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06.14.05 by Widge @ 12:16 am  Well, I saw this book a while back on Boing Boing, and anything that sounds remotely like it belongs on the Art Bell show (mysterious giant black orb, strange disappearances) is a winner in my book. Basically a town in Massachusetts gets visited by the aforementioned orb in 1935. Later, the only five witnesses to the event disappear. And the puzzle of what happened only begins when you finish the book and go, "Um...what?" You go to creator Bob Staake's website and there's enough backstory here to make the folks at Haxan Films go "Well...shit." Strange phenomena + puzzle/riddle book = we are very intrigued. It's available from Commonwealth Editions. Categorized as: Books and Headsup
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06.06.05 by Widge @ 2:36 am  
Written by Mark Frauenfelder The stated intent behind this book is to provide a counterpoint to all of the catalogs of "finest things" in the world. So here you get a glimpse of exactly what the book promises when it purports to be "A Guide to the Most Disgusting, Hideous, Inept and Dangerous People, Places and Things on Earth." The end result? It's what the Ripley's Believe It or Not television show would be like if it appeared on cable. Now I've read many books about crazy, hairy shit before. But there was just something comforting in turning the page to the first entry and seeing, in huge point type, "LEAST ADORABLE PET." Now when I started to think about what the least adorable pet might turn out to be, I started considering the question on the obvious level: something odd that a handler would bring onto Johnny Carson's show so we could all guffaw at watching the thing try and crawl up Johnny's sleeve. You know, something spiky. Or poisonous. Or stinky. But no. I was being way too general and Frauenfelder goes right to the appropriate, specific answer: Miracle Mike, the Headless Chicken. It was at this point that I felt a large sigh leave my body: I knew exactly what I was in for and that I was in the hands of a man who knew what he was doing. And he had done his research. Categorized as: Books and Reviews
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05.09.05 by Dindrane @ 5:07 am 
Written by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child Finally released in paperback is Brimstone, the latest in the FBI Special Agent Pendergast novels by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. Pendergast has returned from his adventures in Kansas (Still Life with Crows) to find Detective D'Agosta is not only back from his failed attempt at being a writer, but has been demoted to beat cop on Long Island, far from his beloved NYC. The case that conveniently brings them together concerns the mysterious death of a notorious sinner, a death that speaks more of Faust than of normal murder. Is the devil really behind this killing and the ones that follow? Preston and Child weave a tale that attempts to tie together such elements as the world of contemporary art criticism, Englishwomen living in Italy, medieval tales of spontaneous human combustion, Renaissance violins, and more. Categorized as: Books and Reviews
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05.07.05 by Dindrane @ 3:17 am 
Written by Laurell K. Hamilton Incubus Dreams ostensibly follows necromancer Anita Blake as she fights crime, tries to stay alive, and bones an ever-increasing number of men in order to feed the awfully convenient ardeur--the irresistible craving for sexual contact that she inherited from her vampire lover and "master," Jean Claude. Long time Anita fans will want to know the following: we get more Jean Claude than we have in a long time, and Richard seems to be back, but how long that lasts and what his role will be is still up in the air. Edward, alas, does not make an appearance, nor does Asher. Much of the story revolves around the subservient were-leopard Nathanial, as well as Anita's "relationship" with the implausibly "perfect" Micah, the erstwhile pard leader. The mystery/crime to be solved is, as always, secondary, and even more so in this novel. There's really very little pretense here--this book is about Anita and her "love" life, which gets increasingly dull as the pages wear on. Sure, the first sex scene, even two, has some promise, but how many sex scenes can one read during a book you didn't pick up for solely that reason? They become tedious and frankly boring, and simply skipping them would lose you about half the book. Categorized as: Books and Reviews
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04.12.05 by Doc @ 2:22 pm 
Written by Simon R. Green John Taylor has spent the last few years trying to forget his past. From a dingy office in a bad part of London, he works as a private eye, assisted greatly by a supernatural (literally) ability to find anything that someone wants found. He can't pay the rent, sleeps on the sofa in his office, and generally exists as an embodiment of every P.I. cliché in the book. That is, until his newest client walks in the door. Joanna Barrett is a very wealthy woman, and her daughter has gone missing. Sounds like little trouble, until Ms. Barrett mentions where her daughter is believed to have gone: Nightside. Nightside is Taylor's home, or was. It's the dark heart of London, possibly of the world, a place where it's always 3 a.m. and where anything can be bought for the right price. Nightside is a magical place, inaccessible to most ordinary people, but Taylor isn't ordinary. He's not sure what he is, exactly, as he has no idea who (or what) gave birth to him...only that it was horrible enough that his father drank himself to death shortly thereafter. Taylor has been running from Nightside for years, because for some reason a large number of very powerful people there seem to want him dead, for reasons he's never been clear on. But he needs the money. Badly. And the girl could be in serious trouble if she stumbled into Nightside accidentally or fell in with the wrong crowd once she got there. So Taylor takes the case, and must step back into the dangerous world that he's been trying to forget, risking his life to find some pampered rich girl runaway before she gets herself killed, or worse. Categorized as: Books and Reviews
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