Observations from the Balcony

Recent additions (purchases and copies for review consideration) to the house:

Brown Harvest by Jay Russell

Ever been a boy or girl detective? Ever wanted to be one? Brown Harvest is the story of what happens when boy detectives grow old. With guest appearances by just about every character you ever loved reading about when you, too, were young and/or innocent.

Burning Bright by Jay Russell

Bloody hell!

That’s what London is starting to look like now that Marty Burns has hit town.

Having made Los Angeles safe for quality detective drama in Celestial Dogs, Marty is ready to conquer England with his new show, Burning Bright. Marty follows the bloody footsteps of Jack the Ripper, only to walk into a modern evil far more terrible than any mere serial killer. Hunted by Ultima Thule, a neo-Nazi cult with mystical powers, Marty forms a fellowship of eccentric allies to counter the Thule’s dark threat.

From a secret voodoo temple in the slums of Liverpool, to arcane Druidic rituals in Arthurian Cornwall, to spectacular magical battles above and beneath the streets of London’s East End, Marty races against time and fate to save the soul of a nation.

And he doesn’t even like the beer.

Greed & Stuff by Jay Russell

Long ago he was the teen star of a TV sitcom. Then he was a washed up private eye. But now Marty Burns is back on TV, playing a private investigator. But while he is waits to see if his show is renewed, he stumbles into a mess involving “The Devil on Sunday”, a remake and a very real corpse.

Celestial Dogs by Jay Russell

Marty Burns was famous. Once.

Now he’s just another fallen star, earning his keep as a low-rent private eye. But everything Marty has ever believed in is about to be shattered when the hunt for a missing hooker draws him into an epic struggle between age-old foes.

Two ancient cults have brought their eternal battle from the mystic mountains of Japan to the seedy streets of Los Angeles. Marty must confront vicious pimps, suspicious cops, Hollywood mega-moguls and all-powerful demons from the pages of myth as his life is turned inside-out. He is forced to confront that most difficult, but fundamental of questions: What do you believe in?

Awesome supernatural powers have renewed their endless fight, with the soul of humanity hanging in the balance.

Only this time, there’s Marty Burns. Who’s about to become famous…

Again.

Give & Take by Stona Fitch

Ross Clifton is a brilliant jazz pianist–and an even more talented thief. He steals millions of dollars in diamonds and BMWs and gives all the money away. But his life as a latter-day Robin Hood is about to come to an abrupt end. Fast, funny, and felonious, Give and Take takes you on an economic shakedown cruise.

Veil of Lies by Jeri Westerson

Crispin Guest is a disgraced knight, stripped of his rank and his honor - but left with his life - for plotting against Richard II. Having lost his bethrothed, his friends, his patrons and his position in society. With no trade to support him and no family willing to acknowledge him, Crispin has turned to the one thing he still has - his wits - to scrape a living together on the mean streets of London. In 1383, Guest is called to the compound of a merchant - a reclusive mercer who suspects that his wife is being unfaithful and wants Guest to look into the matter. Not wishing to sully himself in such disgraceful, dishonorable business but in dire need of money, Guest agrees and discovers that the wife is indeed up to something, presumably nothing good. But when he comes to inform his client, he is found dead - murdered in a sealed room, locked from the inside. Now Guest has come to the unwanted attention of the Lord Sheriff of London and most recent client was murdered while he was working for him. And everything seems to turn on a religious relic - a veil reported to have wiped the brow of Christ - that is now missing.

The Savage Humanists edited by Fiona Kelleghan

What if we were modified neurologically so we could only tell the truth? What if aliens beamed us proof that God didn’t exist? What if the sideshow freak you’re seeing is really a visiting alien? What if a teleportation accident created a duplicate you?

Meet the Savage Humanists: the hottest science-fiction writers working today. They use SF’s unique powers to comment on the human condition in mordantly funny, satiric stories, each accompanied by commentary by renowned SF scholar Fiona Kelleghan.

Every author in this anthology has been nominated for the Hugo or Nebula Awards — or both! — and many have won. In these pages, you’ll find the top names in the SF field: including Jonathan Lethem (author of the novel Gun, with Occasional Music), James Morrow (The Philosopher’s Apprentice), Kim Stanley Robinson (Red Mars), Robert J. Sawyer (Rollback), and Connie Willis (The Doomsday Book), plus Gregory Frost, James Patrick Kelly, John Kessel, and Tim Sullivan.

Valley of Day-Glo by Nick DiChario

Broadway Danny Rose is on the move!

