Small House of Everything

Small House of Everything

Monday, March 14, 2011

INCOMING

Another day, another thrift store.  Happy face for the Unicorn Mystery Book club volumes  :-)

  • Piers Anthony.  Alien Plot.  SF collection.
  • Neal Barrett, Jr.  Dungeons & Dragons:  The Movie.  Movie tie-in novel.
  • Neal Barrett, Jr.  Judge Dredd.  Movie tie-in novel.  Stallone reeked in the flick, but maybe Barrett will do better with the book.
  • David Brin.  Earth.  SF novel.
  • Walter R. Brooks.  Freddy Goes to Florida (original title To and Again).  Juvenile. The first adventure of Freddy the Pig.
  • Sean Chercover.  Trigger City.   Mystery.  Ray Dudgeon #2.
  • (Detective Book Club).  Contains Hildegarde Withers Makes the Scene by Stuart Palmer & Fletcher Flora, A Clutch of Coppers by John Creasey writing as "Gordon Ashe", and Saxon's Ghost by Steve Fisher.  Mystery Omnibus.  Following Palmer's death, Flora completed his last novel.  The Creasey is a Patrick Dawlish novel first published two years earlier in England.  Fisher was a popular screenwriter and has published many western novels.
  • K. W. Jeter.  Dark Seeker.  Horror novel.
  • Michael R. Pitts.  Famous Movie Detectives III. Nonfiction, reference.  I really have to get the earlier two volumes.
  • Rudy Rucker.  Mind Tools:  The Five Levels of Mathematical Reality.  Nonfiction.  It just sounded cool.
  • Wilson Tucker.  The Year of the Quiet Sun.  SF novel.  Winner of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and nominated for a Nebula Award.
  • (Unicorn Mystery Book Club).  Contains Night Cry by William L. Stuart, Fatal Step by Wade Miller, An Author Bites the Dust by Arthur W. Upfield, and Lady Afraid by Lester Dent.  Mystery omnibus.  Stuart's book was notably made into a movie, Where the Sidewalk Ends.  The Miller is a Max Thursday mystery.  The Upfield features Australian detective Napoleon Bonaparte.  Lester Dent, of course, was the author of most of the Doc Savage novels under the name "Kennethh Robeson".  The Unicorn Mystery Book Club published 83 volumes between 1945 and 1952; four unabridged mystery books were included in each volume.  The editor for the last 80 volumes was Hans Stefan Santesson, perhaps best known as the editor of  The Saint Mystery [Detective] Magazine and Fantastic Universe. 
  • (Unicorn Mystery Book Club).  Contains Shoes for My Love (also known as Blood on My Shoes) by Jean Leslie, Dead Sure by Stewart Sterling, Framed in Guilt by Day Keene, and A Rope for the Baron by "Anthony Morton" (John Creasey).  Mystery omnibus.  The Leslie was the fifth of her eight mystery novels.  The Sterling was the second novel about Gil Vine, house detective, later private eye; this UMBC edition seems to indicate the novel's subtitle is The Case of the California Cutie  -- can anyone shed a light on this?  Framed in Guilt was recently reprinted with another Keene novel by Stark House (unabashed plug).  The "Morton"/Creasey was another in his popular series about John Mannering, the Baron.
  • (Unicorn Mystery Book Club).  Contains The Innocent Bystander by Craig Rice, Atomsk by "Carmichael Smith", A Corpse in Diplomacy by Miriam Borgenicht, and He's Late This Morning by Christopher Hale.  Mystery omnibus.  The Rice is a stand-alone suspense novel.  The author of Atomsk is better known as "Cordwainer Smith", acclaimed science fiction author; this book is a Cold War thriller.  The Borgenicht was the first of her seventeen mystery novels.  I know nothing about Hale.
  • (Unicorn Mystery Book Club).  Contains Fountain of Death by Hugh Lawrence Nelson, Murder Can Be Fun (also published as A Plot for Murder) by Fredric Brown, Uneasy Street by Wade Miller, and Echo My Tears by Jan Foster.  Mystery omnibus.  The Nelson is a Steve Johnson and Harry Sinclair mystery.  The Brown is a standalone, based on his story "The Santa Claus Murders".  Uneasy Street is another Max Thursday novel.  The Foster is a first novel.
     The used book store where I got the Unicorn Mystery Book Club volumes (for a buck each!!!) has a dozen or so others.  I may go back.

5 comments:

  1. Nice selection.

    Oh, by the way, you were kind to Stallone when you said he reeked. I did enjoy the novel a bit more though. Wonder if the new film coming will be any better.

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  2. Yeah, it's probably worth the dollar gamble to get those Unicorns...I suspect, unless they're in rotten shape, that at least you can sell them for more. I wouldn't mind having the Rice/Linebarger or the Brown for a buck...at the moment, the only one I have is pretty astounding one, the one with THE FAR CRY by Brown, an Elisabeth Sanxay Holding novel, WHEN DORINDA DANCES by "Brett Halliday" (an early Shayne, actually by Dresser), and Curme Gray's MURDER IN MILLENNIUM VI, the sf/mystery that so confoundedly both impressed and annoyed Damon Knight when he reviewed it. I'm quite sure that the Unicorn edition, at very least, printed more copies than did the small press that first published the Gray novel.

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  3. Lester del Rey praised MURDER IN MILLENIUM VI highly. It's one of those books that you either love or hate or, like Knight, find impressively frustrating.

    Actually, that was the one volume I was hoping they had at the thrift store. The Brown was, IMHO, his best mystery. Holding is always impressive and I usually enjoy Halliday's work.

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  4. btw, Jerry...any film/a/v today? Or is the boa video the entry?

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