pornokitsch

New Releases: Horns by Joe Hill

Horns, released this March, is the heretical and daring new book from bestselling horror author Joe Hill. 

When Ig Perrish wakes up after a night of drunken self-pity, he finds a pair of enormous horns sprouting from his forehead. 

This is only the first in a series of uncomfortable transformations: people share their darkest secrets with him, he can flawlessly imitate other voices, snakes gaze at him longingly and there's even a bit of awkward fire-breathing.

Classic Covers: Mourned on a Sunday by Helen Reilly

Who doesn't love a Dell Mapback?

Underground Reading: Maisie Dobbs and Birds of a Feather by Jacqueline Winspear

I'm an avid reader of the vintage tea cozy mystery, from the inspired puzzles of Agatha Christie to the quiet grace of GK Chesterton's books to the sublime "novels-with-detective-interruptions" of Dorothy L. Sayers (my all-time favorite author).  As prolific as many of those authors were, however, they just aren't writing any more books.  So I occasionally pick up modern tea cozies, in the great good hope that I might have found another author or series to help stretch out the time in between rereading Gaudy Night.

Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs series has not proven to be such a stopgap.

Memory x Opportunity

"In six weeks, [Hard Case Crime] is going to publish Donald E. Westlake's unpublished novel, MEMORY. Both Publishers Weekly and Booklist have given it starred reviews, calling it "a significant final work from a master" and "absolutely a must-read." 

The book hits stores at the end of March -- but if you're reading this message you have a chance to get a copy sooner than that. At the start of March we're going to be sending 12 free advance copies of the book to randomly selected people from our mailing list. Interested in throwing your hat into the ring? Well, we don't need your hat -- just send your name and the address to which you'd like the book mailed if you're chosen to drawing@hardcasecrime.com before 5PM (New York time) on February 28."

  - Charles Ardai, Hard Case Crime

New Releases: The Bronx Kill by Peter Milligan

The Bronx Kill is now the third I've reviewed in the fledgling Vertigo Crime series - an ambitious effort to tell standalone crime stories using the graphic novel format. The other two (Ian Rankin's foray into Hellblazer and Jason Starr's The Chill) were attempts by celebrated authors to write for the comic format. I didn't find them spectacular successes - if anything, I think they helped disprove the theory that 'just because you're a good author, you can write for comics'. 

In The Bronx Kill, Milligan, a tried & true comic book writer, shows them how it's done. 

Even a broken clock is right twice a day. 

Classic Covers: Private Eyeful by Henry Kane

Her curve-hugging, low-cut top reveals everything except her beautiful brain. Seriously, it's not there.

Stop looking.

Private Eyeful by Henry Kane.

More lists: Top 100 Hard-Boiled Characters (from 2002). Love the diversity - and seeing modern favorites Hap Collins/Leonard Pine & Nick Stefanos both tied at #14. A few baffling selections (Hannibal Lecter is hard-boiled?), but overall, tough to complain.

Graphic Novel Round-Up: The Power of Books

Three graphic novels reviewed. The golden thread this time? Books. The power of books. The strange call to collecting books. And even the danger of hiring a "book" author to write a graphic novel...

Unwritten (Carey / Gross): The team from Lucifer team up in this new, slightly post-modern fantasy. Tom Taylor lives in the shadow of his missing father - but even more in the shadow of "Tommy Taylor", his father's Potter-esque fictional creation. 

As things start to get a bit weird (serial killers, death threats, magical tattoos...), Tom Taylor starts out on a quest to figure out what's really going on. He doesn't get too far in this first collection, but the set-up is very intriguing. 

A bit of Fables (what with the "power of stories" shtick) and a bit of The Magicians (with its combination of angst and fantasy). The lead characters are, so far, slightly forgettable - with the absent father being the most appealing of the lot. However, the story is great - and the occasional creative segue to "Tommy Taylor books" (or Rudyard Kipling's diary) is incredibly well done. Carey and Gross should settle in for a long and fascinating run. One to keep following. (7/10)

Two more below the jump - the lastest from Vertigo Crime and a classic from Seth.

Underground Reading: The California Voodoo Game by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes

 On a personal note on the progression of time, I remember picking up my copy of The California Voodoo Game from the second-hand section of Rainy Day Books (Fairway, Kansas) and reading it while my mom was at work. I was, at most, 13. 

This was the first book I ever read in the Dream Park series - and it lead to some pretty wild speculation about my own future career. Somehow I parlayed my skills at math (awesome) and tennis (not so hot) to become a fearsome warrior the likes of which the world had never seen... 

Two decades later, I suck at math, Rainy Day Books is on Twitter and The California Voodoo Game is as wildly entertaining as ever.