JUST ONE BIT & JUST ONE PIECE

Time got away from me this week.  I didn't have enough time to mention that today is National Rubber Ducky Day:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBvtD6xs77g

Openers:  There was a vulture on the mailbox of my grandmother's house.

As omens go, it doesn't get much more obvious than that.  This was a black vulture, not a turkey vulture, but that's about as much as I could tell you.  I have a biology degree, but it's in bugs, not birds.  The only reason I knew that much was because the identification key for vultures in North America is extremely straightforward.  Does it have a black head?  Its a black vulture.  Does it have a red head?  It's a turkey vulture.  This works unless you're in the Southwest, where you have to add:  Is it the size of a small fighter jet?  It's a California condor.

We have very few condors in North Carolina.

"I bet you have some amazing feather mites," I told the vulture, opening the car door.  The vulture tilted his head and considered this, or me, or my aging Suburu.

I took out my phone and got several glamour shots of the bird.  When I tried to upload one on the internet, however, my phone informed me that it had one-tenth of a bar and my GPS conked out completely.

Ah yes.  That, at least, hadn't changed.

-- A House with Good Bones by "T. Kingfisher" (Ursula Vernon) (2023)

Sam Montgomery is looking forward to a rare extended visit with her mother, but things have changed.  The warm interior of the house is now painted a sterile white, and her mother jumps at the smallest noises.  And when Sam steps out in back to clear her head, she discovers a jar of teeth hidden beneath the rosebushes,,,and vultures are circling the the garden from above.  As Sam tries to discover why her mother is so frightened in her own home, she soon learns that some secrets are better left buried.

A House with Good Bones, described as a haunting Southern Gothic novel,  won the 2923 Dragon and the 2024 Locus Awards for Best Horror Novel, came in third for the 2023 Good Reads Award for Best Horror Novel, and was nominated for the 2024 August Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel from the British Fantasy Association. 

Ursula Vernon (b. 1977) has published at least 47 books, writing children's books under her own name and books for older audiences as "T. Kingfisher" -- she has used both names for short stories.  Her writing has been nominated for many awards, and she has won three Dragon Awards, six Hugo Awards, two Locus Awards, one Lodestar Award, three Mythopoetic Awards, two Nebula Awards, and three WFPA Small Press Awards.  Vernon has also won awards for artwork.  Her artwork titled The Biting Pear of Salamanca became an internet meme.

In June of 2023, she announced that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer, but by that December she said that treatments were successful and that she was cancer-free.  I hope that means that there will be many more wonderful books from her in the future.

Incoming:

