INCOMING

• Mike Carey, Vicious Circle.  A Felix Castor fantasy thriller.  A missing ghost case drags Castor "and his loved ones into the middle of a horrific plot to raise oneof hell's fiercest demons."  Carey earned his chops writing comic books and I am a big fan of his Lucifer series based on the Neil Gaiman character.  This book sounds like a good 'un.
• Edward Mandell House (no relation), Philip Dru:  Aministrator.  Noted political novel from 1912 about the military overthrow of the U.S. government, beginning in 1920.  Colonel House is perhaps best known as a confidant and advisor to President Woodrow Wilson.  According to the back cover blurbs on this edition, the book "copyrighted fascism" before Mussolini and has had "a greater impact on American government than the Communist Manafesto, Mein Kampf, or any other tract of politcal extremism."  This book is the second of only three published by Roger Welch University Press (the first was a book by Welch and the third was a book extrapolated from a Czechoslovakian Communist party strategy paper from the early Fifties which planned a totalitarian takeover of a democracy) .  Roger Welch, of course was the founder of the John Birch Society, and Roger Welch University was an online univeristy founded in 2005 (two decades after Welch's death) to grant an associates degree in liberal arts.  As of 2010, the university was listed as being "inactive."  Just as well, says I, having no taste for political bovine excrement extremism.
• "M. E. Kerr" (Marijane Meaker) The Books of Fell.  YA omnibus of three novels:  Fell, Fell Back, and Fell Down.  Meaker's YA books have won just about every award possible in that genre.  Mystery readers may best know her for the paperback thrillers  published as "Vin Packer."  Among her many collectible books are those exploring lesbianism published in the Fifites and Sixties as by "Ann Aldrich."  Whatever name she uses, whatever genre she writes in, she's noted for complex characters, complex situations, and lucid prose.
• Tim Lebbon, Fears Unknown.  Horror collection of four novellas. two of which won the British Fantasy Award.  Good stuff.