Lady in the Mist: Winter Frost: Amazon.com: Kindle Store: Upon her arrival in Shoal Harbor, Maine, Lily Jackson hears eerie moans that the locals claim are the ghostly cries of the unfortunate Breckenridge women. Running from loss and setback in Cincinnati, Lily needs the job as semi-psychiatric caregiver for Andrew Breckenridge, but the storm she has to weather from the oldest Breckenridge brother is severe. Clinton Breckenridge is a brooding man used to getting his own way, and he’s not convinced Lily is the right person to help his troubled younger brother.
Even as Lily starts picking up the pieces of Andrew’s tortured psyche and finding out his dark secrets, another mystery looms before her. Andrew’s lover has gone missing in recent months and no one knows what has happened to her, or if her voice has joined those of the other Breckenridge women. Before she knows it, Lily finds herself in danger—thrust directly into the eye of the raging storm.
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Free Today for Kindle
Lady in the Mist: Winter Frost: Amazon.com: Kindle Store: Upon her arrival in Shoal Harbor, Maine, Lily Jackson hears eerie moans that the locals claim are the ghostly cries of the unfortunate Breckenridge women. Running from loss and setback in Cincinnati, Lily needs the job as semi-psychiatric caregiver for Andrew Breckenridge, but the storm she has to weather from the oldest Breckenridge brother is severe. Clinton Breckenridge is a brooding man used to getting his own way, and he’s not convinced Lily is the right person to help his troubled younger brother.
Even as Lily starts picking up the pieces of Andrew’s tortured psyche and finding out his dark secrets, another mystery looms before her. Andrew’s lover has gone missing in recent months and no one knows what has happened to her, or if her voice has joined those of the other Breckenridge women. Before she knows it, Lily finds herself in danger—thrust directly into the eye of the raging storm.
Happy Boxing Day . . .
. . . even if nobody knows what it is or why it exists.
What Is Boxing Day? — FactMonster.com: Despite its name, Boxing Day, which is celebrated on December 26 in Great Britain, has nothing to do with pugilistic competition. Nor is it a day for people to return unwanted Christmas presents. While the exact origins of the holiday are obscure, it is likely that Boxing Day began in England during the Middle Ages.
What Is Boxing Day? — FactMonster.com: Despite its name, Boxing Day, which is celebrated on December 26 in Great Britain, has nothing to do with pugilistic competition. Nor is it a day for people to return unwanted Christmas presents. While the exact origins of the holiday are obscure, it is likely that Boxing Day began in England during the Middle Ages.
Free Today Only for Kindle
Three from Blasted Heath: The Vanity Game, Hot Wire, and The Unburied Dead.
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
Keiji Nakazawa, R. I. P.
The Japan Times Online: HIROSHIMA — Keiji Nakazawa, author of "Hadashi no Gen" ("Barefoot Gen"), an iconic comic about the 1945 Hiroshima atomic bombing, has died of lung cancer at a hospital in the city, sources said Tuesday. He was 73.
Charles Durning, R. I. P.
NYTimes.com: Charles Durning, who overcame poverty, battlefield trauma and nagging self-doubt to become an acclaimed character actor, whether on stage as Big Daddy in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” or in film as the lonely widower smitten with a cross-dressing Dustin Hoffman in “Tootsie,” died Monday in New York. He was 89. He died of natural causes, The Associated Press reported, citing Judith Moss, his agent and friend. Charles Durning may not have been a household name, but with his pugnacious features and imposing bulk he was a familiar presence in American movies, television and theater, even if often overshadowed by the headliners.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Overlooked Movies: Being There
Sometime in the late '60s I picked up a paperback copy of The Painted Bird and was bowled over by it. Later I read Steps and Being There and thought they were both great. For some reason I didn't read any of his other works, and when I saw this movie I was unaware of the plagiarism accusations that are still controversial and unresolved. I don't know or care who wrote the books I read. They're fine works, no matter who wrote them, and this is a very funny (and frightening) movie.
Peter Sellers plays Chance the Gardener. Chance has spent most of his life gardening for a very rich man and watching TV. He has no other life, which is okay with him, as he's a man of very limited intellect. When his employer dies, Chance is loosed on the world wearing a rich man's clothes and carrying his TV remote control. By chance (ha!) he's taken in by another rich man and his wife (Melvyn Douglas and Shirley Maclaine, who misunderstand his name as Chauncey Gardner. Before long, his simple conversation (all he can talk about is gardening) is being taken as metaphorical wisdom. He never pretends to be any more than he is, but people see what they want to see, and by the end of the movie he's being considered as a candidate for president.
