INCOMING

• Michael Brandman, Robert B. Parker's Fool Me Twice.  A Jesse Stone mystery, the second by Brandman continuing the adventures of Parker's character.  "A Hollywood movie company has come to town, and brought with it a huge cast, crew, and a troubled star.  Marisol Hinton is very beautiful, reasonably talented, and scared out of her wits that her estranged husband's jealousy might take a dangerous town.  When she becomes the subject of a death threat, Jesse and the rest of the Paradise police department go on high alert.  And when Jesse witnesses a horrifying collision caused by a distracted teenage driver, the political implications of her arrest bring him into conflict with the local selectmen, the DA, and some people with very deep pockets.  There's murder in the air, and Jesse's reputation as an uncompromising defender of the law -- and his life -- are on the line."  Brandman wrote three Jesse Stone novels following Parker's death; the series is now being continued by Reed Farrell Coleman.
• Al Cobb, Savannah's Ghosts.  Collection of supposedly "all-true" ghost stories from Savannah, Georgia.  "These exciting stories were compiled by examining past and present supernatural cases involving ordinary Savannah citizens."   The author is a member of The Searchers, a local group which gathers "information and evidence of ghostly activity in and around Savannah."  Cobb is quick to explain that The Searchers "are strictly a non-profit group and not affiliated with any occult or Satanic group of any kind.  We only wish to add to the knowledge of mankind and its purpose spiritually on this planet...Currently [as of the 2001 publication date] The Searchers are running ads in Creative Loafing Newspaper offering to help anyone who has a suspected haunting or other supernatural occurrence."  I've mentioned before that I am a sucker for this type of regional book.  This copy was signed by the author.
• Douglas G. Greene, editor, Classic Mystery Stories.  Mystery story anthology of thirteen stories dating from 1841 to 1920.  Many of the usual suspects are included among the authors:  Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Rodrigues Ottolengui, Jack London, Jacques Futrelle. Samuel Hopkins Adams, Baroness Orczy, Gelett Burgess. Melville Davisson Post, Susan Galspell, E. C. Bentley, and H. C. Bailey.  A good collection but geared more for the neophyte.  Greene is a noted scholar of the genre and the co-owner and editor of the mystery publisher Crippen & Landrau.
• Mel Odom, Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel:  Cursed.  Television tie-in novel.  "Sulking around the Slayer in Sunnydale, the vampire Spike has often run into demons intent on punishing him for throwing in with the White Hats.  But when there are hints of a more organized campaign dedicated to the vampire with a chip in his head, Spike sets off on the trail of whomever's put a hit out on him.  Meanwhile, in the City opf the Angels, a vampire with a soul finds that the search for a mystical object is tied to his days as the vicious Angelus.  Then Spike -- his former partner in carnage -- arrives in L.A.  Each nursing a grudge, and with the specter of Buffy in both of their (cold, dead) hearts, the two vampires reluctantly work together...until their torturous past catches up with them!"  This book "takes place in an alternate continuity during Buffy's fifth and Angel's third seasons."
• William MacLeod Raine, Guns of the Frontier.  Nonfiction.  An account of some of the famous gunslingers and lawmen of the old West.  "It was a free country, wide open.  but freedom was bought by the gun.  And when the gunsmoke cleared away, too many hombres were ready for the undertaker.  Into this lawless land rode the giants of the West:  Wild Bill Hickok, Sam bass, Bat Masterton, Ben Thompson.  Some were bed, some were good...all were quick on the trigger -- and only the toughest survived."  The original subtitle for the book was "The story of how law came to the West."  Raine was a very popular western writer with well over eighty books to his credit.