Saturday, May 15, 2010

Book Sale Finds

I had a wonderful afternoon digging through tables and boxes of books. It was the first of the summer book sales. The books are all donated and the proceeds go to our local historical society. I took over two boxes of hardcovers and a brown paper bag full of paperbacks to donate and came home with my shopping bag full for a grand total of five bucks.

With so many different people donating, you never know what you're going to find, but I was surprised to see quite a few advance copies of books, not this years, but fairly new. Got my mystery fix with a Crais, several Paretsky's that I'd missed and "The Pearl Harbor Murders" by Max Allan Collins. I'd seen his name mentioned all the around the web, so when I saw this book, I grabbed it. This will be my first reading of any of his work.

I also managed to snag four short story anthologies. It's funny how things collide. Jedidiah Ayres had mentioned Pinckney Benedict on his blog and I'd seen his name mentioned in several other places and what should I spot first off? "Town Smokes" by Pinckney Benedict. Great stories so far! I liked the title of Pam Houston's collection "Cowboys Are My Heroes" so I grabbed that one. And I found two sci-fi anthologies. One a collection by Larry Niven called "Tales of Known Space: The Universe of Larry Niven" and the other is "A Treasury of Great Science Fiction" edited by Anthony Boucher that has a great line-up of authors.

I'd seen the name Charles Grant before so when I came across several of his books I picked up two. One called "In The Mood" which sounds excellent and another called "Black Oak:Winter Knight". I looked Mr. Grant up and discovered that he passed away several years ago, but, wow!, was he prolific. I also found a book called "Friday" by Robert A. Heinlein.

As I'm fond of Southern writers, I was pleased to come across two books by Southern writers. The first is "Sullivan's Island" by Dorothea Benton Frank and the other is "Bad Ground" by W. Dale Cramer which sounds like a great read.

How about you? What treasures did you find this weekend?

5 comments:

Chris said...

As a fan of Southern writers, Sandra, have you read any Larry Brown. Recently watched the documentary about him called The Rough South of Larry Brown, and really liked it. I'd read some of his stories, so I ventured out to the used bookstore in town and picked up a couple of his novels: Dirty Work and Father and Son.

I really enjoy the blog that Max Allan Collins keeps. Here's the link if you're interested, provided you don't already know about it:

http://www.maxallancollins.com/blog/

David Cranmer said...

"The Pearl Harbor Murders" by Max Allan Collins sounds like a fine pick. One of the few by his I haven't read.

sandra seamans said...

I've read Father and Son and I have a copy of Dirty Work but haven't cracked that one yet. F&S was great, Chris. And believe it or not, I didn't know Collins had a blog!

There seems to be several in a historical vein, David. The inside flap says there's one called The Hindenburg Murders and another The Titanic Murders. He's seems to be very prolific.

Michael Bracken said...

The writing world is small, with many overlapping and intersecting relationships. For example, whether you realize it or not, Sandra, you already know Charles Grant's wife--Kathy Ptacek, a wonderful writer in her own right--because she's a fellow member of SMFS.

Also, many years ago, in the late 70s and early 80s, when I was a teenager and young adult, I edited KNIGHTS, a science fiction fanzine. Charlie, a young professional writer with only a dozen or so short stories to his credit, wrote a column for my fanzine, and when his first novel--THE CURSE--was published in 1977 he sent me a copy, which I still have.

I later sold a short story to Charlie for one of his many anthologies, and I'm now an irregular contributor to his wife's publication, THE GILA QUEEN'S GUIDE TO MARKETS.

While I enjoy Charlie's novels, I even more strongly recommend his short stories. So, keep an eye open for his byline in any horror anthologies you get your hands on.

sandra seamans said...

It is a very small world, Michael! I checked through my anthologies and found one of Charles' stories in "Cutting Edge". I'll be looking for more!