup is intriguing enough: six floors’ worth of tenants in a new apartment building are named as beneficiaries in the will of a mysterious multimillionaire. But it’s not as simple as receiving a check: The deceased’s will claims he was murdered – by one of them, no less – and whoever figures out whodunit gets the entire take. He gives them each clues to help them out. I think it’d make an awesome mystery if only it were “written up” for adults. –Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

This week we deal with the wonderful world of the post-apocalypse, where books depict the future as a lawless wasteland, where only the strong survive. Hell, if Oprah can tackle the subject, why can’t we? Thanks to Matt Baker for contributing one of this week’s covered titles; donations are always welcome here.

TRAVELER #1: FIRST, YOU FIGHT by D.B. Drumm – I only can imagine the pitch meeting for this series, which began in 1984: “I know, we’ll have world destroyed in a horrific nuclear war and set the books 15 years after the fact, with our hero being a guy we know only as ‘Traveler.’ He’s some sort of special ops soldier who’s infected with a mysterious chemical combination which makes him feel all the pain around him. Then we’ll throw in enough stuff from the MAD MAX movies to keep the kids entertained.”

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I’m glad there’s no Half Price Books anywhere near my Oklahoma City home, because I might be broke if there were.

Earlier this spring, while in Austin, Texas – auditioning for a game show with friends in a desperate and ultimately failed bid at easy fortune –  we went not once, but twice, to Half Price Books. I’d been to an HPB only once before, a couple summers ago in Dallas, and it was like book heaven.

Granted, they have tons of used books that are mutilated and sticky like everyone else, but what I like are the stacks of publisher’s remainder books, usually in perfect shape and marked down to criminally low prices. Luckily, I found a bunch of virtual steals…

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Unlike the other DVDs in Lurker Films’ series, THE H.P. LOVECRAFT COLLECTION: VOLUME 4 – PICKMAN’S MODEL easily could have have been tagged as variations of a theme, since the bulk of the disc is comprised of three movies all based on the same short story: “Pickman’s Model.”

Up first, you have CHILEAN GOTHIC, which has an interesting take on the story, starting with a investigative reporter trying to find out what happened to a fellow reporter and friend. This brings him to an odd painter named Pickman and the dark secret behind his work.

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Jack London is one of those authors you were “forced” to read as a kid in school, and then later in life, realized how great his books really are. This new collection – JACK LONDON’S TALES OF CANNIBALS AND HEADHUNTERS, edited by Gary Riedl and Thomas R. Tietzefurther – only further expands his greatness, showcasing stories not as well-known as his other output.

This anthology gathers nine of his SOUTH SEA TALES, with a detailed introduction for each story and endnotes that follow. A must-have for the adventure fan in all of us, the collection is printed chronologically. The stories’ age doesn’t show, as all of them click into a groove right away. You don’t feel as though London is getting his feet wet with the first stories and then improving as he goes.

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

Declared by a boyfriend as being “pornophobic,” Ayn Carrillo-Gailey immerses herself into all things X-rated in — take a deep breath, preferably from the diaphragm — PORNOLOGY: NOUN—1: A GOOD GIRL’S GUIDE TO PORN; 2: THE MISADVENTURES OF THE WORLD’S FIRST ANTHROPORNOLOGIST; 3: A HILARIOUS EXPLORATION OF MEN, RELATIONSHIPS, AND SEX. First, she makes a 12-item to-do list which includes such things as visiting a sex store, enrolling in a blow-job class and going to a brothel. The ensuing chapters detail just that, with the author’s private life constantly getting in the way. From start to finish, she goes through a few boyfriends as she becomes more in touch – so to speak – with porn. Carrillo-Gailey’s writing style is breezy and humorous, even if some chapters are far stronger than others. And while I don’t buy for a second that all of what she says transpired actually did – some episodes smack of being too convenient – PORNOLOGY is good for 230-ish pages of amusement.

I don’t think I’ve ever read a short story by Joyce Carol Oates that I didn’t like. In that form, she’s an absolute master. That’s not to slight her novels, but all bets are off in short fiction, and she uses that to her advantage, as evidenced in her latest collection, THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES: TALES OF MYSTERY AND SUSPENSE. As the title suggests, the nine pieces all center around women – broken, warped, victims one and all. And as the subtitle suggests, Oates is working mostly in the Gothic genre here, proving one page after another that she’s America’s living successor to Edgar Allan Poe. From the fractured first-person of “So Help Me God” to the appearance of symbols in “Angel of Mercy,” she’s not afraid to get experimental. I think it contributes further to granting us a sense of palpable unease as we devour her desserts. As expected, highly recommended.

Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody series has to be one of the longest-running in the mystery market, as TOMB OF THE GOLDEN BIRD – now in mass market paperback – marks the 18th installment. Eighteen! Light and fluffy but undeniably comfortable, TOMB has a slight “cozy” aspect to it, but since it’s not dealing with knitting or cats, I’m cool with it. In this one, Amelia and her husband are party to the opening of the tomb of King Tut, which brings out all sorts of bad guys. The plot gets wrapped up in kidnappings, secret documents and other reliable elements that make for good old-fashioned intrigue. That it’s wrapped in an archaeological shell of all things Egyptian makes it all the more appealing. It kinda makes me want to dive in to the rest of the series, but the sheer number of previous novels is overwhelming; thankfully, the back of the book includes summaries for each to help newcomers find their way.

Just as it promises, PHILIP K. DICK: FOUR NOVELS OF THE 1960S gathers up a quartet of the über-influential sci-fi writer in a handsome Library of America edition: THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, THE THREE STIGMATA OF PALMER ELDRICH, DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? (better known as the basis for BLADE RUNNER) and UBIK. Personally, I’ve never been able to get into Dick’s style. But I’m obviously in the minority. His fans love how he toys with mind-bending plots, alternate realities and hallucinogenic events. Among them is Jonathan Lethem, who edited and provides the notes for this edition. It’s nice to see a sci-fi author being treated with such reverence from a line known for its emphasis on the literary. Presentation-wise, this is a must for the cult of P.K.D., printed on paper that will outlast you. It even comes with a built-in cloth bookmark. Classy!

Enough already. After reading SANDMAN MYSTERY THEATRE: DR. DEATH AND THE NIGHT OF THE BUTCHER – the fifth collection of the Vertigo comic –  I’m ready to declare I’d put the ’90s title up against any mystery novel. It’s just that. Damned. Good. This SMT book encompasses two complete story arcs of four issues apiece, though both fit together snugly with an underlying theme of living two lives. Wesley Dodds is the mild-mannered man who dons gas mask at night to bring down public enemies with his gas gun. This puts a serious cramp on the evolving relationship with his long-suffering gal pal, Dian Belmont, whose suspicions of Wes’ double life are raising more questions she no longer can stand to let go unanswered. Amdist all the sex and scandal, there are two strings of diabolical serial killers, as sumptuous as period mysteries should be. If you aren’t reading this, your life is worse off. You just don’t know it yet.

With Anne Rice off writing Jesus books, who will provide America with its erotic-tinged Gothic fiction? Natasha Mostert steps forward with hand raised and SEASON OF THE WITCH, about Gabriel Blackstone, a psychic hacker who falls hard for two witch sisters while investigating the disappearance of a banker’s son. The novel is an uneasy mix of magic, murder, technology, love and death – different, if nothing else. Set in the present day – witness references to everything from Guns ‘N Roses to Pringles – its self-aware hipness is off-putting, with dialogue like “whatever rubs your Buddha” rubbing the wrong way. With Gothics, the reader wants to be immersed in the world, rather than constantly jarred out of it. At least I do.

Freelance journalist Marlise Elizabeth Kast recounts her tour of duty at scandalous supermarket rag The Globe in TABLOID PRODIGY: DISHING THE DIRT, GETTING THE GOSSIP, AND SELLING MY SOUL IN THE CUTTHROAT WORLD OF HOLLYWOOD REPORTING. What’s most interesting is how tabloid “journalists” get the scoops, interviews and photos they get, which Kast details through numerous good stories, including crashing a soap star’s wedding, calling Carrie Fisher to ask about her trip to the “psycho ward,” catching Morgan Freeman with his alleged mistress, tracking down the dish on Leonardo DiCaprio’s “kinky sex life,” learning how Dolly Parton supposedly once had an affair with a 15-year-old boy. As fun and fearless as those tales are, the stress of churning out these celebrity features took their toll on Kast, and she even remains apologetic about some of her bylines. That kind of approach is refreshing, especially compared to other, far lesser tabloid tell-alls like the execrable, “funny” RABID NUN INFECTS ENTIRE CONVENT. –Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.

OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS BY THESE AUTHORS:
• SANDMAN MYSTERY THEATRE: THE SCORPION by Matt Wagner, Steven T. Seagle and Guy Davis
• A SCANNER DARKLY by Philip K. Dick