New Treasures – Page 199

New Treasures: Best New Werewolf Tales, edited by Carolina Smart

Thursday, July 12, 2012 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

It’s Thursday, so I must be Goth Chick. Sadly, I am not. Last night Goth Chick received reports of a possible sighting of the Jersey Devil in Skokie, Illinois, and she immediately leaped in the Gothmobile to investigate. At the moment, she’s diligently exploring the back alleys of the Chicago suburbs with an EMF detector and a Piña colada.

Frankly it all sounds dubious to me, but maybe that’s because I’m left holding the bag for the Thursday blog entry. “Uphold my fine journalistic standards — I will countenance nothing less,” said her last text. Had to look up “countenance,” which didn’t bode well.

Luckily, Toronto-based Books of the Dead Press came to my rescue with a well-timed announcement this week, promoting six new releases.

Founded in 2009, Books of the Dead Press is one of the most active small presses around. They’ve already released eight books this year; some of their recent titles include Berserk by Tim Lebbon; Husk by Matt Hults; Gary Brandner’s The Howling Trilogy, Pain Cages by Paul Kane, Badass Zombie Road Trip by Tonia Brown, and the Zombie Kong anthology, edited by James Roy Daley.

But the title that really grabbed my attention was Best New Werewolf Tales, Volume 1, edited by Carolina Smart, which was released in paperback and Kindle format in May. Following on the heels of their popular anthologies Best New Zombie Tales and Best New Vampire Tales, this one contains “more than 100,000 words of ferocious, slavering, hairy horror” from Jonathan Maberry, Michael Laimo, John Everson, James Newman, David Niall Wilson, and many others — 20 short stories altogether.

The fiction appears to be all new (not reprints). The cover art is by Carl Graves. You can find the complete Table of Contents at the Books of the Dead website here.

“Ferocious, slavering, hairy horror.” That’s gotta be better than whatever Goth Chick finds in Skokie, no matter how good that EMF detector is. I tell you, good things come to he who waits. And who patiently checks his e-mail.

Best New Werewolf Tales is available for $9.99 in paperback and $3.49 in Kindle format. You can purchase both at their online store.

New Treasures: Tales From Super-Science Fiction, edited by Robert Silverberg

Thursday, July 5, 2012 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

You really have to admire the team at Haffner Press. These guys must work night and day. Hot on the heels of their last release just two months ago — the gorgeous Kuttner collection Thunder in the Void — they’ve now published Tales From Super-Science Fiction, a thick anthology of fourteen stories from the legendary 50s SF magazine Super-Science Fiction. I’m not sure how they do it.

As usual the team at Haffner is firing on all cylinders, and both the marketing team and the production staff deserve kudos for a top-notch production. The Art Director and Book Designer have hit it out of the park, and —

What’s that? There is no “team” at Haffner Press? It’s just one guy, Stephen Haffner?

Ha. Like I’m going to believe that. Just take a look at their schedule of upcoming titles. There’s nearly a dozen. Maybe Stephen is the front man, but nothing can convince me he doesn’t have two dozen gnomes in a sweatshop in his basement. There’s no other explanation.

However he does it, I hope he keeps it up. Tales From Super-Science Fiction contains fiction by A. Bertram Chandler, Robert Bloch, Jack Vance, Robert Moore Williams, Daniel L. Galouye, Alan E. Nourse, Tom Godwin, Robert Silverberg, and others. Here’s the book description:

Super-Science Fiction was launched during the sf boom of the mid-1950s. Paying a princely rate of 2 cents a word the magazine attracted fiction by Isaac Asimov, Robert Bloch, Harlan Ellison. James Gunn, Jack Vance, and Donald Westlake, and featured cover art by Frank Kelly Freas and Ed Emshwiller. Running for 18 bi-monthly issues (Dec ‘55 to Oct ‘59), the magazine eventually devolved into a publication capitalizing on the then-current craze of “monster” stories. Editor Silverberg traces the genesis of Super-Science Fiction from its beginnings as an outlet for numerous colonization/expedition stories to its conclusion with such stories as “Creatures of the Green Slime,” “Beasts of Nightmare Horror” and “Vampires from Outer Space.”

