INCOMING

• Joe Abercrombie, Best Served Cold.  Doorstop stand-alone fantasy.  Monza Murcatto has been betrayed and left broken.  For this, seven people must die.
• James Lee Burke, Pegasus Descending.  A Dave Robicheaux mystery.  Twenty-five years ago Robicheaux could not save Dallas Klein.  Now Klein's daughter is in Louisiana and Dave has a chance to atone -- if he can live that long.  I haven't read a Burke novel in more than a decade.  How foolish of me.
• Tana French, The Likeness.  Mystery.  Cassie Maddox has transferred out of Dublin's Murder Squad with no intention of returning until a corpse is discovered of a woman who is Cassie's double and who has an ID with the name Cassie once used on an undercover job.
• Eddie Stone, Donald Writes No More.  Biography of Donald Goines, author of cult ghetto crime novels. Goines was an addict and pimp who turned to writing but his demons overtook him.  His 1974 murder remains unsolved.
• Robert Knott, Robert B. Parker's Ironhorse.  A Virgil Cole/Everett Hitch western, the first in the series by another hand.  This is Knott's first novel but not his first outing with Parker's characters -- he co-wrote the movie based on Parker's Appaloosa.  Cole and Hitch are on a train returning from Mexico when an old enemy of Cole's comes aboard.
• Scott McGough, Outlaw:  Champion of Kamigawa (Book One), Heretic:  Betrayers of Kamigawa (Book Two), and Guardian:  Saviors of Kamigawa.  Gaming (Magic:  The Gathering) tie-in novels in the Kamigawa Cycle.  Princess Michiko must join forces with the rogue ronin Toshi Umezawa as a war between the spirit world and the human realm threatens everything.
• Dan Nokes, Adam and Eve Bizaare Love Triangle in the Zombie Apocalypse:  The Complete Undead Omnibus, The Paranormals:  10th Anniversary Complete Chronicles and The Pistoleers:  Murder, Vengeance and Family Ties.  Graphic novels.  Nokes is a Southern Maryland cartoonist (turns out he lives in the same development as I).  He had a table at the Fourth of July "makers' market" at the Annemarie Sculpture Garden and Art Center in Dowell, Maryland.  Nice guy.  All three books were signed.  On two of them, he took the time to draw a character from each book; the the third he drew a picture of my 18-year-old granddaughter Ceili as a vampire.  (She was thrilled.)  Dan also signed a comic book, Tristan & the Cuddly Defenders:  Out of the Attic.  Tristan is a teddy bear and was co-created by Dan. (It seems teddy bears have been protecting children from Monsters under the bed since 1902,) also got a signed Zombies Against Animal Cruelty poster.  Free plug:  Dan runs 21st Century Sandshark Studios (www.21sandshark.com) and Tristan lurks at www,thecuddlydefenders.com.  Check them out.
• "James Rollins" (Jim Czajkowski), Ice Hunt.  Thriller.  Ice Station Grendel has been deserted for more than seventy years, but something unnatural is now moving within the old Soviet Union stronghold.