Seven Books Worth Your Time

DIG TEN GRAVES by Heath Lowrance: "Heath Lowrance follows up his classic debut, THE BASTARD HAND, with a searing collection of hard-boiled, dark fiction. The blackest of noir permeates the pages of DIG TEN GRAVES and oozes into its dark alleyways, its blood stained streets and its rain soaked gutters - even the crevices on the faces of its battle scarred and booze battered protagonists." -- Paul D Brazill.

THE CHAOS WE KNOW by Keith Rawson: “The Chaos We Know is a pulp-fueled debut w/ dopers, cops, husbands and wives. boyfriends & girlfriends, psychos & sadists, sand-storming through the potholes & shithouses of Arizona, leaving barnacles of the self centered, the down trodden’ & the surviving. Keith Rawson is the new garbage-tongued satirist of filth, deviance & violence for the new underclass.” -- Frank Bill.

THE NIGHT AND THE MUSIC by Lawrence Block: Lawrence Block’s 17 Matthew Scudder novels have won the hearts of readers throughout the world—along with a bevy of awards including the Edgar, the Shamus, the Philip Marlowe (Germany), and the Maltese Falcon (Japan).
And it’s MattScudder who’s been largely reponsible for Block’s lifetime achievement awards: Grand Master (Mystery Writers of America), The Eye (Private Eye Writers of America), and the Cartier Diamond Dagger (UK Crime Writers Association).

But Scudder has starred in short fiction as well, and it’s all here, from a pair of late-70s novelettes (Out the Window and A Candle for the Bag Lady) through By the Dawn’s Early Light (Edgar) and The Merciful Angel of Death (Shamus), all the way to One Last Night at Grogan’s, a moving and elegiac story never before published. It was short fiction that kept the series alive on the several occasions when the flow of novels wass ingterrupted, and short stories that took Scudder down different paths and showed us unmapped portions of his world.

CHOKE ON YOUR LIES by Anthony Neil Smith: A new novel by the author of PSYCHOSOMATIC, YELLOW MEDICINE, and HOGDOGGIN'. Smith presents his homage to one of his favorite detectives, Nero Wolfe, but written for the "internet porn" generation.

Octavia VanderPlatts is wealthy, powerful, and "comfortable with her weight"--or to hear her say it, a "rich fat b****." Her IQ is at the genius level, and she uses it to manipulate and frighten anyone who tries to get in her way. She controls an empire built on discrimination lawsuits won against some of the nation's top companies. On top of that, Octavia doesn't care one wink what people think of her.

PULP MODERN Edited by Alec Cizak: The inaugural issue of Pulp Modern, a quarterly dedicated to crime, fantasy, and western fiction. Includes new stories by Jimmy Callaway, James Duncan, C.J. Edwards, Garnett Elliott, Melissa Embry, Edward A. Grainger, Glenn Gray, David James Keaton, John Kenyon, Chris La Tray, Yarrow Paisley, Matthew Pizzolato, Thomas Pluck, Stephen D. Rogers, Sandra Seamans, Copper Smith and a classic tale by pulp fiction pioneer Lawrence Block.

FRANK SINATRA IN A BLENDER by Matthew J. McBride: Sometimes solving a crime takes a hard guy who’s not afraid to work outside the law, and PI Nick Valentine swerves through the underbelly of St. Louis looking for answers. With every law he breaks, every drink he takes, and every Oxycontin he snorts, Valentine lurches closer to finding the truth. Or floating facedown in the Missouri River.

THE TRADITIONAL WEST (A Western Fictioneers Anthology): The classic American Western returns in this collection of brand-new stories by some of the top Western writers in the world today. Robert J. Randisi, Dusty Richards, James Reasoner, Larry D. Sweazy, L.J. Washburn, Jackson Lowry, Larry Jay Martin, Kerry Newcomb, and many other members of Western Fictioneers, the only writers’ organization devoted solely to traditional Western fiction, take readers from the dusty plains of Texas to the sweeping vistas of Montana and beyond, in the biggest original Western anthology ever published!