http://www.bookgasm.com reading material to get excited about Tue, 13 May 2008 11:29:46 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Regardless of what you think of it, the new-in-paperback Chuck Palahniuk's RANT: AN ORAL BIOGRAPHY OF BUSTER CASEY will screw with your head. And I don't just mean shock you, but really mess with it. It'll cut around your entire scalp, scoop out your brain and wring it dry before ... http://www.bookgasm.com/reviews/horror/rant/ With the political season not taking a break, Ed Gorman's mystery SLEEPING DOGS is a perfect respite from the headlines. Longtime political advisor Dev Conrad works for Sen. Warren Nichols, who is trying to hold onto his seat while his opponent Jim Lake seems to be gaining ground. The novel ... http://www.bookgasm.com/reviews/thrillers/sleeping-dogs/ She's back, pimpin' out notable new releases to place on your radar! STAR WARS: LEGACY OF THE FORCE — INVINCIBLE by Troy Denning — The rebel cause is losing ground under the twin blows of Admiral Gilad Pellaeon’s assassination and the death of Mara Jade Skywalker. At the same time, the ... http://www.bookgasm.com/previews/book-whore-51308/ 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 ... http://www.bookgasm.com/reviews/horror/every-sigh-the-end/ 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 ... http://www.bookgasm.com/reviews/thrillers/the-moneypenny-diaries/ All the news that's fit to capsulize! 'SNUFF' FILMS To promote Chuck Palahniuk's upcoming novel SNUFF, the book's heroine — aging porn queen Cassie Wright — has her own MySpace page. I abhor MySpace, but at least it includes a hilarious faux trailer (more suggestive than explicit) for one of Cassie's '70s ... http://www.bookgasm.com/news/newsgasm-51208/ With INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL mere days away from hitting the multiplex, DK Publishing has kindly provided us with five copies of INDIANA JONES: THE ULTIMATE GUIDE to give away! This book is packed with a wealth of information from all four movies — about ... http://www.bookgasm.com/contests/win-a-copy-of-indiana-jones-the-ultimate-guide/ 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 ... http://www.bookgasm.com/reviews/horror/serpent-girl/ 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 ... http://www.bookgasm.com/reviews/thrillers/random-victim/ 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. ... http://www.bookgasm.com/reviews/comics/out-of-picture/ 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 ... http://www.bookgasm.com/reviews/sci-fi/the-digital-plague/ 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 ... http://www.bookgasm.com/reviews/thrillers/quickgasm-5808/ 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, ... http://www.bookgasm.com/reviews/thrillers/diana-prince-wonder-woman-%e2%80%94-volume-one/ 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 ... http://www.bookgasm.com/reviews/mystery/the-murderer-vine/ 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, ... http://www.bookgasm.com/reviews/thrillers/bullets-broads-blackmail-bombs-high-adventure/ 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, ... http://www.bookgasm.com/reviews/thrillers/the-price-of-blood/ 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. ... http://www.bookgasm.com/reviews/entertainment/no-regrets/ 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 ... http://www.bookgasm.com/reviews/comics/metronome/ 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 ... http://www.bookgasm.com/reviews/anthologies/paper-cities-an-anthology-of-urban-fantasy/ 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 ... http://www.bookgasm.com/reviews/horror/the-vanishing/