Starting to think of stocking stuffers?

Jill Thompson's delightfully zany MAGIC TRIXIE series would be great for the kiddos.

Booklist says "Thompson’s colorful art showing dragon Abby gleefully tearing up the house will have young readers laughing, and they’ll cheer Trixie’s solution to her problems.”

The Graphic Classroom is also a huge fan:

“From the candy-hued watercolors, to the adorable characters, to the sweet and witty story, MAGIC TRIXIE is a delight all around. Magic Trixie herself is a very bright, mischievous bundle of energy with a knack for getting in trouble and her friends are cute, cuddly takes on classic monsters with personalities that could easily belong to real, live children. The adult characters feel so real that I wonder if Thompson modeled them on her own friends and family. Young readers will relate to the relationships and family dynamics in the story and laugh out loud at the craziness. Thompson’s watercolors are truly stunning; she’s a master at mixing words and pictures seamlessly into a compelling story. I can’t recommend MAGIC TRIXIE highly enough – it’s jumped straight into my top ten all-ages comics of all time.”

Major props for Piccirilli's newest

Tom Piccirilli chats with Seth Harwood over at Blood on the Page.

Cullen Gallagher has a wonderful write-up at Pulp Serenade:

"Shadow Season was one of those books that I connected with from the very first line, and went on to read in a single afternoon. It’s an uncompromisingly dark story masterfully told that speaks well beyond its gripping scenario. Piccarilli allows us to connect with the characters on a level that feels very private, perhaps all the more so because of the main protagonist’s blindness: together, we share in his darkness.

Piccirilli’s refined artistry as a writer, particularly his expressive phrasing and impeccable pacing, are on display throughout Shadow Season. Finn’s hyper-sensory perception as a result of his blindness seems to infect Piccirilli’s prose, which uses touch and temperature, sound and smell, to evoke the physical surroundings of the campus, and the increasing isolation of the hostile environment. Even Piccirilli’s decision to write in the present tense seems related to this overarching sense of “blindness”: everything is happening “now,” with no foresight into the future, and no assurance that everything will turn out all right in the end, if in fact there ever will be a finite 'end' to any of this. This only adds to the highly cinematic quality of the narrative, with the bulk of it occurring on a single day with the occasional flashback to earlier times."

And some other great reviews...

"Piccirilli sharpens his literary knives and begins his assault on the readers with the brutality he is so well known for. Shadow Season is an extremely disturbing novel, easily matching the emotional intensity of his earlier masterpieces such as A Choir of Ill Children and November Mourns. Its violence is harrowing, plentiful, and realistic as hell... Shadow Season is Tom Piccirilli at his absolute best. It is an erotically charged and brutally violent novel that will please not only his fans, but should delight anyone who enjoys intelligently written, high octane thrillers. Shadow Season is highly recommended." - Horror World

"I've raved on Omnivoracious before about mystery/noir master Tom Piccirilli--his The Cold Spot and The Coldest Mile are among my recent favorites. Now he has another first-rate novel out, Shadow Season, with an intriguing premise that severely limited or, depending on your perspective, opened up the possibilities of his prose. It's another instant classic." - Jeff VanderMeer, on Amazon blog "Omnivoracious"



For those of you who haven't discovered Piccirilli's short stories yet, check out his newest collection, forthcoming from Cemetary Dance!

"To say the fiction of Tom Piccirilli often defies convention or genre labeling would be a grand understatement. Better to say Piccirilli creates his own literary space, in which inhabits beings of a dark but strangely beautiful grotesqueness, characters that offer readers twisted, warped reflections of themselves.

The work contained in his upcoming Cemetery Dance collection “Futile Efforts” certainly does that and more. They run the gamut, proving what most already know: that Tom Piccirilli is a skilled and versatile wordsmith: a dark fantasist with the heart of a crime/Noir writer, a sculptor of oddities, and a gifted poet, also. However, for all Piccirilli's strange, melancholic grace, the sharp edge of steel isn't far behind." - Shroud Magazine

This Veterans Day

"This Veterans Day reminds me when I was growing up in then-South Central L.A., I’d occasionally hear from my dad Dikes about his experiences in World War II. I knew he’d seen combat in an all-black squad at Guadalcanal and encountered racism both there and when he was in basic training in the Jim Crow Army at Fort Huachuca in southeast Arizona. My uncle, his older brother Norman, had seen mop-up action at D-Day and was among those black expatriates who’d remained in France after the war. Their younger brother, Sam, had been stationed in India, and my uncle on my mother’s side, Oscar Hutton Jr., I never knew. Oscar had been a Tuskegee airman and was killed in plane combat over Memmingen, Germany, in July of 1944. I have the Purple Heart awarded him posthumously.

