The Empty Badge (Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles Book 8) - Kindle edition by Wayne D. Dundee. Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com. It's been weeks since Cash Laramie, the famed "Outlaw Marshal," has been heard from. Meanwhile, at the Federal Marshal headquarters in Cheyenne, Wyoming, some disturbing reports are starting to filter in about the notorious Driscoll Gang rapidly hitting a series of banks, allegedly with the aid of a badge-wearing accomplice claiming to be Laramie. Can it be true? Can it be that the lawman with the hair-trigger temper and the mile-wide independent streak has finally gone completely rogue?
The truth is seldom easy to find. And on the lonely, twisting trails of northwestern Wyoming in the 1880s, it was often lost forever. But every now and then, when those dusty trails converged in certain unexpected ways, answers were revealed and justice was delivered in a blaze of gunfire.
This novella first appeared in the short story collection Trails of the Wild: Seven Tales of the Old West, published by BEAT to a PULP in 2013.
Otherwise: Lou Antonelli has begun a new blog where he'll be reprinting his previously published alternate history stories. The blog is Otherwise, and it "kicks off with a reprint of Lou Antonelli's "A Rocket for the Republic", originally published in the Sept. 2005 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction." You can find it at the link.
John Dexter (Robert Silverberg), Stripper!, Nightstand, 1962
NYTimes.com: Cosimo Matassa, whose used-record business in New Orleans led him to sell new records, which led him to open a tiny studio that helped jump-start rock ’n’ roll by recording early hits by the likes of Fats Domino and Little Richard, died on Thursday in New Orleans. He was 88.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Amazon.com: Chasing the Queen of Sassi eBook: Paul Di Filippo: Kindle Store: A science fiction story set in one of the oldest cities in the world.
After his wife's death, Rupert decides to change his life and start your journey: he wants to see Matera again, and ends up loving it so much that he decides to move there. But the city is mysterious: who is the beautiful Daeria Bruno that appears and disappears without a trace? And how will the cucibocca's curse affect his life? In a dizzying series of time travels, Rupert will reveal legendary secrets, being at the center of a timeless story.
Highly recommended!
The Bone Orchard (The Gin Palace Trilogy Book 2) - Kindle edition by Daniel Judson. Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.: Caught up in a blood feud with Southampton’s chief of police, one-time PI Declan “Mac” MacManus must these days tread lightly. Working for minimum wage as a dishwasher, Mac is too busy making ends meet to find trouble—that is until a power-player named Frank Gannon approaches him with a job his conscience won’t let him refuse. And when that job sets him up to witness a back-road car crash—a crash that was clearly no accident—Mac must once again choose between taking action or letting the innocent suffer. As he follows a trail of clues, dodging enemies, old and new, Mac struggles to uncover a truth that could very well bring an end to all his troubles—and may also hold the shocking answer to a haunting question about his own tragic past.
News9.com - Oklahoma City, OK: TUTTLE, Oklahoma - A Tuttle woman is charged with assault and battery after attacking her husband with a metal pipe and then running over a family dog.
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Don Elliott (Robert Silverberg), Convention Girl, Nightstand, 1961.
Note: I'm not responsible for sentence structure in headlines.
Caught on camera: Thief steals alligators in his pants
Lip-Syncs in Film and Television: An Essential List
This "banned" clip wasn't included, possibly for good reason. (Lip-synch begins at about 2:35.)
Examiner.com: Bob Crewe, who was the songwriter and record producer responsible for many of the 1960s hits by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, died on Tuesday at the age of 83, according to WFJA radio station’s web site on Thursday. Confirmed by Crewe’s brother, Danny, he passed away peacefully in Scarborough, Maine. Crewe became well-known again in recent years as a real-life character in the Broadway hit “Jersey Boys” which was the story about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons which was turned into a motion picture.
Being interested in paperbacks, I naturally had to have a copy of this book. My primary collecting (or accumulating) interest is in U.S. paperbacks, but I do have some from Australia, mainly because the Original Novels Foundation reprinted some of my favorite writers in digest form under several imprints, primarily Phantom Books and Original Novels. Sometimes covers similar to the U. S. editions were used. Sometimes covers from U.S editions got put on different titles. Anyway, I like to have the variant printings if they're not too expensive. Unfortunately collectors have driven up the prices on the Australian digests, so I don't often buy them now. And if they have to be shipped from Australia, the postage costs are sometimes staggering.
So instead of having most of the books, I have this nice reference volume, which is illustrated with many B&W cover scans and two pages of color scans. Some of the more intriguing covers are from books I've never seen, or in some cases never heard of. That just adds to the fun.
The book was originally published by Gary Lovisi under his Gryphon Books imprint, and it's hard to come by now. If you run across a cheap copy, grab it.
Variety: Richard Kiel, who most famously played Jaws in two James Bond films starring Roger Moore, “The Spy Who Loved Me” and “Moonraker,” and also appeared in Adam Sandler comedy “Happy Gilmore,” died Wednesday afternoon in a hospital in Fresno, Calif., three days shy of his 75th birthday.
John B. Thompson & Jack Woodford, Hitch-Hike Hussy, Beacon, 1953
NYTimes.com: Marvin Barnes, one of basketball’s most talented and defiantly self-indulgent players, whose career dissolved in a haze of drugs and alcohol, died on Monday in Providence, R.I. He was 62.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Graham Joyce (1954-2014): Author Graham Joyce, 59, died September 9, 2014. He was diagnosed with aggressive lymphoma in 2013 and had been undergoing treatment. Joyce is best known for his acclaimed award-winning novels, which cross the borderlines of fantasy, horror, dark fantasy, and the paranormal.
