Winter Preparations

The garden's pretty well done, there's corn, broccoli and cauliflower in the freezer, beans and tomatoes canned, and potatoes dug and stored in the cellar. I've made a batch each of peach and plum jam. The wild blackberries are picked and frozen to make pies this coming winter. There's just a few pumpkins and carrots to be taken care of and summer's harvest will be finished. Put up to be enjoyed during the long winter months.

But the garden wasn't the only thing harvested for the coming winter. I've got books!! Our local historical society has four used booksales a year to raise money for their various projects. And I hit every one this summer. For the price of one brand spanking new hardcover, I've gathered together over fifty books to be savored this winter.

I know, I know, used book sales cut into author's profits. But living on the back side of nowhere where the only bookstore is a Christian bookstore fifty miles away and a library that caters to the cozy cat and crafts readers, the booksale is my lifeline to the darkside of the mystery world.

Being a short story writer, I was thrilled to find and purchase eight mystery anthologies. On the non-fiction side for fifty cents I scored a copy of "Murder Ink" by Dilys Winn and another fifty scored a biography of Arthur Conan Doyle by Daniel Stashower.

I now have the complete Kidd series by Sandford, a few Michael Connelly's, two Patrick and Angie books by Lehane and books by newer authors that I've never or just vaguely heard of. But the biggest finds were the old books that I found. And such treasures.

Three of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe books, two James Ellroy PI novels that I never heard of
"Because the Night" and "Clandestine", Willeford's "Miami Blues", and Estelman's "Sugar-Town" and Lawrence Block's "A Walk Among the Tombstones". All authors I've never read and look forward to. I found a Robert Randisi book "No Exit from Brooklyn" and Ed Gorman's "Everybody's Somebody's Fool" both excellent books and highly recommended. I found a double PI book by Carter Brown. I'd never heard of him but the titles sound luscious, "The Ice-Cold Nude" and "Lover Don't Come Back". So I'm well-stocked in the PI genre.

Since James Reasoner and David Cranmer are always discussing Westerns on their blogs, I even grabbed a couple of them. "The Day the Cowboys Quit" by Elmer Kelton and "One Man Posse" by Max Brand.

On the noir side of the mystery genre I found Harry Crew's "Scar Lover" and a triple treat in one book of James M. Cain that include "Career in C Major", "The Embezzler" and "Double Indemnity"

There are many more, but I've probably bored you to death by now. So what have you stockpiled to get you through the winter?

Today's quote comes courtesy of Harry Crews

"You have to go to considerable trouble to live differently from the way the world wants you to live. That's what I've discovered about writing. The world doesn't want you to do a damn thing. If you wait till you got time to write a novel or time to write a story or time to read the hundred thousands of books you should have already read - if you wait for the time, you'll never do it. Cause there ain't no time; world don't want you to do that. World wants you to go to the zoo and eat cotton candy, preferably seven days a week."