INCOMING

• Erin Blakemore, The Heroine's Bookshelf.   Nonfiction, twelve essays on remarkable women in literature.  Each woman is categorized according to their strength:  Self (Lizzy Bennett, Pride and Prejudice). Faith (Janie Crawford, Their Eyes Were Watching God), Happiness (Anne Shirley, Anne of Green Gables), Dignity (Celie, The Color Purple), Family Ties (Francie Nolan, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn), Indulgence (Claudine, Colene's Claudette novels),  Fight (Scarlet O'Hara, Gone With the Wind), Compassion (Scout Finch, To Kill a Mockingbird), Simplicity (Laura Ingalls, The Long Winter), Steadfastness (Jane Eyre, Jane Eyre), Ambition (Jo March, Little Women), and Magic (Mary Lennox, The Secret Garden).  All of which leads me to the shameful confession that I have read none of these books.  Yet.
• Gene DeWeese, Murder in the Blood.  Mystery. "When local history teacher Lou Cameron disappears, Farrell County Sheriff Frank Decker is puzzled by accusations of embezzlement, even if they do come from wealthy and influential Nathaniel Wetherstone, whose family owned half of Farrell County for a century.  Was Cameron -- who moonlighted as an insurance salesman -- stealing moony from Wetherstone's company?  Decker doesn't think so, especially when Cameron's car is found submerged with the body of a stranger inside.  But two questions trouble Decker:  who is the dead man and where is Cameron?  The answers lead Decker on a strange and twisted trail back into the Wetherstone family secrets, where a century-old murder holds the key to the scandalous secrets lurking in Decker's backyard -- as well as a face-off with a killer that proves famliy ties can bind in sinister and shocking ways."  DeWeese also wrote gothic novels as "Jean Deweese" and tie-in novels for various franchises, including two Man from U.N.C.L.E novels, in collaboration and under the joint pseudonym "Thomas Stratton.T
• Jason Nickles, Immortal.  Horror novel.  "It was the perfect replica of a vampire.  a harmless relic from a forgotten carnival brought to New York for study.  Archaeologists called it a charlatan's toy.  David Kane called it...Master.  In a city that never sleeps, he has found the perfect place to initiate the innocent.  Now, a lonely woman wanders the streets offering salvation from the open wounds in her wrists,,,a man awakens to a room of freshly mauled corpses..an executive spends his lunch hour feasting on the flesh of strangers.  Welcome to New York."