Recently Procured

I am DONE with traveling. Finally. And I, of course, had a pile of book awaiting me in addition to a few picked up on the road. Between a trip to New Orleans and one to Los Angeles I visited some great stores including a legendary store in LA. But first my NOLA nabs.

One of my first stops was, of course, to a local bookstore soon after I got to town. New Orleans is rife with indie stores and some specialize in having some hard-to-find books such as Thomas Ligotti's Grimscribe seen above in its British First Edition format found at Crescent City Books. Plus, it was signed to Michael from Ligotti so it fits in perfectly on my shelves. I had a nice chat with the Michael who originally had gotten it inscribed along with many other Ligotti works. I'm still on the hunt for a copy of The Nightmare Factory though. If Sub Press ever gets to Nightmare, as they have with Ligotti's other books, I'll bite for it. The next few came from Dauphine Street Books, which is one of those dusty, cramped stores where the books have splilled out into the aisle so badly you can't even see all the books without moving piles around. In other words: book heaven. What first caught my eye was a HC first edition of Paul Malmont's The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril, which I couldn't resist for less than the cost of the paperback. I spotted a copy of Gahan Wilson's The Cleft and Other Odd Tales at the bottom of a pile and had to have it since I read a couple of his shorts recently and loved them. The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley was suggested by the owner. And aho I am to turn down suggestions?

Awaiting me at home were Seanan McGuire's Discount Armageddon, which is putting cryptids into Urban Fantasy. Despite the cover I'm interested especially since the first October Daye surprised me in a very good way last year. I'm most excited by Andre Norton's classic Forerunner, which Tor is reissuing as its been on my reading bucket list for awhile. Flatscreen by Adam Wilson was a surprise as I had it on my to-buy list. I don't get a lot of non-genre books for review despite reading plenty. Then again I review those type of books infrequently.Titan Books has some exciting stuff brewing continuing their push into reintroducing classic pulp characters such as like the Fu Manchu series by Sax Rohmer and the original pulp superstar Sherlock Holmes with the Further Adventure series. Next is The Night Sessions by Ken McLeod, his latest Sci-Fi Thriller to be released by Pyr come this April and Erin Hoffman's second Chaos Knight book. At the bottom is Card's latest Endervese book following Bean into space.

On my trip to Los Angeles I literally happened upon the famous genre store Mysterious Galaxy. My wife was driving towards the ocean to find a place for dinner and I told her stumbling upon it was a sign that we had to go. The one thing I noticed about the store is that they aren't afraid to stock complete long series runs, while most stores would only have the the latest book or two or at a long shot the last three. There were also a fair number of signed books since Mysterious gets on so many author tours. But I was looking for the unusual since my own collection is fairly filled out with popular genre books. First Kim Stanley Robinson's novelette The Lucky Strike stood out despite its diminutive size. Even though I already have a copy of Malmont's The Astounding, The Amazing, and the Unknown I couldn't passed up a signed first edition since I got Chinatown in its first edition in NOLA. I had to make the Malmont sandwich complete.  The next few were review copies awaiting me on my most recent homecoming. I've been reading Nancy Kress' short work for years, but have never read anything long so I'm looking forward to trying out After the Fall, Before the Fall, and During the Fall very much. I'll probably read it next. Sub Press also sent me Bentley Little's latest collection of short horror stories Indignities of the Flesh. Although I didn't announce it too formally a personal reading goal this year is to read more Horror. Sub Press is also doing a limited edition of one of GRRM's early novels Dying of the Light, which I originally read 7 years ago when I was going through A Song of Ice and Fire withdrawal. Lastly is the Sword and Sorcery influenced The Scar by Sergey & Marina Dyachenko, which looks all kinds of pretty.

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