• Edward S. Aarons, Gang Rumble.  Crime/J.D. novel.  "It's a hot, sticky Philadelphia night.  And teenager Johnny Broom is ready to score.  He's got his gang rumble set up with the Violets, the perfect cover for his real plans for the evening -- opening up the warehouse his brother guards for Comber's boys to clean out.  Johnny's got it all figured.  What he doesn't figure is that the creepy kid Mike will show up and start taking over the action.  He doesn't figure that officer Vallera will be one step ahead of him, ready to bust the heist.  He doesn't figure that John Dexter Stephens, whim everyone knows is the only adult friends the kids have, will be tagging along on the bust.  Johnny's got the perfect plan, so why does everything start to go so wrong..."
• Cleve F. Adams, The Private Eye.  Hard-boiled mystery.  ""Las Cruces is a booming, vice-ridden mining town in Arizona that specializes in murder.  J. J. Shannon, the toughest private eye west of the Rockies goes out there to investigate a suicide, and before he even smells a suspect, he has kidnapped the mayor, bribed the chief of police and bought out a newspaper.  Besieged by three beautiful, stubborn women, dodging lead and dynamite and threatened by every henchman in town, Shannon manages to stay alive while he hunts a wholesale killer who heads up the bloodthirsty mob that murders for millions!"
• Marvin H. Albert, The Girl with No Place to Hide.  Private eye novel, originally published as by "Nick Quarry.'  "The woman comes into the bar and catches Jake's attention immediately.  Not beautiful, but there is something striking about her.  She asks for Steve Canby, who's just left, and dismissed Jake with a glance.  The n she leaves.  Jake doesn't think much about it until he comes out of the bar and finds the woman being choked by a huge hulk of a man.  Coming to her rescue, he barely manages to keep from being strangled himself.  Later, they end up at his apartment.  Her name is Angela and she just wants someplace safe to spend the night.  someone is out to get her.  Jake Barrow is a private detective between jobs, so he agrees.  But later that night when he returns from a false alarm from someone claiming to want his services, he finds her gone.  Was the call a ruse?  Who knew she was here?  But this is just the beginning -- it's not long before his pursuit of Angela leads to murder."  Also, Last Train to Bannock.  A Clayburn western, originally published under the pseudonym "Al Conroy."  The trail from Parrish City to Bannock was the deadliest stretch in the west, plagued by manhunting Apache raiders, crippling blizzards, and gold-hungry white men hired to kill.  Any man who lead a train on this trail gambled his life against losing odds.  Clayburn was willing to take that gamble -- for the sake of a woman and for revenge.
• John Appleyard (and the staff of John Appleyard Agency, Inc.), Fifteen Mysteries of Pensacola, 110 Years Ago, Volume III.  Local history, sort of.  Appleyard's "Sherlock and Watson" are the real-life Patrolman Corporal Yelverton and scientific detective Henry Coburger.  "The places they gp, the things they see, hear, and do are real.  So are most of the people who cross these pages.  However, the plots and the villains are fictional."  As with previous volumes, this edition was published to benefit the WEAR-TV 3 Christmas program, providing gifts for underprivileged children. 
• William Ard, Calling Lou Largo! Omnibus volume of Ard's two novels about the "relatively tough detective"  Lou Largo -- All I Can Get and Like Ice She Was.  Also, several Timothy Dane mysteries, Cry Scandal and Perfect .38 (an omnibus of The Perfect Party and .38 [also [published as You Can't Stop Me and as This Is Murder]) , two Danny Fontaine novels in the Omnibus Two Kinds of Bad (As Bad as I Am [also published as Wanted:  Danny Fontaine] and When She Was Bad), and the standalone You'll Get Yours (originally published under Ard's "Thomas Wills" pseudonym).  Mike Nevins called Ard "one of the most distinctive voices in the history of the private eye novel."  Ard died of cancer at age 37.  I'm still looking for a reasonably priced copy of his posthumous book Babe in the Woods, completed by Lawrence Block.
• Raymond Benson, Hunt Through Napoleon's Web.  Adventure, the sixth and final Gabriel Hunt novel.  The Gabriel Hunt series was created by Charles Ardai; to create a pulpish take on an Indiana Jones type of hero.  Each volume was written by a different author (James Reasoner, Ardai, Nicholas Kaufmann, Christa Faust, David J. Schow, and Benson).   For reasons unknown to me, the publisher pulled the rug out from under this enjoyable series, with the sixth volume getting little distribution.  "From the towers of Manhattan to the heat of Morocco, one man finds adventure everywhere he goes:  GABRIEL HUNT.  Backed by the resources of the $00 million Hunt foundation and armed with his trusty Colt revolver, Gabriel Hunt has always been ready for anything -- but is he prepared for Napoleon's Web?  Of all the treasures Gabriel hunt has sought, none means more to him than the one drawing him to Corsica and Marrakesh, his own sister's life.  To save her, Hunt will have to challenge the mind of a dead tyrant -- the ingenious Napoleon Bonaparte."  The only problem I have ever had with this series is the name Ardai gave to Gabriel Hunt's brother -- a not-so-clever cheap shot that came across as jarring every time I saw it.
