The value of this collection is that there is something appealing for virtually everyone within, from the most casual of fans to the most serious aficionado. At the same time, one is almost certain to encounter something new and unexpected. While the stories are related to mystery, crime, thriller, or even romantic suspense fiction, the sources for such tales range from one-shot, hardcover anthologies to mystery periodicals and small press magazines. As a result, there most likely is something in this volume you have not read, but would want to.
The selection process for these books is subjective. It has to be. I'm sure Coben and Penzler have their own favorites among those selected, although determining which would be difficult, given that the stories are arranged in alphabetical order by author. That being said, even the most discerning reader can find something in each story to recommend the volume. Still, favorites will emerge. I have a bunch of them.
"The Stars Are Falling" by Joe R. Lansdale concerns the return of a man believed to be dead from The Great War, an event that takes his wife and son unaware. It is obvious to the reader early on that there have been changes in the soldier's absence; the question is whether the man himself realizes the extent and degree to which the changes have occurred. This is certainly one of Lansdale's darker tales of recent note.
"What His Hands Had Been Waiting For" by Beth Ann Fennelly and Tom Franklin is equally as grim, albeit with a hint of redemption included as a dim light. Set against the backdrop of a historical disaster, it concerns a series of hard choices made by desperate people with the life of an innocent at risk. It is one of those stories that is darkly and beautifully told, yet remains disturbing long after the last paragraph is read..
Mariner Books; Original edition
Paperback: 432 page
“Affluence Intelligence lays out a three-month plan that leads to achievement of lofty goals, recognizing and living priorities, and enjoying a greater sense of possibility…Goldbart and Difuria have turned what sometimes seems an insurmountable obstacle into an enjoyable adventure. Affluence Intelligence helps readers get a grip on the worry and anxiety and transform fear into power. The program outlined here is concrete and perhaps revolutionary, with the potential to redirect an ages-old but dead-end paradigm into a satisfying and productive road trip to a worthy and fulfilling destination.”
Da Capo Lifelong Books
Hardcover: 272 pages
If you've ever fantasized about feasting on Frank Sinatra's Barbecued Lamb, lunching on Lucille Ball's "Chinese-y Thing," diving ever-so-neatly into Joan Crawford's Poached Salmon, or wrapping your lips around Rock Hudson's cannoli – and really, who hasn't? – hold on to your oven mitts! In The Dead Celebrity Cookbook: A Resurrection of Recipes by 150 Stars of Stage and Screen, Frank DeCaro—the flamboyantly funny Sirius XM radio personality best known for his six-and-a-half-year stint as the movie critic on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart—collects hundreds of recipes passed on from legendary stars of stage and screen, proving that before there were celebrity chefs, there were celebrities who fancied themselves chefs.
Publisher: HCI
Paperback: 384 pages
Fug You is Ed Sanders's unapologetic and often hilarious account of eight key years of "total assault on the culture," to quote his novelist friend William S. Burroughs.
Fug You traces the flowering years of New York's downtown bohemia in the sixties, starting with the marketing problems presented by publishing Fuck You / A Magazine of the Arts, as it faced the aboveground's scrutiny, and leading to Sanders's arrest after a raid on his Peace Eye Bookstore. The memoir also traces the career of the Fugs--formed in 1964 by Sanders and his neighbor, the legendary Tuli Kupferberg (called "the world's oldest living hippie" by Allen Ginsberg)--as Sanders strives to find a home for this famous postmodern, innovative anarcho-folk-rock band in the world of record labels.
De Capo
Hardcover: 448 pages
The Marbled Swarm is Dennis Coopers most haunting work to date. In secret passageways, hidden rooms, and the troubled mind of our narrator, a mystery perpetually takes shape—and the most compelling clue to its final nature is the marbled swarm itself, a complex amalgam of language passed down from father to son.
Cooper ensnares the reader in a world of appearances, where the trappings of high art, old money, and haute cuisine obscure an unspeakable system of coercion and surrender. And as the narrator stalks an elusive truth, traveling from the French countryside to Paris and back again, the reader will be seduced by a voice only Dennis Cooper could create.