Orrie Hitt, Wild Oats, Beacon 1958
Flavorwire: The Forgotten TV Roles of 15 Hollywood Legends
You've heard this story before: "It was a wandering daughter job." This is an excellent version of that story. This time the wandering daughter is Kristin VanDorn (Ilah Davis, in what might have been her only movie role), who's been brought up n the rigid Calvinst home of her father, Jake (George C. Scott). When she goes missing on a church-sponsored trip to California, Jake hires a sleazy P.I. named Mast (Peter Doyle) to find her.
What Mast finds is a hardcore porn film starring Kristen. Was there ever anybody better at playing a tightly wound guy than Scott? The scene where Mast shows Jake the film is just one of several in the movie that prove Scott was a masterful actor. The scene is so famous that it's become part of an Internet meme, as in George C. Scott watches Star Wars on Blu-Ray or George C. Scott watches the Modern Warfare 3 trailer.
Naturally Jake doesn't consider that his daughter might be appearing in a hardcore film of her own volition. He believes she's been kidnapped and forced into the role, so he goes to Calfifornia to find her. He travels through the belly of the beast in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego. Along the way he enlists the help of a woman named Niki (Season Hubley), who's in the porn game herself. There are some fine scenes between the two of them, complete opposites that they are, that really bring out their characters.
The rest of the plot and its unfolding, I'll leave it to you to find out. This movie was a real shocker to me when I saw it long ago, 1979 or '80. I'm sure it's lost a lot of the shock value by now, but parts of it would still be tough to watch. Scott is really good. So are Boyle and Hubley.
The movie was written and directed by Paul Schrader, whose brother, Leonard, wrote the novelization. I read that one when it came out, and I'm sure I still have a copy of it somewhere. If I ever run across it, I'm going to read it again.
If you want to read about what life was like in the late 1950s to the early '70s, you could go to books written during that time (you need search no further than John D. MacDonald). Or you could read Ed Gorman's Sam McCain series. Gorman has something that that MacDonald didn't: perspective. Gorman's had time to think about what happened and to reflect on it for a good many years. And that's just one thing that makes this series so interesting. There are plenty of other things, too.
Riders on the Storm (all the books except the first in the series take their titles from songs popular at the time) is set in 1971. At the end of the previous book (Bad Moon Rising), McCain has been drafted and appears likely to be shipped off to Vietnam. That doesn't happen. He's in a terrible car crash in boot camp and then is hospitalized for a long time. He's mostly recovered now, and sure enough, he gets involved in another murder investigation. His friend Will Cullen, a returned vet, is accused of the murder of a political candidate, Steve Donovan, another vet. Donovan's a war hawk; Cullen's a member of an anti-war veteran's group and has been severely beaten by Donovan for that reason. It's no surprise that Cullen is the primary suspect. He's just about catatonic, however, and isn't any help in the investigation that McCain undertakes.
Pretty much the whole city of Black River Falls believes that Cullen is guilty. The police chief surely seems to. Not many people want McCain to find out if Cullen is innocent. They'd be happy to see him convicted.
As usual in Gorman's books, the characters are a lot more complex than they first appear. As soon as you think you know them, you find out that you don't. People are never simple black-or-white creations. They're complex mixtures who will leave you thinking about them when you lay the book aside. Also as usual, the writing is clear and clean and sharp with astute observations about the times, the politics of the era, and human nature. It's enough to make you envious if you're a writer and prone to that sort of thing. Not that I am, of course.
When I read Bad Moon Rising, I thought it would be the last book in the series. I was really glad to discover that it wasn't, and I hope there will be many more to come. This as an excellent series, and I highly recommend all the books in it, including this one.
New York Post: An elderly church deacon driving to Sunday Mass with a plaque on her windshield that says, “God is my co-pilot,” fatally struck a homeless man in Brooklyn, witnesses and officials said.
Scott O'Neill, Martian Sexpot, Jade, 1963
The Five-Two: Charles Rammelkamp "911"
TBO.com, The Tampa Tribune and The Tampa Times: CLEARWATER — A 52-year-old woman faces a slew of charges, including one for attempted murder, after she sprayed her estranged husband in the face with hair spray, and attacked him with a hammer, knives and a screwdriver, the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office said.
Hat tip to Walter Satterthwait.
Margaret Atwood's new work will remain unseen for a century: Novelist says it is 'delicious' to be first contributor to the Future Library, which will compile 100 texts for publication in 2114
Edgar Rice Burroughs, A Fighting Man of Mars, New English Library, 1973
The Empty Badge (Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles Book 8) - Kindle edition by Wayne D. Dundee. Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com. It's been weeks since Cash Laramie, the famed "Outlaw Marshal," has been heard from. Meanwhile, at the Federal Marshal headquarters in Cheyenne, Wyoming, some disturbing reports are starting to filter in about the notorious Driscoll Gang rapidly hitting a series of banks, allegedly with the aid of a badge-wearing accomplice claiming to be Laramie. Can it be true? Can it be that the lawman with the hair-trigger temper and the mile-wide independent streak has finally gone completely rogue? 
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