That's the bare outline, but it's also pretty much the whole movie. Sellers is great, and so is the supporting cast. If you haven't seen it, you really should.
The final scene, one of the most memorable and most discussed in the movie, isn't in the novel, by the way.
Monday, December 24, 2012
Jack Klugman, R. I. P.
News from The Associated Press: Jack Klugman, the prolific, craggy-faced character actor and regular guy who was loved by millions as the messy one in TV's "The Odd Couple" and the crime-fighting coroner in "Quincy, M.E.," died Monday, a son said. He was 90.
It Might Be too Late to Order for Christmas
The Robert E. Howard Foundation: Now available: Back to School by Robert E. Howard. This volume presents, in black and white facsimile, all of the known, surviving school work of the author from Cross Plains, most of it never before published. Includes work from English, History, Biology, Geometry, Physics, and more. This soft cover book measures 8.5 X 11 and has 450 pages, with introduction by Rob Roehm.
Sunday, December 23, 2012
PimPage: An Occasional Feature in Which I Call Attention to Books of Interest
The Silver Alibi (A Big Earl Stark Western): James Reasoner: Amazon.com: Kindle Store: Big Earl rides again!
Earl Stark was once a fast-shooting stagecoach guard in Texas before taking up the study of law, becoming an attorney, and eventually being appointed a federal district court judge. Now he combines a keen legal mind with a frontiersman's gun-handy toughness to bring justice to the Old West.
One of New York Times bestselling author James Reasoner's most popular characters, Judge Earl Stark is back in a brand-new 27,000 word short novel full of action and mystery. THE SILVER ALIBI finds him dealing with feuding mine owners, bushwhackers, cold-blooded murder, and a wild ruckus that lands Judge Stark himself behind bars before he can nab a ruthless killer.
Earl Stark was once a fast-shooting stagecoach guard in Texas before taking up the study of law, becoming an attorney, and eventually being appointed a federal district court judge. Now he combines a keen legal mind with a frontiersman's gun-handy toughness to bring justice to the Old West. One of New York Times bestselling author James Reasoner's most popular characters, Judge Earl Stark is back in a brand-new 27,000 word short novel full of action and mystery. THE SILVER ALIBI finds him dealing with feuding mine owners, bushwhackers, cold-blooded murder, and a wild ruckus that lands Judge Stark himself behind bars before he can nab a ruthless killer.
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Saturday, December 22, 2012
Lee Dorman, R. I. P.
Rolling Stone: Lee Dorman, bassist for Iron Butterfly, died on Friday at the age of 70, the Associated Press reports. According to a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff's Department, Dorman was found dead in a vehicle on Friday morning and may have been on his way to a doctor's appointment.
Jimmy McCracklin, R. I. P.
SFGate: Jimmy McCracklin, one of the most prolific blues singers and songwriters of all time, with a recording career that spanned 1945 to 2010, died Thursday at Creekside Healthcare Center in San Pablo after a long convalescence.
Larry L. King, R. I. P.
NYTimes.com: Larry L. King, a journalist, essayist and playwright with a swaggering prose style and a rollicking personal one, who left Texas as a young man but never abandoned it in his work — turning out profiles of politicians, articles on the flaws and foibles of American culture, searching autobiographical essays and, most famously, the book for the Broadway musical “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” — died on Thursday in Washington. He was 83.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
Hat tip to Jeff Meyerson.
8 Incredible Sunken Treasures Discovered
8 Incredible Sunken Treasures Discovered: Scattered across the ocean floor, there are more than 300 million shipwrecks, containing billions of dollars worth of cargo. These are some of the best treasures that have been found.
Friday, December 21, 2012
A Kickstarter Project of Interest
There's an Alamo connection. Check it out.
PHIL COLLINS AND THE WILD FRONTIER by Ben Powell — Kickstarter
Hat tip to Tina Karelson.
PHIL COLLINS AND THE WILD FRONTIER by Ben Powell — Kickstarter
Hat tip to Tina Karelson.
Seduction of the Innocent -- Max Allan Collins
This book is set in the year 1954. I was around then. I was 12, and I was reading EC Comics. Lots of others, too, but some of the stories I saw in EC Comics have stuck with me to this very day. I can remember the panels as plainly as if I'd seen them last week. They were potent stuff, for sure. I read the newspapers in those days, too, mostly the sports pages (not much has changed with me in the last 60 years), but I was vaguely aware of the activities of Dr. Fredrick Wertham, who wrote a book with the same title as this one, and of the congressional hearings on comic books, in which America learned that comic books (especially EC Comics) were to blame for juvenile delinquency and many other assorted ills.
