Wolf Creek: Massacre! - Kindle edition by Ford Fargo, Jerry Guin, Jackson Lowry, Bill Crider, Charles Steel, Troy D. Smith. Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.: Welcome to Wolf Creek.
Here you will find many of your favorite authors, working together as Ford Fargo to weave a complex and textured series of Old West adventures like no one has ever seen.
Fort Braxton has a temporary new commander, vainglorious Major Joab Putnam, whose determination to win personal glory will endanger the fragile peace the army has made with the Kiowas… and put the people of Wolf Creek in harm’s way.
Sun Sentinel: Police K9 attacks cop, doughnut shop worker
Penis picture provoked assault: Drunken Donna Hamer didn’t see anything funny about it, started calling Rick Scherzo “gay” and battered him with a wooden kitchen roll holder. She had sunk her teeth into his hands and threatened him with his own 12-inch chef’s knife, even though he had told her the picture was just a joke.
Purple Clover: Winning an Academy Award doesn't necessarily mean that a film or actor was the best – as seen here in 12 of the most egregious Oscar mistakes of all time
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Arthur MacArthur, Aphrodite's Lover, Universal Giant, 1953
Beating the Bushes - Kindle edition by Christine Matthews. Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.: Two fathers. One missing boy. A friendship that binds the two men, even beyond death.
When fifteen year old Stevie Kracher goes missing, volunteers descend on a small Missouri town to join the search. One of those volunteers is Vincent Lloyd, whose six-year-old little girl had disappeared three years earlier. When her body was finally found, Vince became the prime suspect. Now he sees this new abduction as a chance to redeem himself, and to help save a child.
Baylor Kracher is frantic to find his son. Nothing this devastating has ever happened to him; when he meets Vince he's found the only person he believes might understands his terror. Working with an Internet search group, fighting an aggressive reporter who's convinced that Vince killed his daughter, neither man will give an inch. But are they too late? And if they succeed, are they prepared for what they might find?
Hartford Courant: A 47-year old Stamford man flew into a rage and began yelling and throwing things around a local salon because he did not like his haircut, according to police.
Read the lost Sherlock Holmes story found in an attic: Revealed for the first time, here is the short Sherlock Holmes story written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in an effort to save his favourite bridge in Selkirk
Kristine Kathryn Rusch is a remarkable writer and an amazingly prolific one. She's written crime novels, science fiction novels, fantasy novels, and romance novels (and these are just the ones I know about) under her own and other names. She's written dozens of short stories. She's won awards in just about all those fields I mentioned. What she's doing now, however, is unprecedented, as far as I know. I reviewed one of the Retrieval Artist novels in her Anniversary Day saga a couple of years ago. Then the books stopped. There was apparently a good reason for that. She's decided to release the next six books in the series on a monthly schedule, beginning with A Murder of Clones last month. Has anyone ever tried something like this before? Instead of waiting a year or so for the next book in a series to appear as I did after Blowback, you have to wait only a month. You can see the books and the schedule here if you're interested. Every book I've read in the series has been a good one. They're SF but with a strong mystery element, so you might want to give these a try if you haven't already. They're best read in order, and maybe you'll be hooked.
Hector France, Musk, Hashish and Blood, Avon, 1951
When Steve Lewis reviewed this book on Mystery*File, he guaranteed that the ending would please any fan or noirish fiction. Having had the book on my shelves for 40 years or so yet never having read it, I figured I'd give it a try. After all, it was guaranteed, and Steve and I often agree about books.
We agree about this one, too. It's a coming-of-age novel and a crime novel all in one. Young Bill Owens, just out of high school and hitching his way to California for a job, gets a ride with a lovely young blonde named Alma, who's about four years older than he is and who is not what she seems to be, at least not what she seems to Bill. We readers are in on the plot, and we know that Alma's got a trunk full of cash from an armored car robbery that didn't go off as planned (depending on whose plan you mean; do fictional armored car robberies ever go off as planned?).
Alma sees Bill as an opportunity. The cops are looking for her, but with him along, she's part of a couple. They're not looking for a couple. She offers to give him a ride all the way to California. She also tells him numerous lies.
The plot twists and turns along because the cops aren't the only ones after Alma, as you may have guessed. Some very bad guys want that money. There's a fairly incredible part in the middle of the book that had me shaking my head a bit, but it's forgivable to me because it involves a hand-painted tie. Ah, hand-painted ties. How long has it been since you've seen or read about one of those? Well, that's too long. But I digress. Along the way, Bill falls for Alma, and she appears to be falling for him, as well. But is she?
After a number of double- and triple-crosses we get the answer to that question, and Bill's done a good bit of growing up. I'm not going to spoil the ending for you, but [SPOILER ALERT] then again maybe I am. In a norish novel, as you know, things don't usually end well [END OF SPOILER ALERT].
Take Me As I Am might not be among the best of the Gold Medals, but it's right up there. Check it out.
Flavorwire: Harris Wittels, a rising young talent in Hollywood, died on Thursday�of a potential drug overdose, TMZ reports. He was 30 years old. He had been an executive producer on Parks and Recreation, and his previous credits included work as a writer on The Sarah Silverman Program, Secret Girlfriend, and Eastbound & Down. Wittels had been open about his difficulties with addiction, and he had been to rehab twice.
Li'l Tom and the Pussyfoot Detective Bureau: The Case of the Parrots Desaparecidos - Kindle edition by Angela Crider Neary. Children Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.: Someone is stealing the parrots of Telegraph Hill! San Francisco is plagued with a rash of exotic birdnappings, and it's up to Li'l Tom and Lola of the Pussyfoot Detective Bureau to track down the culprits and put an end to this sinister scheme. With the help of a motley crew of cats, one rat, and a dog, they'll venture into the dangerous back alleys of Chinatown to rescue the brilliantly plumaged captives!
