She’s back, pimpin’ out notable new releases to place on your radar!
DEVIL MAY CARE by Sebastian Faulks — The execution of an Algerian drug runner in Paris leads to the return of Agent 007 to the world of intrigue and danger where he is most at home. The head of MI6, M, assigns him to shadow the mysterious Dr. Julius Gorner, a power-crazed pharmaceutical magnate, whose wealth is exceeded only by his greed. Gorner has lately taken a disquieting interest in opiate derivatives, both legal and illegal, and this urgently bears looking into. Bond finds a willing accomplice in the shape of a glamorous Parisian named Scarlett Papava. He will need her help in a life-and-death struggle with his most dangerous adversary yet, as a chain of events threaten to lead to global catastrophe.
LAMPLIGHTER: MONSTER BLOOD TATTOO, BOOK 2 by D.M. Cornish — Orphan Rossamünd Bookchild has been sworn into the Emperor’s service, to light the lamps along the highways and protect travelers from the ferocious bogles that live in the wild. But he’s found it no easier to fit in with the lamplighters than he did with the foundlings — always too small and too meek — and his loneliness continues no matter how hard he tries to succeed. But when a haughty young girl, a member of a suspiciously regarded society of all-women monster hunters is forced upon the lamplighters for training, Rossamünd is no longer the most despised soul around. As Rossamünd begins to make new friends in the dangerous world of the Half-Continent, he also seems to make more enemies, finding himself pushed toward a destiny that he could never have imagined.
COSMOS INCORPORATED by Maurice G. Dantec — Fifty years of warfare, disease and strife have decimated the world’s population. Those who remain are motes in the mind of UniWorld, a superstate that monitors humanity via a vast computer metastructure that catalog everything about everyone on the planet: race, religion, genetic codes, even fantasies. Those who have the means escape UniWorld’s tight control through the Orbital Ring. Though his memory has been wiped clean and his history fabricated in order to pass through UniWorld’s check points, Sergei Diego Plotkin knows his name and his mission: to murder a man in the city of Grand Junction, a Vegas-like outpost that is home to the private launching pad to the Ring. But this sense of purpose is compromised by random memories that flash through Plotkin’s brain. England and Argentina. The shores of Lake Baikal. And something else. Something indescribable.
THE MAN WHO TURNED INTO HIMSELF by David Ambrose — In the middle of an important meeting, businessman Rick Hamilton has a terrible premonition: His wife is about to die. Racing to save her, he finds her lifeless body in the road, her car crushed by a truck. The light dwindles from his eyes … and then she is alive again, begging for help, and Rick Hamilton no longer is himself, but another man with another life, and a different history. Based on the “many worlds” theory of quantum physics, which posits the existence of parallel universes, THE MAN WHO TURNED INTO HIMSELF is a suspenseful, mind-bending mystery that addresses our deepest questions about reality, death, identity and the mind.
PROMISE OF THE WOLVES by Dorothy Hearst — The legends say that when the blood of the Wide Valley wolves mingles with the blood of the wolves outside the valley, the wolf who bears that blood will stand forever between two worlds. It is said that such a wolf holds the power to destroy not only her pack, but all of wolfkind. That’s the real reason Ruuqo came to kill my brother, my sisters, and me in the faint light of the early morning four weeks after we were born. Wolves hate killing pups. It’s considered unnatural and repulsive, and most wolves would rather chew off their own paws than hurt a pup. Ruuqo was only doing his duty.
PLAGUE SHIP by Clive Cussler with Jack du Brul — The Oregon is a covert ship completely dilapidated on the outside but, on the inside, packed with sophisticated weaponry and intelligence-gathering equipment. Captained by the rakish, one-legged Juan Cabrillo and manned by a crew of former military and spy personnel, it is a private enterprise, available for any government agency that can afford it. The crew has just completed a top-secret mission against Iran, when they come across a cruise ship adrift in the sea. Hundreds of bodies litter its deck, and as Cabrillo tries to determine what happened, explosions rack the length of the ship. Barely able to escape with his own life and that of the liner’s sole survivor, Cabrillo finds himself plunged into a mystery as intricate — and as perilous — as any he has ever known, and pitted against a cult with monstrously lethal plans for the human race … plans he may already be too late to stop.
WHEN YOU ARE ENGULFED IN FLAMES by David Sedaris — David Sedaris’ ability to transform the mortification of everyday life into wildly entertaining art is elevated to wilder heights in his sixth essay collection, culminating in an account of his venture to Tokyo in order to quit smoking. Trying to make coffee when the water is shut off, David considers using the water in a vase of flowers and his chain of associations takes him from the French countryside to a hilariously uncomfortable memory of buying drugs in a mobile home in rural North Carolina. In essay after essay, Sedaris proceeds from bizarre conundrums of daily life — having a lozenge fall from your mouth into the lap of a fellow passenger on a plane or armoring the windows with LP covers to protect the house from neurotic songbirds — to the most deeply resonant human truths.
WACKY PACKAGES by The Topps Company — Wacky Packages — a series of collectible stickers featuring parodies of consumer products and well-known brands and packaging — were first produced by Topps company in 1967, then revived in 1973 for a highly successful run. In fact, for the first two years they were published, Wacky Packages were the only Topps product to achieve higher sales than their flagship line of baseball cards. Known affectionately among collectors as “Wacky Packs,” as a creative force with artist Art Spiegelman, the stickers were illustrated by such notable comics artists as Kim Deitch, Bill Griffith, Jay Lynch and Norm Saunders. This first-ever collection of Series One through Series Seven (from 1973 and 1974) celebrates the 35th anniversary of Wacky Packages and is sure to amuse collectors and fans young and old.
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I hope Mr. Sedaris and / or his publisher gave credit to Vincent van Gogh for the cover art, Skull With Burning Cigarette, for it is his work. Vincent labored without success as an artist. His works explode upon the world after his death, and one even winds up on a book cover that deals with the absurdities of life.