• Algernon Blackwood, Delphi Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood.  A massive (6182 pages!) eBook compilation of the novels Jimbo, The Education of Uncle Paul, The Human Chord, The Centaur, The Prisoner of Fairyland, The Extra Day, Jules le Vallon, The Wave. The Promise of Air, The Garden of Survival, The Bright Messenger, the play Karma, and the autobiographical Episodes Before Thirty, as well as ten short story collections, and miscellaneous stories.  Blackwood is best known for being one of the premier authors of ghost stories in the 2oth century; his novels, however tend to be infused with occultism -- he was a mystic and, at times, a Rosicrucian, a Buddhist, a Cabalist, and a member of the Golden Dawn; he appeared to believe in reincarnation and in a "possible new, mystical evolution of human consciousness."  I have read all the short stories previously and one or two of the novels.  Most of the contents are available elsewhere on the internet, but it's good to have them gathered all in one place.
• Ben Bova, Laugh Lines.  Science fiction collection of six short stories and two novels, The Starcrossed (1975) and Cyberbooks (1989).  In The Starcrossed, "Bill Oxnard, a young technological genius, has perfected true three-dimensional television.  He thought he would be rich and famous -- but he hadn't realized how deranged the executives running the industry were..."  In Cyberbooks, "Carl Lewis thinks his 'cyberbook' will make it possible for anyone to download books directly and cheaply. But neither he nor lovely but naive editor Lori Tashkajian has any idea of how much his invention will upset the cut-throat world of big publishing..."
• Peter Brandvold, The Cost of Dying.  Another Lou Prophet, Bounty Hunter western from Man Pete.  "After a hard night with his sometimes lover Louisa Bonaventure -- "The Vengeance Queen" -- Lou Prophet decides to cool his heels at a local honky tonk.  Things heat up fast when he defends one of the girls from a sadistic brute who also happens to be the deputy sheriff,  And now Prophet is running for his life...with a bounty on his head.  Heading south of the border to Mexico, Prophet isn't the only man marked for death.  The young red-headed pistolero Colter Farrow has made an awful lot of enemies, too -- and now practically every bounty hunter south of the Rio Grande is gunning for blood.  For money.  For fun.  And now, for Lou Prophet..."
• John Creasey, The Black Spiders.  A Department Z/Gordon Craigie thriller.  "When the sound of gunfire wakes Nigel Murray in the middle of the night, he discovers two gun-wielding strangers and a woman, half-drowned in a well beneath his window.  Easily disarming the threat, Murray rescues the woman, only to discover the young beauty is none other than the kidnapped niece of the leader of Canna, a peaceful island in the British Commonwealth now stirring with political unrest.  Called in by the elite secret service Department Z to help stop the overthrow of Canna's government, Murray finds himself caught up in a wed of conspiracy and treason, a danger only deepened by his loyalty to the woman whose life is in is hands." 
• Lydia Davis, can't and won't (stories).  Collection of 122 very short stories (in 268 pages).  Jeff Meyerson has mentioned this collection several times on the internet, and since I trust Jeff's taste, I' thought I'd pick up a copy.
• Brendan Dubois, Storm Call.  A Lewis Cole mystery.  "Retired intelligence analyst Lewis Cole us determined to save his friend Felix Tinios from being sent to death row -- but Felix refuses to accept Lewis's assistance.  Felix, who used to be an enforcer for the Boston mob, is being tried for the brutal murder of a local businessman.  Witnesses place him at the apartment where the body was found; the murder weapon belonged to Felix; and his fingerprints are all over the crime scene.  It seems to be an open-and-shut case, but Lewis refuses to believe his friend was responsible.  Then two FBI agents bring Lewis disturbing news:  they have word that unless Felix is freed from prison in just three days, he will be murdered while in custody.  With time running out, the FBI nipping at his heels and Felix's own lawyer refusing to help, Lewis is on his own as he desperately tries to clear his friend's name before Felix leaves prison...in a body bag."  I have always enjoyed Dubois' writing but I had to think twice before picking this one up because of events last years that irretrievably tarnished his reputation; i opted to but the book.  whether I will continue to do so remains up in the air. 