Tales From Super-Science Fiction is 400 pages, with a cover price of $32. It is illustrated by Ed Emshwiller and Frank Kelly Freas, with cover art by Freas. You can find the complete Table of Contents at the Haffner website.

See the complete list of recent New Treasures here.

New Treasures: Patrice Sarath’s The Crow God’s Girl

Saturday, June 23, 2012 John ONeill Comments 7 comments

Patrice Sarath has had an enviable career. Her contribution in Black Gate 4, “A Prayer for Captain LaHire,” the tale of three knights and followers of Joan of Arc who discover the horror a fourth disciple has unleashed, was one of the most acclaimed stories from our early years and was reprinted in Year’s Best Fantasy 3 (2003). She edited the anthology Tales From The Secret City in 2007.

She turned to novels in 2008 with Gordath Wood, a book she describes as “hard to categorize:”

It’s fantasy but with only a touch of magic to it. It has romance, but is not a romance (a very different beast). It has a murder-kidnap mystery in it. Basically it has all of the elements of books I like to read. And although everybody has different tastes, I am betting that more than a few of you also like your books the same way I do — shaken and stirred. So if you like fantasy-mystery-romance novels, this one’s for you.

Gordath Wood was well reviewed and spawned a sequel, Red Gold Bridge, in 2009. In 2011 she published The Unexpected Miss Bennet, a Pride & Prejudice sequel which follows middle sister Mary Bennet, the most misunderstood of the Bennet sisters.

Now she’s turned to digital books with a second sequel to Gordath Wood, The Crow God’s Girl. When Lord Terrick’s youngest son is kidnapped, teenage Kate Mosland teams with a mysterious young girl named Ossen to execute a daring rescue… an action with unexpected consequences. As the kingdom stands on the brink of war and Terrick demands Kate submit to a new role, Kate finds that another daring and unexpected action may be the only way to find her true home.

The Crow God’s Girl is 326 pages and was published June 6, 2012. It is available via Amazon Kindle for $3.99.

Tor Releases The Devil Delivered and Other Tales by Steven Erikson

Friday, June 22, 2012 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I know we’ve got a lot of Steven Erikson fans out there. We’ve got your back.

On Tuesday Tor Book released The Devil Delivered and Other Tales, the latest collection of a trio of fantasy novellas from Steven Erikson, following 2009’s Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, which gathered three short novels of the Malazan Empire.

Like Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, The Devil Delivered and Other Tales features work previously printed in expensive limited edition hardcovers from PS Publishing: The Devil Delivered (from March 2005), Fishin’ with Grandma Matchie (November 2005), and Revolvo (December 2008). Most of them are no longer available, or available only at collector’s prices, so if you’re an Erikson fan who hasn’t seen them before this edition is a bargain.

Unlike Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, this volume features standalone tales unrelated to his popular Malazan Empire setting. Here’s the summary for the first story, The Devil Delivered:

Mind the Hole. In a world of ozone depletion, toxic deadzones, internicine brew-ups and lifeless oceans, nothing has changed. Or so it seems, but in the break-away Lakota Nation, in the heart of a land blistered beneath an ozone hole the size of the Great Plains of North America, something is happening. Tracked by a growing global audience of online subversives and electronic muckers, a lone anthropologist wanders the deadlands, recording observations that threaten to bring the world’s powers to their knees. Past and future; restless ghosts and rogue corporations; rad-shielded cities and unprotected peripheral populations; all now face each other, across a chasm once wide but growing ever narrower. Mother Earth is poisoned beyond any hope of resuscitation. Humanity beyond any hope of redemption — but one last lesson of life awaits. When Nature starts losing the game, Nature changes the rules. We’ve turned paradise into Hell, and in Hell, the Devil Delivers.

The Devil Delivered and Other Tales is $14.99 in trade paperback for 336 pages. It was published by Tor Books on June 19, 2012.

New Treasures: Necropolis by Michael Dempsey

Thursday, June 21, 2012 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Back in April I told you about this sale at Night Shade Books (now expired). I took advantage of it myself, and ordered roughly a dozen titles.