But the experiences of the black soldier was missing from movies like “The Battle of the Bulge,” “The Longest Day” and “Patton,” a film with only a small part for one black actor, James Edwards (who had strong roles as a soldier in “Home of the Brave,” Sam Fuller’s “Steel Helmet” and “The Manchurian Candidate”), as the general’s valet. But where was the story about the 761st all-black tank battalion under Patton’s command? Where was the story of Patton writing of that outfit, “… I have no faith in the inherent fighting ability of the race.” (See “Brothers in Arms: The Epic Story of the 761st Tank Battalion, WWII’s Forgotten Heroes” by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anthony Walton.) And what about the amazing story of Medal of Honor winner Sgt. Eddie Carter, half black and half East Indian, who fought bravely with the anti-fascist Abraham Lincoln Brigade, in the U.S. Army in WWII, and with Chiang Kai-shek’s army? (My source here is “Honoring Sergeant Carter: Redeeming a Black World War II Hero’s Legacy” by Allene Carter and Robert L. Allen.)"

Click here to read the rest of Gary Phillips' introduction, and an excerpt from FREEDOM'S FIGHT. Phillips also shares the story behind the book over at The Rap Sheet.

Gischler gesticulating

...or doing the robot. Either way, check out his W. W. interview with BSC Review, in which Gischler and Keith Rawson delve into the finer points of this writing business.

Rediscover a Texas original

"Molly Ivins had a voice to be reckoned with at a time when female reporters were relegated to the 'women's pages.' Throwing off the mantle of convention and embracing the quirky rebelliousness of her home state of Texas in the 1960s, she forged a career as an influential political columnist and social activist. Fans of Ivins's work and readers interested in feminist history, contemporary politics, and media studies will like this first full-length biography of Ivins." - Library Journal

"full of wonderful stories about a complex, brilliant woman who will be remembered for her trademark wit and down-home wisdom"
- Dallas Morning News

"this biography will be enjoyed... it will help a new crop of readers discover an American original" - Cleveland Plain Dealer

"a solid account of her development as a reporter and writer. The best part, of course, is rereading Ivins’s old zingers... Aspiring journalists, read this — and then get to work." - Kirkus Reviews

"an illuminating portrait... Long before she grew famous for challenging the right-wing status quo, Molly Ivins worked at the Minneapolis Tribune. [Minutaglio and Smith's MOLLY IVINS] is a well documented look at an unconventional life." - Minneapolis Star Tribune

New release from a food guru

Exclusive note from EAT YOUR WAY TO HAPPINESS author, Elizabeth Somer:

Most people realize there is a link between what they eat and their physical health. We know that a diet packed with saturated fat can, over the years, lead to heart disease, colon cancer and even dementia. Or that a diet low in other nutrients, calcium for example, can lead to problems like bone loss and osteoporosis. But fascinating research done over the past twenty years has shown us that there’s also a real link between what we eat and how we feel—emotionally and mentally. I first reported on this in my book Food & Mood, published in 1995. In the fifteen years since that book was published, the research has continued to evolve and grow, which led me to write my latest and most exciting book to date, EAT YOUR WAY TO HAPPINESS.

The evidence is so strong in these studies that I’ve now completely changed the way I eat and how I counsel others to. For example, in recent years a wealth of new research has uncovered a strong link between our intake of the omega-3 fat DHA and a reduced risk for depression, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. And vitamin D, once thought to be important only for maintaining strong bones, has now been linked to reducing winter blues. While eating right to feel your best is a style of eating, not just a food here and there, it is now clear that dotting a good diet with certain super mood foods can have a profound effect on how fast we think, how clearly we remember and how happy we are throughout the day. And that’s what EAT YOUR WAY TO HAPPINESS will help you achieve.

If you follow the guidelines in this book, you will start to see immediate improvement in your mood, and you’ll discover the happiness that comes with eating well. (And as an added bonus, you’ll also lose those extra pounds!). I can’t tell you how often people, after following the advice in my book, have told me, "I never knew I could feel this good!" Now you can, too.

Enjoy!
Elizabeth Somer

Towering above

Soul brothers Reed F. Coleman and Ken Bruen are #4 on the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association's list of October 2009 bestsellers!

Recent Marvels

Greg McElhatton at Comic Book Resources has some kind words about Swierczynski's IMMORTAL WEAPONS #4:

"I've been increasingly pleased... a thoroughly enjoyable group of one-shots focusing on the other mystical martial artists that Danny Rand hangs out with on occasion.

This month's installment brings Tiger's Beautiful Daughter to the foreground... When the climax hits, it's satisfying; not only because it's a good ending, but because it's a perfectly paced origin story. Everything you need to know about Tiger's Beautiful Daughter is there, and it's easy to look ahead and see where her life is going. It's a pity all origin stories aren't this concise and interesting.

Swierczynski and company are bringing back that same amount of fun that Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction initially infused to the title. With stories like this, I'll keep coming back."


And, by the way, this is the same Swierczynski who recently had an adventure, "smoking some incredibly potent form of crack" while time-traveling. Man, those writers have all the fun...!

A line out the door

Greg Rucka and Matthew Southworth’s STUMPTOWN #1 sells out!

Name-checked

Oline Codgill: "Michael Koryta is an amazing writer and so young. We'll be hearing a lot more from him."

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jason-pinter/the-state-of-the-crime-no_b_342918.html