• Bruno Fischer, These Restless Hands.  Crime novel.  "a sound in the night, 'a voice whispering her name in a dream.  A voice belonging to a shape in the darkness, a shape with relentless reaching hands....she felt a mantle of sweat under her nightgown, as when awakening from a nightmare.  "WHO IS IT?" she whispered...'  Was it the killer, the man who had strangled her sister, the man who had attacked Rebecca herself on a lonely road the night before?  This was a moment of terror, and there were many more in the life of the town before the killer was brought to bay."  A shorter version of this story appeared in Mystery Book Magazine, Summer 1949.
• Thomas Harris. Cari Mora.  Thriller from the man best known for giving us Hannibal Lector (who, despite what you may heard from a certain politician, is a fictional character).  "Half a ton of a dead man's gold lies hidden beneath a mansion on the Miami Beach waterfront.  Ruthless men have tracked it for years.  Leading the pack is Hans-Peter Schneider.  Driven by unspeakable appetites, he makes a living fleshing out the violent fantasies of other, richer men.  Cari Mora, caretaker of the house, has escaped from the violence in her native country.  She stays in Miami on a wobbly Temporary Protected Status, subject to the whims of ICE.  she works at many jobs to survive.  Beautiful, marked by war, Cari Mora catches the eye of Hans-Peter as he closes in on the treasure.  But Cari Mora has surprising skills, and her will to survive has been tested before.  Monsters lurk in the crevices between male desire and female survival..."
• Richard Jessup, Comanche Vengeance.  Western.  "He followed her on her trail for vengeance, a guardian angel with a fast draw.  'Let's put it this way, ma'am,' Duke said, softly, gently.  'The Comanches left a trail, all right, a trail of broken bodies and slow death.  you can't follow them into their camp -- they'd kill you.'  'Not before I get off a few shots myself,' Sarah snapped.  'Now, ma'am,' Duke spoke sternly.  'I don't like to hear that kind of talk from a lady.  I'm going to help you whether you like it or not...' "  Also, Texas Outlaw.  "Who was there to stand up to him?  He was the fastest draw in Texas and he didn't seem to care whether he lived or died."
• Elmer Kelton, The Good Old Boys.  Western.  "When Hewey Calloway returned , West Texas was still a land of wide open spaces.  but for a driffting cowboy of thirty-eight, time was closing in.  Unlike his brother, who had settled down to farm and raise a family, Hewey had no ties, nothing but his horse and his pack.  With the law from the next county on his tail, Hewey proposed to lay low for a while and think things through.  As luck would have it, though, he rode right into the middle of a foreclosure on his brother's place.  And now the family looked to this saddle bum for a way to fend off disaster.  It'll take guts -- and all his kill with a rope and a gun -- but Hewey vows to save them, and yo find a place for himself in the land he loves."
• Frank McAuliffe, For Murder I Charge More.  Edgar Award-winning book in the Augustus Mandrell, assassin for hire series.  "seven years ago, Mandrell smuggled General von Ritterdorf -- one of Hitler's doubles -- out of Europe and onwards to Argentina.  Now, Mandrell is back in America and working with the Hitler look-alike to block the New York Giants from winning the pennant, but there's much more at stake than a mere baseball game.  And what's more, Mandrell's old foe Louis Proferra -- now in the CIA -- has reared his ugly head again.  Proferra has been assigned the task of protecting the major league baseball player Mandrell is hunting.  Always a fly in the ointment, that guy.  How many more body parts must Louis Proferra lose before he gets the message?  Augustus Mandrell is sure one more won't hurt..."
• Seanan McGuire, Lost in the Moment and Found.   Fantasy novel, the 8th in the Hugo, Nebula, Alex, and Locus Award-winning Wayward Children series.  "Welcome to the shop where lost things go.  If you ever lost a sock, you'll find it here.  If you ever wondered about your favorite toy from childhood...it's probably sitting on a shelf in the back.  and the headphones you swore that this time you'd keep safe?  You guessed it...Antoinette has lost her father.  Metaphorically.  He's not in the shop, and she'll never see him again.  But when Antsy finds herself lost (literally, this time), she comes to realize that however many doors open for her, leaving the shop for good might not be as simple as it sound.  And stepping through those doors exacts a price."