LI'L TOM AND THE PUSSYFOOT DETECTIVE BUREAU: THE CASE OF THE PARROTS DESAPARECIDOS is a whimsical, all-ages mystery featuring a pair of charming feline detectives. Packed with action, humor, colorful characters, and vivid settings, it's a delightful reading experience for young and old!
CBS Sacramento: Authorities say a Patterson man is under arrest after he allegedly bit off his mother’s ear.
StoryBundle: Welcome to StoryBundle! As the temperature outside ranges from chilly to frigid, there's no better activity than to hole up indoors with some great reads. Enter The Cozy Mystery Bundle. A total of fourteen titles (seven books and two more boxed sets) are made up of perennial favorites like Bill Crider and Ed Gorman, as well as some new and rising stars you're sure to love. All these wonderful titles are curated by Patricia Lee Macomber, and you can read more about the bundle here, or you can click on each book cover to see a preview and reviews.
Robert C. Du Soe, The Devil Thumbs a Ride, Avon, 1949
Business Insider: Here's The Most Affluent Town In Every State
LA Times: Movita Castaneda, a movie actress who married Marlon Brando in 1960 and had two children with him, has died in a Los Angeles rehabilitation center. She was believed to be 98.
Mickey Spillane, Vengeance Is Mine, Signet, 1953
The Washington Post: Arnaud de Borchgrave, who interviewed statesmen and despots across time zones and war zones as a swashbuckling foreign correspondent for Newsweek magazine, and who later led the Washington Times as editor during the newspaper’s early years, died Feb. 15 at a hospice in the District. He was 88.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
AbeBooks: The Queen of Crime Writing - Agatha Christie: “Anyway (poetry) is not the most important thing in life, is it? Frankly, I'd much rather lie in a hot bath sucking boiled sweets and reading Agatha Christie, which is just exactly what I intend to do as soon as I get home.” -- Dylan Thomas
Crime, murder, the Orient Express, Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot - these are all terms synonymous with the queen of crime writing, Agatha Christie. Born on September 15, 1890, Christie grew up in Torquay, Devon, where she enjoyed a happy childhood.
Maybe The Man in the High Castle isn't an overlooked pilot. Maybe all of you saw it, but since I haven't seen much discussion of it on blogs, I thought I'd at least mention it. It's based on Philip K. Dick's novel of the same name. Since I read book well over 40 years ago, I don't remember a lot about it. I remember enough, however, to know that the premise of the proposed series is the same as that of the novel: the U.S. has lost WWII. As a result, the western U.S. is ruled by the Japanese, while the eastern half belongs to the Germans. There's a neutral strip somewhere around the middle.
In the proposed series, it's about 15 years after the war, and it's clear that there's an underground resistance that's fighting in both halves of the country. One of the keys is a film called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. It shows an America that won the war, and some people believe that it's true, not a hoax. I recall that in Dick's novel, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy is a book, not a film, but I don't mind the change. It's a lot easier to show a film than passages from a book.
The look of the pilot is great, there was a nice twist at the conclusion, and the cast does a good job. There's a lot about the cops and the enforcers of both the Germans and the Japanese, which I don't remember from the book. It could be that the series (if it gets made) will become just another us-against-them thriller, which the book was not. I'll probably still watch it though, because I'm curious to see where it goes.
You can watch the pilot here if you haven't seen it.
Yahoo News: NEW YORK (AP) — Singer-songwriter Lesley Gore, who topped the charts in 1963 at age 16 with her epic song of teenage angst, "It's My Party," and followed it up with the hits "Judy's Turn to Cry," and the feminist anthem "You Don't Own Me," died Monday. She was 68.
Music News - Digital Spy: Sam Andrew - founding member and guitarist of Big Brother and the Holding Company - has passed away.
Mickey Spillane, One Lonely Night, Signet, 1954
Presidents' Day (Washington's Birthday) in United States: Washington's Birthday, also known as Presidents' Day, is a federal holiday held on the third Monday of February. The day honors presidents of the United States, including George Washington, the USA's first president.
Suave French actor Louis Jourdan dies at 93: Paris (France) (AFP) – Veteran French actor Louis Jourdan, who starred in “Gigi” and “Octopussy”, has died in Los Angeles at the age of 93, his official biographer Olivier Minne said Sunday.
Bookmarks: Philip Levine, the former poet laureate of the United States whose poems dignified working-class life, died on Saturday at his home in Fresno. He was 87 years old.
Blood and Gold (Outlaw Ranger Book 3) - Kindle edition by James Reasoner. Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.: A savage ambush...twenty men slaughtered in a brutal massacre...a fortune in gold stolen! This was a crime big enough and bold enough to bring the Outlaw Ranger to the wide-open settlement of Cemetery Butte, where a powerful mining tycoon rode roughshod over any who dared to oppose him. But even that atrocity doesn't prepare G.W. Braddock for the evil that awaits him, stretching bloody hands out of the past.
Gritty, compelling, and packed with action, the saga of the Outlaw Ranger continues in BLOOD AND GOLD, the third exciting installment in this series from bestselling author James Reasoner.
Carl Jonas, Snowslide, Dell, 1953
Wolf Creek: Massacre! - Kindle edition by Ford Fargo, Jerry Guin, Jackson Lowry, Bill Crider, Charles Steel, Troy D. Smith. Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.: Welcome to Wolf Creek. 
