INCOMING

It has been a quiet week.  My back is feeling better, despite last Thursday when we brought the kids into Tyson's Corner for a book signing by "Erin Hunter."  Hunter is the author of the very popular  juvenile series Warriors and Seekers.  (Think tribes of cats and tribes of bears.)  The two series were created by Victoria Holmes, who oversees both series.  To help with the workload, three other writers were brought in (four other writers, if you count the graphic novels).  There have been umpty millions of Hunter books sold; half (I swear) on Thursday night.  The "Erin Hunter" who was at the signing was Vicky Holmes and she was perfectly charming and openly honest.  (She starts each Warriors book by deciding what cat to kill and how -- she's allergic to cats, you see, and doesn't really like them.)  Anyway, there were thousands of gibbering children at the signing, climbing over the shelves, biffing siblings with soda cups, and doing all the obnoxious things kids do while under the doting eyes of parents.  Let me add that both Mark and Erin did none of those things [so sayeth the prideful grandfather].  We had to get there at  4:30 in order to get tickets at 5:00 for a 7:00 signing.  We arrived slightly after a busload of kids shipped in from Pennsylvania.  It's a two-hour drive for us each way, so we started out at 2:30 and didn't get home until 10:30.  The kids were happy -- far happier than my back was.  I took it easy for the next couple of days, until overwhelmed by guilt, I did our taxes.  So it's been a fairly light week for book-buying -- at least for myself.

• Ben Bova, Mercury.  SF.
• "Joe Bob Briggs" (John Bloom), Profoundly Disturbing:  Shocking Movies That Changed History!  Joe Bob takes on fifteen cult films, including Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS.
• Leonard Carpenter, Conan the Raider.  The barbarian who just will not die.
• Jeffrey Carver, The Rapture Effect.  SF.
• Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, editors, Sirens and Other Demons.  Erotic horror; twenty-two stories.
• [Detective Book Club], omnibus of three novels:  Gideon's Fog by "J. J. Marric" (John Creasey), Alive and Dead by E. X. (Elizabeth) Ferrars, and The Big Call by John Creasey as "Gordon Ashe."  The last is part of the Patrick Dawlish/Crimehaters series.
• Steve Perry, Conan the Formidable.  One of some two dozen Conan pastiches (see Leonard Carpenter, above) published by Tor.
• "Dodge Tyler" (evidently John Edward Ames), Dan'l Boone:  The Lost Wilderness Tales:  Taos Death Cry.  Number eight (of eleven) in the western series.

     And on the e-book front:

• Kevin J. Anderson, Tau Ceti.
• Douglas R. Brown, Tamed.
• Robert Brumm, Windigo Soul.
• Lee Goldberg, The Jury Series.
• Timothy Hallinan, The Four Last Things.
• Elizabeth Massie, Aberrations:  Horror Stories.
• Richard McManus, The Chip-Head Apocalypse.
• John Jackson Miller, Star Wars:  Lost Tribe of the Sith:  Secrets.
• Scott Nicholson, Write Good or Die.
• Darren Pillsbury, Imaginary Friends.
• Anthony J. Rapino, Welcome to Moon Hill.
• Sam Winston, The Mechanist, Stories, and What Came After.