• "John Norman"  (John Frederick Lange, Jr.), Ghost Dance.  A western, kind of.  "Here, in this pa=lace, her meaning as a woman is clear.  Here, part from symbols and diguises, she stands as a woman, the prize of man.  Does he, this woman, now know her femaleness?  Does she understand?  Is the meaning of her excruciatingly desirable body now brought home to her?  Does she now understand the significance of her sex:  that she is female, that nature has designed her for man/  Yes, thought Chance, she is very beautiful, marvelously incredibly beautiful -- Miss Lucia Turner educated Eastern gentlewoman, sophisticated and refined, feminist -- captive female -- suddenly expectedly shamefully simply captive female.  Reduced utterly, she, Miss Lucia Turner, gifted and beautiful, to ancient primitive essentialities -- owned, literally owned [...] a novel of a man and a woman, of so-called civilization versus the traditions of a proud and once-great people, told with all the vigor and passion that characterize John Norman's bestselling Gor novels."  Yeah...the Gor novels.  Norman wrote 38 of the kinky, sexual fantasy planetary romances that were heavily laden with bondage and domination, sado-masochism, and the enslavement of women.  Ghost Dance appears to be an apple that did not fall far from the tree.  The Gor novels have become cultish; somehow I have a feeling that many of the fans are incels.  Norman, by the way, is a professor of philosophy and should in way be compared to Michael Crichton, who used the pseudonym "John Lange" for a number of early novels.
• Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, Verse for the Dead.  Thriller, sn agent Pandergast novel.  (The authors' first names are missing from the novel's jacket, because they are a brad, I suppose.)   "After an overhaul of leadership at the FBI's New York Field Office, A.X. L. Pendergast is abruptly forced to accept an unthinkable condition of continued employment:  the former rogue agent must now work with a partner.  Pendergast and his new teammate, junior agent Coldmoon, are assigned to Miami Beach, where a rah of killings by a bloodthirsty psychopath is distinguished by a confounding M.O.:  cutting out the hearts of his victims and leaving them -- along with cryptic handwritten letters -- at local gravestones, unconnected save for one bizarre detail:  all belonging to women who committed suicide.  But the seeming lack of connection between the old suicides and the new murders is soon the least of Pendergast's worries.  As he digs deeper, he realizes the brutal new crimes may be just the tip of the iceberg;  a conspiracy of death that reaches back decades."
• Bill Pronzini, Cream of the Crop:  The Best Mystery & Suspense Stories of Bill Pronzini, The Hanging Man & Other Western Stories, and High Concepts (science fiction stories).  Three retrospective collections form one of the best in the business.
• Bill Pronzini & Martin H. Greenberg, editors, The Railroaders.  Western anthology in "The Best of the West" series, with twelve stories and one poem.  Authors include O. Henry, Clarence E. Mulford, Tom W. Blackburn, Clay Fisher, Wayne D. Overholser, Giles A. Lutz, Jeffrey M. Wallman, and John Jakes.  Like all others in this series, a great bargain.
• "Clay Randall" (Clifton Adams), Amos Flagg -- Showdown, The seventh (and final( Amos Flagg western.  "The new marshal's problem is that he likes to kill people, and soon the town is crawling with fast-draw artists anxious to challenge the marshal's  growing reputation as a gunman.  There's still one man who stands between the marshal and the gunmen -- and that's Amos Flagg.  the question is, does Flagg want to save him?"
• "J. D. Robb" (Nora Roberts), Betrayal in Death, Imitation in Death, Forgotten in Death, and Shadows in Death.  All Eve Dallas mysteries, a series that has thus far reached 59 novels and 10 novellas.  A combination of mystery. police procedural, romance, and -- because the setting is in a future New York -- science fiction.  Betrayal is #12 in the series:  "At the luxurious Roarke Palace Hotel, a maid walks into suite 4602 for the nightly turndown -- and steps into her nightmare.  A killer leaves her dead, strangled by a thin, silver wire.  He's Sly Yost, a virtuoso of music and murder.  A hit man for the elite.  Lieutenant Eve Dallas knows him well.  but in this twisted case, knowing the killer doesn't help her solve the crime.  Because there's someone else involved.  someone with a more personal motive.  And Eve must face a terrifying possibility -- the real target may, in fact, be her husband, Roarke...:"  Imitation is #17 in the series:  "Summer 2059.  A man wearing a cape and a top hat approaches a prostitute on a dark New York City street.  Minutes later, the woman is dead.  Left at the scene is a letter addressed to Lieutenant Eve Dallas, inviting her to play his game and unveil his identity.  He signs it 'Jack.'  Now Eve is in pursuit of a murderer who knows as much about the history of serial killers as she does.  