In this brightly satiric, postapocalyptic novel of the far future, a young Indian brave named Broadway Danny Rose embarks upon a quest across the desolate planet Earth to find the mysterious Valley of Day-Glo, where plants and animals and large bodies of water are rumored to still exist, and where, according to legend, “death becomes life.”

Valley of Day-Glo is a brilliant blend of Douglas Adams’s farcical humor and Kurt Vonnegut’s droll absurdity. Hugo Award-nominee Nick DiChario delivers a witty and poignant story that deals with the power of myth, the search for truth, and the meaning of life and death.

The Lighthouse trilogy by Adrian McKinty

When Jamie’s mother inherits a small island, and moves her little family from Harlem to Ireland, her troubled son sees a chance to start over, far away from the bullies and the pitying stares. Cancer has left Jamie without an arm or the will to speak. But Muck Island offers more than solitude and sea views. Jamie learns that he is heir to an ancient title, Laird of Muck, Guardian of the Passage, and certain otherworldly responsibilities. With the help of a mysterious object he discovers in the island’s old lighthouse, Jamie sets out on a dangerous mission that will change the course of his life, and possibly the universe, forever.

Tautly paced and brilliantly imagined, this novel will thrill sci-fi fans eager for new heroes and new worlds to explore.

Renderings by James Sallis (signed first edition)

A man travels alone to an island. There he reflects on his life as an artist - a writer - and on the women he has loved. Soon the reader realizes that this man is on the edge of sanity, and his review of his life is his attempt to retain what he can of sanity and meaning. Renderings is a novel written so tightly that no air escapes and no impurity seeps in.

Solitaire by Kelley Eskridge

Solitaire tells the story of Ren “Jackal” Segura and of the highly structured, near-future society that shapes and controls her destiny. A series of incidents leads to her arrest, conviction, and forced participation in an experimental form of punishment known as virtual confinement (VC). In VC, the comatose subject is imprisoned in a colorless, constricted virtual environment in which time itself stretches and slows. In less than one real-time year, Jackal endures the virtual equivalent of several years of unbroken solitude. Jackal’s experiences in VC — her near capitulation to madness and despair, her creation of a doorway to a brighter, more expansive world, and her subsequent, painful reemergence form the heart of this beautifully detailed, sometimes harrowing account of courage, cruelty, and survival.

A Handbook of American Prayer by Lucius Shepard

A man walks into a bar. A dispute ensues, and the bartender kills him. He’s sentenced to ten years for manslaughter. In prison, the convict, Wardlin Stuart, writes prayers addressed to no god in particular. Inexplicably, his prayers - whether it’s a request for a girlfriend or a special favor for a fellow inmate - are answered, be it in days or weeks. When his collection of supplications, A Handbook of American Prayer, is published by a New York press, Stuart emerges a celebrity author. Settling into a new life in Arizona, he encounters a fundamentalist minister. The two are destined for a confrontation. In the interim, it seems that the god to whom Stuart has been praying has manifested himself on the earth. In this short novel about America’s conflicting love triangle - celebrity, spirituality, and money - Shepard negotiates the thin line between the real and the surreal, expounding upon violence and redemption along the way. this story of an unlikely American messiah shows why The Wall Street Journal has compared Shepard, an award-winning author, to Graham Greene, Robert Stone, and Ward Just.

Valentine by Lucius Shepard

In a landscape that will exist only for as long as it is imagined, VALENTINE unfolds to reveal the intricacies of the human heart. In South Florida, a hurricane alert waylays a journalist in the coastal town of Piersall. This safe harbour hosts an unlikely reunion, as he miraculously finds himself stranded with a lost love. This chance encounter is merely the first in a chain of events that will again link these estranged lovers to one another. But eventually the suggestion emerges that their love may not be governed by chance alone, but by the ever-bending rules of the imagination. Investigating the nature of their love and the elusive, alienating force that separated them in the past, despite their seemingly boundless passion, this is an erotic valentine of insatiable longing and hope that will make a sensual and entrancing holiday gift.

Lock 14 by Georges Simenon

One rainy night, a canal worker stumbles across the strangled body of Mary Lampson in a stable near Lock 14. The dead woman’s husband seems unmoved by her death and is curt and unhelpful when Maigret interviews him aboard his yacht. But gradually Maigret is able to piece together their story - a sordid tale of whisky-fuelled orgies and nomadic life on the canals. Can the answer to this crime be found aboard the yacht? Or is the murderer among the bargees, carters and lock-keepers who work the canal? In Lock 14, Simenon plunges Maigret into the unfamiliar canal world of shabby bars and shadowy towpaths, drawing together the strands of a tragic case of lost identity.