THE INCOMING THAT ATE SOUTHERN MARYLAND

Some pretty good stuff this week, including the Adams' anthologies, the Jackson collection, the Dell Ten-Cent, and the coffe-table reference books.   You cannot hear me, but inside I'm going, 'Squee!"

• John Joseph Adams, editor, The Living Dead and The Living Dead 2.  Horror anthologies.  Almost a 1000 pages of zombie badness spread over 78 stories.
• Lawrence Alexander, Speak Softly.  A Theodore Roosevelt mystery.
• Maya Angelou, Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now.  Brief pieces of advise, wisdom, and observation from an admired author.
• "Piers Anthony" (Piers Anthony Jacobs), Firefly.  Billed as "a novel of ecstatic terror."
• Philip Athans, editor, Realms of the Dragons.  Gaming (Forgotten Worlds) tie-in anthology with fourteen stories taking place in the Year of the Rogue Dragon universe.
• Marian Babson, Whiskers and Smoke (aka, A Trail of Ashes).  Mystery.  I've been hooked on Babson  for some time now.  Her books are consistently readable.
• Keith Baker, The City of Towers.  Gaming (Eberron) tie-in fantasy; Book I in The Dreaming dark series.
• Faith Baldwin, Bride for Broadway.  A Dell Ten-Cent Book (#5) -- perhaps it should have been a Dell Fifty-Cent Book, because that's what I paid for it.  Baldwin was a very popular author in her time, but I've never read her before (although a book she co-authored with Achmed Abdullah is currently on Mount TBR).
• "L. A. Banks" (Leslie Esdaile Banks), Minion.  Horror, a Vampire Huntress novel, the first of a series.
• Stephen Baxter, Titan.  Hard SF.
• Edward Bolme, The Alabaster Staff.  Gaming (Forgotten Realms) tie-in novel, part of The Rogues series.
• Gwendoline Butler, Coffin Underground.  A Chief Inspector John Coffin mystery.
• David Chacko, White Gamma.  Spy-guy thriller, part of the Stephen Warfield series.
• David Cian, Transformers, Book 2:  Annihilation.  Part of a toy tie-in trilogy.
• Susan Collins, Gregor the Overlander.  YA fantasy novel by the author of The Hunger Games.  This one is Book One in The Underland Chronicles.
• Donn Cortez, CSI: Miami:  Cut and Run, CSI:  Miami:  Harm for the Holidays, Part One:  Misgivings, and CSI: Miami:  Riptide.  Television tie-in novels.  I've read all of MAC's CSI novels and graphic novels so it's time to try some others.
• Greg Cox, Star Trek:  Deep Space Nine:  Devil in the Sky.  Television tie-in novel.
• Richie Tankersley Cusick, The Mall.  YA horror novel.
• Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, editors, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror:  Ninth Annual Collection.  Annual with thirty-five stories and ten poems, along with seventy-five pages of introductory material.
• Troy Denning, Giants Among Us.  Gaming (Forgotten Realms) tie-in novel, Book II of The Twilight Giants series.
• Terrance Dicks, The Bermuda Triangle Incident.  YA SF short novel, part of The Unexplained series. 
• Dannielle Doggett, project manager, Mythology:  Myths, Legends, & Fantasies.  Coffe table book -- if you have a very sturdy coffee table.  This sucker is HEAVY!
• "Tabor Evans" (house name begun by Lou Cameron, who wrote one -- and probably all three- of the books listed), Longarm, Longarm on the Border, and Longarm in the Indian Nation.  Books #1, 2, and 5 in the long-running adult western series.
• Matt Forbeck, Marked for Death.  Gaming (Eberron) tie-in novel; Book 1 of The Lost Mark series.
• Holly George-Warren and Patricia Romanowski, editors, The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll.  2001 edition, "revised and updated for the 21st Century."  Jon Pareles, consulting editor.
• Gavin Gibbins, They Rode in Space Ships.  Nonfiction?  Accounts of two persons who claimed to have flown in flying saucers.  This is a British book published in 1957, which was when the saucer craze was in its heyday; it was published by a respectable publisher and not by some fly-by-night outfit or vanity press.
• Barb & J. C. Hendee, Dhampir.  Vampire novel.
• Charlie Higson, Silverfin.  YA novel, the first in a series featuring a young James Bond.
• Declan Hughes, City of Lost Girls.  An Ed Loy novel by one of Ireland's best crime writers.
• "Iceberg Slim (Robert Beck), Mama Black Widow.  Gangsta crime novel about a ghetto homosexual queen.
• Shirley Jackson, Just an Ordinary Day.  Collection of fifty-two uncollected or unpublished stories, some fantastic, some psychological, some romantic, but all magical.  Edited by two of the demons she raised, Laurence Jackson Hyman and Sarah Hyman Stewart.
• Cameron Judd, The Shadow Warriors and The Phantom Legion.  The first two books in the Mountain War Trilogy of Civil War era novels.
• Stuart M. Kaminsky, CSI:  New York:  Blood on the Sun.  Television tie-in.  See my remarks on Donn Cortz, above.
• William H. Keith, Jr., Battletech:  Operation Excalibur.  Gaming tie-in novel.