I finally found time to put them away this week. They look terrific, and I hope to tell you about some of them over the next few weeks.

Let’s start with Michael Dempsey’s Necropolis, a delicious-looking cross of science fantasy and pulp detective novel:

Paul Donner is a NYPD detective struggling with a drinking problem and a marriage on the rocks. Then he and his wife get dead — shot to death in a “random” crime. Fifty years later, Donner is back — revived courtesy of the Shift, a process whereby inanimate DNA is re-activated.

This new “reborn” underclass is not only alive again, they’re growing younger, destined for a second childhood. The freakish side-effect of a retroviral attack on New York, the Shift has turned the world upside down. Beneath the protective geodesic Blister, clocks run backwards, technology is hidden behind a noir facade, and you can see Elvis and Radio City Music Hall ever night. In this unfamiliar retro-futurist world of flying Studebakers and plasma tommy guns, Donner must search for those responsible for the destruction of his life. His quest for retribution, aided by Maggie, his holographic Girl Friday, leads him to the heart of the mystery surrounding the Shift’s origin and up against those who would use it to control a terrified nation.

Night Shade is discovering and promoting a lot of new talent, and Necropolis is a fine example. It’s Dempsey’s first novel, although he wrote for network TV in the mid-90s.

Necropolis is 361 pages in trade paperback, with a $14.99 cover price. It was released in October 2011. The cover art is by E.M. Gist. You can order it directly from Night Shade here.

See the complete list of New Treasures features here.

A Tale of a Vanished Writer: Geoffrey Huntington’s The Ravenscliff Series

Tuesday, June 19, 2012 John ONeill Comments 16 comments

If you follow what we call “the industry,” you’re probably aware of a routine publishing phenomenon: a new writer appears, publishes 2-3 novels, and then vanishes. Frequently right in the middle of a promising new series.

Here’s another routine phenomenon: I discover them ten years later.

Fricken’ hell. Where do all these vanished writers come from? People puzzle over where they go; I just want to know how they keep popping up. Vanished writers. They’re all over the place, like discount car insurance.

Last month I bought a collection of 240 new science fiction and fantasy paperbacks (Told you I buy collections. They’re like boxes of Christmas.) This one was an eclectic mix of remaindered titles from the last ten years, all in terrific shape, at about a buck a book. The seller still has a few lots left on eBay, if you’re interested.

Anyway. One of the chief joys of buying books by the quarter ton is finding bizarre stuff you don’t normally come across. (The other is coming up with creative ways to sneak them into the house without your spouse knowing, but that’s a different topic.) One of the many interesting items I came across in the first lot was the 2004 YA novel Demon Witch by Geoffrey Huntington, with this intriguing description on the back cover:

Long before the days of Madman Jackson Muir, a witch named Isobel the Apostate waged war upon her fellow sorcerers, the noble order of the Nightwing. Burned at the stake for her crimes, Isobel vowed to return and conquer the world. Now that she is back, the only person who can prevent hell on earth is fourteen-year-old Devon March. In a battle that takes him from modern-day Ravenscliff to Tudor England and back, Devon must unleash the Nightwing power within himself and call upon friendships in the strangest places to stand against an evil that has waited five centuries for revenge. For at Ravenscliff, friends come in all shapes and sizes — and enemies are everywhere.

Witches, sorcerers, secret orders, and burnin’ stuff at the stake. That sounded pretty good. Naturally, the cover proclaimed it was Book II of The Ravenscliff Series. Which I’d never heard of.

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New Treasures: Dungeons & Dragons Into the Unknown: The Dungeon Survival Handbook

Saturday, June 16, 2012 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

I don’t get to play D&D as much as I’d like these days. Which means that my enjoyment of the latest supplements chiefly depends on how fun they are to read. By that measure, Into the Unknown: The Dungeon Survival Handbook is one of the best books to come from Wizards of the Coast in a while.

What makes this one stand out? On the surface it’s pretty lightweight, described as

A guide for players and Dungeon Masters who want to play in a Dungeons & Dragons game that explores dungeons and plumbs the blackest reaches of the Underdark… Players will find an assortment of new powers, equipment, feats, character themes, and player races, including the kobold and the goblin. For Dungeon Masters, the book is a trove of dungeon-building advice and details, including lore on classic dungeon monsters, some quirky companions for adventurers, a few timeless treasures, and tips for incorporating players’ character themes into an adventure.