I was even more aware of the results of this hearing a bit later, when the "Approved by the Comics Code" seal started to appear on the comics (we never called them comics, by the way; they were "funny books" even when they weren't funny). Not long after that, I lost interest in comics. The guts had gone out of them. I moved on to the SF digests and never looked back. I was vaguely aware of the Marvel revolution in the '60s, but it was too late for me by then. My interest was finally revived the the Underground Comix in the late '60s and early '70s, but I never read comics again the way I once had.
One comic I did keep reading was Mad. Gaines quickly turned it from a comic book into a black-and-white "magazine" so he didn't have to deal with the Comics Code stuff, and somehow, although my mother tossed all my funny books, the old issues of Mad survived. I don't have issue #1, but I do have a nice little run starting with #2. I bought the paperback collections, too, and I still have the first three or four of those.
Which is all by way of introduction to this thoroughly entertaining novel by Max Allan Collins, in which Dr. Werner Fredrick appears before a congressional committee made up of the same people who questioned Wertham. So does Bob Price, whose testimony is remarkably similar to the words spoken by William Gaines when he testified before the committee in '54.
Not long afterward, Fredrick is murdered (this didn't happen to Wertham). Jack Starr gets involved because he and Maggie Starr (his stepmother) deal with comic strips through their syndication company. There are plenty of suspects, including Price. There's a comic book artist, a comics reader, a publisher, and some other social critics. All have their reasons to want Fredrick out of the way. You can play the guessing game about which real people the characters are based on, or you can go to the "Tip of the Fedora" at the end of the book, where Collins spells it out. I think many of you won't need to do that. And if you don't think this book is relevant now, you haven't been following the news lately.
Besides the dandy storytelling here, there's the Glen Orbik cover, which replicates one of the more famous EC covers, plus a lot of illustrations by Terry Beatty in the good old EC style. Lots of bang for your buck here. The book comes out in February. Be on the lookout; you don't want to miss it.
Detail and Myth: Willy Pogany's Art
AbeBooks: Detail and Myth: Willy Pogany's Art: Willy Pogany was a prolific Hungarian illustrator best-known for his pen and ink drawings and contributions to myths and fables. He belonged to booming era of illustrators which produced the likes of Edmund Dulac, Maurice and Edward Detmold and N.C. Wyeth, and followed closely on the heels of big-name pioneers like Arthur Rackham.
Forgotten Books: Worlds of Weird -- Leo Margulies, Editor
Four years ago at this same time of the year, James Reasoner talked about Worlds of Weird in his "Forgotten Books" post. He paid particular attention Seabury Quinn's "Roads." I said to myself, "Self, you have that book in an earlier edition. You should get it out and read that story." So I did. Sure, it took me four years, but I never claimed to work fast. In the introduction to "Roads," Sam Moskowitz says that it "may well prove to be the greatest adult Christmas story written by an American." He also mentions that Arkham House printed "Roads" in book form with a cover and interior illustrations by Virgil Finlay for $2.00. He goes on to say that "this collectors' and gift edition has been kept in print ever since." That statement is out of date, but you can still buy copies of the Arkham House edition. They're more than $2.00, however (unless you're Scott Cupp; see the update below). A copy of Worlds of Weird is cheaper.
As for the story itself, well, it's indeed a good one. It's a Christmas story with slashing and hacking and religion and magic, and it's great fun, indeed.
James also mentions Robert E. Howard's "The Valley of the Worm," another of the included stories, and calls it "one of REH's best yarns," a sentiment with which I agree completely. I can still remember reading the story for the first time. Great stuff.
James also lists the entire contents of the book, so if you're curious you can click the link above and see what else is there. I read "The Sapphire Goddess" by Nictzin Dyalhis the other day, and it's really in the purple high pulp style. I was reminded of A. Merritt and some of Henry Kuttner. Not for everybody, but if you're in the right mood, give it a shot.
Update: Scott Cupp over at MISSIONS UNKNOWN has a review of the Arkham House edition. Naturally Scott got his copy for a buck. Word of advice based on personal experience: Never go booking with Scott Cupp if you're of an envious nature.
Thursday, December 20, 2012
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