• T. H. Lain, Oath of Nerull and The Savage Caves.  Gaming (Dungeons and Dragons) tie-in novels.
• Jane Langton, Dark Nantucket Noon.  A Homer Kelly mystery.
• Richard Laymon, The Cellar.  Horror.
• Tanith Lee, Wolf Tower.  YA fantasy. Book I in the Claidi series.
• Madeline L'Engle, A Swiftly Tilting Planet and A Wind in the Door.  YA fantasies.
• Edward Levy, TheBeast Within.  Horror.
• [Mike Linaker, ghost writer], Don Pendleton's Mack Bolan: The Judas Project.  Part of the long-running men's adventure series.
• James Lowder, editor, Realms of Valor.  Gaming (Forgotten Realms) tie-in anthology with a dozen stories.
• George R.R. Martin & Gardner Dozois, editors, Warriors 2.  Fantasy anthology with seven stories.
• Walter R. Martin, The Kingdom of the Cults.  Written from an evangelical point of view and first published in 1965, this seems to be a heavily documented, bleak picture of western religions that don't necessarily agree with the author's viewpoint.  Among the cults are Jehovah's Witnesses, Christian Science, Mormanism, Spiritism, Theosophy, Zen Buddhism, Swedenborgianism, Bahai, Seventh Day Adventists, and Unitarians.  No mention of Scientology, which moved beyond Dianetics a dozen years before this book was first published and two dozen years before the revised edition that's before me.
• Anne McCaffrey, A Gift of Dragons.  Fantasy collection with four stories.
• Danica McKellar, Math Doesn't Suck.  Math tricks and instuction from Winnie Cooper.  Everybody loves winnie Cooper, right?
• "Jack McKinney,"  Robotech: The Macross Saga:  #4 Battlehymn, #5 Force of Arms, #6 Doomsday.  Toy/anime tie-in omnibus of three books from the series.  "McKinney" is a pen name used alternatingly by Brian Daley and James Luceno.  Evidently Daley wrote the odd-numbered books in the series and Luceno the even ones; each writer then revised/edited the other's manuscript.
• [Nathan Meyer, ghost writer], Don Pendleton's The Executioner:  Volatile Agent.  Number 350 in the men's adventure series.
• Larry Niven, creator, Man-Kzin Wars V.  Two novellas in the SFshared universe series.
• Mary Packard and the Editors of Ripley Entertainment, Ripley's Believe It or Not!  Special Edition.  A 2001 compilation.  Grandson Mark loves this stuff.
• Lauren Paine, The Running Iron.  Western.
• John Pelan, editor, A Walk on the Darkside:  Visions of Horror.  Anthology with twenty-one stories.
• Steve Perry, Aliens, Book 2:  Nightmare Asylum.  Movie/graphic novel tie-in.
• Steve Perry and Stephani Perry, Aliens, Book 3:  The Female War.  Movie/graphic novel tie-in.
• "Ellis Peters" (Edith Partiger), A Nice Arrangement of Epitaphs.  An Inspector George Felse mystery.
• "Christopher Pike" (Kevin McFadden), The Tachyon Web.  YA SF.
• [Nick Pollotta, ghost writer], Don Pendleton's Stony Man:  Act of War.  Number 94 in this men's adventure series.
• Thomas M. Reid, The Ruby Guardian. Gaming (Forgotten Realms) tie-in novel, Book II in The Scions of Arrabar trilogy.
• Anne Rice, The Mummy; or, Rameses the Damned. Horror.
• Kim Stanley Robinson, Fifty Degrees Below and Sixty Days and Counting.  SF, the the second and final books in the trilogy begun with Forty Signs of Rain.
• [Charles Rogers, ghost writer], Don Pendleton's The Executioner:  Ambush Force.  Numer 354 in the men's adventure series.
• Norman Schmidt, Best Ever Paper Airplanes.  Kitty says her father made the greatest paper airplanes.  He was an aeronautics engineering.  I'm not.  I need help.  So there.
• Mickey Spillane, The Body Lovers and The Snake.  Mike Hammer mysteries.  Also Day of the Guns, a Tiger Mann thriller.
• Leonid Tarassuk & Claude Blair, editors, The Complete Encyclopedia of Arms & Weapons.  Reference.
• Brian Thomsen and J. Robert King, editors, Realms of Magic.  Gaming (Forgotten Realms) tie- in  anthology.  Seventeen stories.
• Vernor Vinge, Across Realtime.  SF omnibus with novels The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime, plus a related novella.
• David Weber, editor (?), The Service of the Sword:  Worlds of Honor #4.  SF anthology of six stories in the Honor Harrington universe, four of which are novel/short novel sized, on a novella, and a short story.
• Robert Weinberg, Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, and Martin H. Greenberg, editors, Weird Vampires Tales.  Instant remainder edition with thirty tales from the weird fiction pulps.
• Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman, editors, The Dragons at War.  Gaming (DragonLance) tie-in anthology with fourteen stories.
• [Douglas P.Wojtowicz, ghost writer],  Don Pendleton's Stony Man:  Splintered Sky.  Number 97 in this men's adventure series.