He has studied the most notorious and the most wicked slayings in modern time.  But he also wants to make his own mark.  He has chosen his victim:  Eve Dallas,  And all Eve knows is that he plans to mimic the most infamous murderers of all time -- including Jack the Ripper."  Shadows  is #51 in the series:  "While Eve examines a fresh body in New York's Washington Square Park, her husband, Rourke, sports an all-too-familiar face among the onlookers.  He knows Lorean Cobbe, from his days on the streets of Dublin.  He knows that Cobbe kills for a living -- and burns with hatred for Rourke, the man he believes to be his half-brother.  Eve is quick to suspect that the victim's spouse -- resentful over his wife's recent affair and poise to inherit her family fortune -- would have happily paid a high-priced assassin to do his dirty work.  Rourke is just as quick to warn her that if Cobbe is her man, she needs to be careful.  Law-enforcement agencies around the world have pursued this cold-hearted killer for years, to no avail.  And Cobbe's lazy smirk when he looks Rourke's way indicates that he will target anyone who matters to Rourke...and is confident he'll get away with it.  Eve is desperate to protect Rourke.  Rourke is desperate to protect Eve.  And together they are determined to find Cobbe before he finds them -- even if it takes them far outside Eve's usual jurisdiction."  (That's a pretty confusing jacket copy, but it certainly will not deter the gazillions of fans of this series.)  Forgotten is #53 in the series:  "The body was left in a dumpster like trash; the victim is a woman of no fixed address who offered paper flowers in return for spare change -- and informed the cops of any infractions she witnessed on the street.  but the notebook where she kept track of litterers and other offenders is nowhere to be found.  Then Lieutenant Eve Dallas is summoned away to a nearby building site to view more remains -- decades old and wearing gold jewelry -- unearthed by construction.  Now she must enter the world of New York real estate and a web of secrets to find justice for two women whose lives were so suddenly discarded..."  I have a bunch of the ...In Death books buried on Mount TBR, but I have not read any of them.  Knowledgeable (and reliable) reviewers such as Kevin Tipple praise the series, and I should really heed their advice, sooner than later.
• Richard Sapir & Warren Murphy, six early novels from the men's action-adventure series The Destroyer:  #2 Death Check, #3 Chinese Puzzle, #4 Mafia Fix, #5 Dr. Quake, #6 Death Therapy, and #7 Union Bust.  Remo Williams was a Newark cop framed for murder and sentenced to death.  His death was faked by the government and Williams was trained as an assassin for CURE, a top-secret government agency set up by President Kennedy.  Remo's trainer and father figure is Chiun, a deadly assassin and the last mast of Sinanju; it turns out that Williams is an avatar of Shiva, as prophesied by the legends of Sinanju.   The books are written with a pulpish. almost satirical, flair and many of the villains in the series are fantastical.   Sapir left the series in the late Seventies, and Murphy continued the series on his own and with the use of several ghostwriters.  Sapir returned to the series in the mid-Eighties, but by the late Eighties, Murphy had sole control of the series.  Murphy left the series in the late Nineties, after novel #107.  The series continued with various ghostwriter and now is up to #155, not including various offshoots (The New Destroyer, the non-fiction The Assassin's Handbook, various novellas, and The Legacy series, featuring the father, son, and daughter of Remo Williams). 
• Richard S. Wheeler, The Final Tally.  western.  "This was no ordinary cattle drive through Sheriff Santiago Toole's Miles City in the Montana Territory.  Three cowboys in the outfit had already stopped bullets, and the boss man Hermes Bragg was dying of consumption.  but his two hard-bitten, closemouthed kids would keep pressing on, no matter what.  As a doctor, Toole's first responsibility was to the wounded.  But he was a lawman, too, and the Bragg outfit wasn't lamming out before he had some answers.  Trouble was, young Athena Bragg didn't intend to hang around, and she'd kill anyone who tried to persuade her.  That's why no one had ever dared interfere with the Braggs -- until now."
• Harry Whittington, Desert Stake-Out.  Western.  " 'Blade' Merrick knew what to expect if the Comanches captured him.  He already had a jagged scar from his neck to his waist to remember them by.  And now he was facing them with  o one at his side but the three cutthroats who had murdered his brother.  It was treachery, front and back -- fighting desert demons in the company of snakes.  And it looked like this pile of rock and sand might be one cowboy's last stand...: