INCOMING

• Shaun Hutson, Shadows.  Horror novel.  "In Oxford and Paris, psychic investigators were attempting to probe hidden areas of the mind.  In New York, writer David Blake was studying the methods of miracle healer Jonathan Mathias.  Driven by their own desperate motives, these researchers were about to unlock Pandora's Box.  For concealed deep withing us all are horrifying forces capable of devastating destruction -- and now those forces were about to be unleashed on a helpless world."  Not great literature, perhaps, but Hutson (like his fellow Brit Guy N. Smith) can tell a pretty effective story.
• Richard S. Wheeler, The Fire Arrow.  A Barnaby Skye western, the 14th in the Ske's West series.  "In the midst of a cruel winter in the Rockies, Barnaby Skye's Crow Indian wide is critically injured during an attack by Blackfeet.  The riders leave Skye and Victoria stranded in their frozen camp with no horses and little food.  When, miraculously, two horses wander into the camp, Victoria believes they have received a gift from her spirit helper.  Soon she and Skye are able to travel toward Victoria's home on the Musselshell River.  Their journey is interrupted by a party of renegade white men with a wagonload of cheap and poisonous whiskey they intend to trade to the Indians -- including Victoria's people, the Crows.  Dragooned into service by the outlaws, Skye is forced to assist them, but all the while he plans to ruin their deadly enterprise."  Five-time Spur winner Richard S. Wheeler is always a good read.