Harper Perennial
Paperback: 208 pages
Landis has a new book, Monsters in the Movies: 100 Years of Cinematic Nightmares, and the Independent's Arifa Akbar asks him to pick out some of the landmark films of the genre. "If you prefer your gore served up with a heaping helping of campy humor, then the Blu-ray release of The Blood Trilogy will be right up your oddball alley," writes Budd Wilkins in Slant. This trilogy, out from Something Weird, would be comprised of Herschell Gordon Lewis's Blood Feast (1963), Two Thousand Maniacs (1964) and Color Me Blood Red (1965). In the Los Angeles Times, Mark Olsen asks Lewis, "Did you consider yourself an artist?" HGL: "Certainly not. Good heavens. That would be the height of arrogance and stupidity. Art is not a factor. I really have some compassion but also a good deal of contempt for people who make this kind of movie and regard themselves as artists. Art is really not even a secondary factor, it's a tertiary factor. Showmanship, now that's a different story."
Publisher: DK ADULT
Hardcover: 320 pages
The Kitchen Counter Cooking School is essentially "What Not to Wear" meets Michael Pollan. Inspired by a supermarket encounter with a woman loading up on processed foods, Le Cordon Blue graduate Kathleen Flinn decided to use her recent culinary training to help a group of nine culinary novitiates find their inner cook. These students invited Kathleen into their kitchens where she took inventory of each person's refrigerator, cabinets and eating habits. After kitchen "makeovers" and a series of basic lessons where they learned to wield knives, trust their taste and improve their food choices, the women found a common missing ingredient--confidence. In this new book, Flinn follows these women's journeys and includes practical, healthy tips to boost readers' culinary confidence, strategies to get the most from their grocery dollar and simple recipes to get readers cooking.
Publisher: Viking Adult
Hardcover: 304 pages
"The Flame Alphabet" is one part inspiring and two parts infuriating. Samuel and Claire are part of a Jewish cult that is lost in the woods, cowering in bunkers and listening to radio sermons that argue that nothing -- faith, understanding, communion -- can be rendered in speech. They are dead to their teenage daughter and each time she speaks, the venom in her sound bites is, quite literally, malignant.
It's an intriguing premise before Marcus ties it to the rack in his linguistic basement and tortures it to death. More than once in the cage match with his wordplay, I sought relief in other novels, just to remember what a good book feels like.
For those who worship at the altar of free speech, and "the craven desire to speak, to write, to be heard," there is much to consider the impact of its evolving rancor.
If we recognize the pain words can inflict, why and when do we encourage them? Long after Samuel turns to crafting "a new language to outwit the toxicity," he speaks a word to the stranger in his bed, just to demonstrate how violating speech can be: "A disease borne straight from the mouth ... (S)he reacted as if I'd pushed a knife into her ribs and then kept pushing, when it was no longer funny, leaning on her with all my weight."
- Publisher: Knopf
- Hardcover: 304 pages
With at least 30 percent of Americans suffering from gluten sensitivity and the huge interest in vegan and vegetarian lifestyles, the demand for hearty recipes that are free from wheat, gluten, meat, and dairy products has never been greater. Susan O’Brien is back with the sequel to her popular Gluten-Free Vegan—this time featuring quick and easy versions of everyone’s favorite comfort food recipes complemented by helpful tips to make your dishes fantastic. Recipes include Pumpkin and Pecan Waffles with Pumpkin Maple Butter, “Mac and Cheese,” Stuffed Bell Peppers, Baked Bean Casserole, Molasses Cookies, Key Lime Pie, and Berry Rice Pudding.
Publisher: Da Capo Lifelong Books
Paperback: 248 pages
The 25th Anniversary Edition of IT was easily the biggest, most lavish production Cemetery Dance Publications has ever undertaken. This special edition goes even beyond the scope and quality of their other much-acclaimed Stephen King special editions (From A Buick 8, Blockade Billy).This deluxe, oversized Gift Edition is one-of-a-kind, printed in two colors and bound in only the finest materials. It will make the perfect addition to any fan's collection and cannot be found anywhere else.
Says founder & publisher Richard Chizmar on working with King, "I've been a Stephen King fan for more than 30 years, and IT is my all-time favorite, so publishing this anniversary edition is a dream come true for me. It doesn't get any better."