Yeah, we’ve seen this book a few times over the decades. A collection of vague dungeoneering advice, some monsters that didn’t make the cut for other modules, and a few new feats. Reminiscent of the 1986 title that finally convinced me I could ignore future TSR hardcovers, The Dungeoneer’s Survival Guide.

At least, that’s what I thought until I opened it.

My favorite section is a 17-page chunk of Chapter 2 titled “Infamous Dungeons,” which takes a detailed look at some of the most popular publications in D&D history, from Castle Ravenloft to The Temple of Elemental Evil to The Gates of Firestorm Peak. Not half-hearted marketing pieces, but warts-and-all descriptions of classic dungeons alongside pics of the original modules. Here’s a brief excerpt from the assessment of 1980’s The Ghost Tower of Inverness:

That publication was preceded by a tournament version that one could purchase only at WinterCon VIII in 1979 in a zip bag containing 40 loose-leaf pages. But even its more professionally published form, the adventure’s tournament pedigree was on full display. Discussions of scoring the players’ efforts riddle the adventure text, which presents an oftentimes nonsensical dungeon full of desperation-inducing challenges… Since then, the Ghost Tower of Inverness has appeared from time to time in various products. Most recently, it was featured in the D&D Encounters season March of the Phantom Brigade.

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New Treasures: Phil & Kaja Foglio’s Girl Genius Omnibus Volume One

Friday, June 15, 2012 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Girl Genius is one of my favorite comics. Or at least it would be, if my dang kids didn’t stop stealing the issues and I could read them.

Now Tor has solved that problem nicely, with the publication of Girl Genius Omnibus Volume One: Agatha Awakens, a handsome 320-page full-color compilation of issues 1-10.

Which my kids immediately stole.

Until I find it again, I have to talk about it in the abstract. Like this: Girl Genius rocks. It’s a “Gaslamp Fantasy” (don’t call it steampunk) which follows the adventures of Agatha Heterodyne, a struggling student at Transylvania Polygnostic University who ends up on the run from the sinister Baron Klaus Wulfenbach. As she makes her way across the wasteland of a devastated Europe, she learns she comes from a family of Sparks — mad scientists with superhuman scientific gifts, and that her own gifts are just beginning to blossom.

I’m making liberal use of Wikipedia to fill in gaps here, owning to the missing issues stashed somewhere under my children’s beds upstairs.

Suffice it to say that Girl Genius is a terrific all-ages comic (one hopes, anyway). It’s fun, fast paced, and filled with lots of laugh-out-loud moments. Phil & Kaja Foglio make especially innovative use of color — the opening pages are black and white, and when color slowly seeps into the pages the effect is quite dramatic. Girl Genius began life in 2001 as a print comic, but became a full-fledged webcomic on April 18, 2005. In 2008 Phil Foglio was nominated for a Hugo award for Best Professional Artist for his work on Girl Genius, and in 2011 the strip won the Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story.

Girl Genius Omnibus Volume One: Agatha Awakens was published in hardcover by Tor Books on February 28, 2012. The cover price is $34.99 for 320 pages in full color.

New Treasures: The Fantasy Fan

Wednesday, June 13, 2012 John ONeill Comments 10 comments

Last month, I got a great e-mail from Black Gate blogger Barbara Barrett. In between her entertaining comments on The Avengers, Arthur Machen, and re-discovering comic books, was this fascinating tidbit:

I’ve started reading The Fantasy Fan — a fan’s tribute to Hornig. It’s a book containing a compilation of all the Fantasy Fan magazines… I’m only on the first zine but I’m amazed how closely the format matches that of Black Gate. Is this a *coincidence*? The first zine was published in September 1933 and it’s chilling because I keep in mind Robert E.Howard was still alive at that point… the breadth and depth of authors, articles and stories are wonderful. It’s definitely a page out of Living History.

Among fantasy collectors The Fantasy Fan is legendary. The world’s first fanzine dedicated to weird fiction, it lasted for 18 issues, from September 1933 to February 1935. Its contributors included some of the most famous names in the genre — H.P Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, Bob Tucker, Julius Schwartz, Forry Ackerman, Robert Bloch, August Derleth, Eando Binder, and many others — and its young editor Charles Horning so impressed Hugo Gernsback that he hired him to edit Wonder Stories in 1933, at the age of 17. While at Wonder Stories he published Stanley G. Weinbaum’s “A Martian Odyssey” and many other famous pulp stories.

Barbara’s reference to a compilation of The Fantasy Fan was so intriguing I had to track down a copy for myself, and it finally arrived last week. Copies of the original fanzine are so rare that I’ve never even seen one, so to hold a facsimile reprint of all 18 issues in my hands was rather breathtaking. The man behind the book is Lance Thingmaker, and here’s what he says in his introduction:

These fragile gems were so unique. They were simple little fanzines, but were filled with stories, articles and comments by history’s most important weird fiction writers and fans. I felt like I was looking back in time… Since they are extremely hard to find, it seemed many others probably never had the chance to check out the world’s first weird fiction zine. I wanted to make it happen.

The end product is a top-notch piece of work. The magazines are presented in facsimile format, with painstaking restoration of the original barely legible pages, hand printed and hand-bound in hardcover by Thingmaker. The book is over 300 pages, including the complete text of H.P. Lovecraft’s famous essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” which was being serialized when the magazine folded. It is limited to 100 copies and sold for $50. Thingmaker’s next project, due to ship later this month, is a facsimile reprint of all four issues of the ultra-rare pulp Marvel Tales.

You can find a detailed breakdown of the contents of The Fantasy Fan here. My thanks again to Barbara for alerting me to this before it sold out!

New Treasures: Zombiegeddon

Saturday, June 9, 2012 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I’m still unpacking from the horrible bout of auction fever I suffered back in March. I uncovered a box of games buried by loot from the April Windy City Pulp and Paper Show in my library on Friday … man, I go to too many auctions.

It’s fun to dig through unexpected boxes of games, though. It’s sort of like archaeology, especially since each item still has the auction tag and price on it. Man, what kind of primitive barbarian would pay 28 bucks for a copy of StarSoldier?? Since it’s in the box … me, apparently.

Still, there’s some intriguing surprises. Like this copy of Reiner Knizia’s Zombiegeddon I found. [Click on the image at right to embiggen.]

I don’t remember buying this game. In truth, twenty minutes ago, I didn’t even know it existed.

But I can imagine what happened. They rattle through items pretty fast at the Games Plus Spring Auction. The auctioneer held it up, I got a quick glimpse of a rare and mysterious gaming artifact with an old lady with spider legs and an undead dog on the cover, I heard the words “mumble mumble ZOMBIE mumble,” and everything went black. Three months later, I’m holding a copy of Zombiegeddon and someone has fifteen bucks of my money.

Zombiegeddon looks pretty neat, though. I mean, how could it not? Here’s the text on the back:

Well, it was nice while it lasted! You have gotten word that the end is near, and Armageddon is right around the corner. (Actually, it begins tonight!) Since it may be a while before you can get to the store, today would be a good time to gather as many supplies as possible. After all, tomorrow might be the beginning of a long, cold, (nuclear) winter!

Reiner Knizia’s Zombiegeddon is a fast-paced, perfect-information, strategy game. Each player spends the first half of the game rushing around the board collecting supplies and trying to stop your pesky neighbors from taking stuff that is rightfully yours … The second half of the game is spent trying to survive. Sure their is some good stuff around, but it certainly isn’t plentiful and let’s face it, everyone is still trying to take it before you do! (Whoever has the most stuff at the end of the game wins!)

The board looks pretty pedestrian — essentially just a blank grid — but the components are sturdy, and the rule book is only two pages. Maybe Drew will play this with me, once we finally find that frickin’ holy grail.

Reiner Knizia’s Zombiegeddon is available from Twilight Creations. It was published in March 2009, and retails for $24.99. The complete rulebook in PDF is here.

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