"I worked on the book in a dream. I remember very little about the writing of it, except for the idea that I'd gotten hold of something that felt very big to me, and something that talked about more than monsters..."
- Stephen King, from the exclusive afterword
Cemetery Dance
Hardcover: 272 pages
Unearthed from the depths of the Batcave by Mathew K. Manning, The Batman Files begins with Wayne's childhood drawings and continues along a time line of significant events in Batman's life. Complete and authentic in every way possible, all of Batman's friends and foes--from Poison Ivy, Catwoman, the Riddler, and Penguin, to the Joker, Batgirl, Mr. Freeze, and of course, Robin--appear throughout the dossier to provide a framework of the Caped Crusader's entire career.
Completely outlining Batman's war on crime, The Batman Files includes in-depth computer files, news articles, crime scene photos, blueprints, schematics, and actual maps of Gotham City that were collected, and in many cases even drawn, by the Caped Crusader himself.
High production values include black matte gilding, as well as a high-tech fabric cover--complete with a metallic Batman emblem to secure the secret contents within. Each detail of Batman's life is carefully and faithfully detailed with the involvement of DC Comics inside The Batman Files--destined to be the must-have gift for every avid Batman fan and collector.
Andrews McMeel Publishing
Hardcover: 308 pages
Have you ever really looked at a book? The state of being high rewards deep attention, and lots of things can seem really, really interesting. It might be a spot on the ceiling, or an oddly-shaped tortilla chip, or a bit of wood grain. But why settle for staring at the coffee table? What if there was a book on that table specially created to amaze and delight pot smokers and their friends? This highly entertaining collection of images is the ultimate centerpiece and conversation starter. Featuring dozens of immersive, trippy, funny, meditative, and mind-bending images, each page offers a new visual world of wonder that everyone can enjoy especially those living the high life
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Hardcover: 112 pages
Everybody counts, or nobody counts. That’s always been the credo of LAPD homicide cop Hieronymus (Harry) Bosch. And that credo has never been more seriously tested than in The Drop.Harry Bosch has been given three years before he must retire from the LAPD, and he wants cases more fiercely than ever. In one morning, he gets two.
DNA from a 1989 rape and murder matches a 29-year-old convicted rapist. Was he an eight-year-old killer or has something gone terribly wrong in the new Regional Crime Lab? The latter possibility could compromise all of the lab's DNA cases currently in court.
Then Bosch and his partner are called to a death scene fraught with internal politics. Councilman Irvin Irving's son jumped or was pushed from a window at the Chateau Marmont. Irving, Bosch's longtime nemesis, has demanded that Harry handle the investigation.
Relentlessly pursuing both cases, Bosch makes two chilling discoveries: a killer operating unknown in the city for as many as three decades, and a political conspiracy that goes back into the dark history of the police department.
Among the other treats in this complex web are Connelly’s ability to construct seamless links between plot strands while springing the occasional plot twist on us, and Bosch’s developing relationship with Maddie, who is showing distinct signs of the sort of inquisitive and probing mind a good cop needs.
And, of course, there’s always Harry, a now-canonical figure in the modern policier genre – an often abrupt, sometimes violent, usually obstreperous man who walks the mean streets of his city, motivated by a simple moral code, that his role is “to speak for victims.” Which he does – eloquently, in his way. The story like is fast-paced and never slows down... Readers will relish this taut thriller.
Little, Brown and Company
Hardcover: 388 pages
In the spring of 2011, Wisconsinites took to the streets in what became the largest and liveliest labor demonstrations in modern American history. Protesters in the Middle East sent greetings—and pizzas—to the thousands occupying the Capitol building in Madison, and 150,000 demonstrators converged on the city.
In a year that has seen a revival of protest in America, here is a riveting account of the first great wave of grassroots resistance to the corporate restructuring of the Great Recession.
It Started in Wisconsin includes eyewitness reports by striking teachers, students, and others (such as Wisconsin-born musician Tom Morello), as well as essays explaining Wisconsin’s progressive legacy by acclaimed historians. The book lays bare the national corporate campaign that crafted Wisconsin’s anti-union legislation and similar laws across the country, and it conveys the infectious esprit de corps that pervaded the protests with original pictures and comics.
Publisher: Verso
Paperback: 192 pages