Sweet Freedom

The past week's and a few more books and other literature, unfairly (or sometimes fairly) neglected, or simply those the reviewers below think you might find of some interest (or, infrequently, you should be warned away from); certainly, most weeks we have a few not at all forgotten titles...if I've missed your review or someone else's, please let me know in comments.

Patricia Abbott: The Star Machine by Jeanine Basinger ; Vanished by Mary McGarry Morris

Neeru/AHCOP: The Girl in Cabin B54 by Lucille Fletcher; Death of a Stray Cat by Jean Potts

Frank Babics: Bourbon Penn, March 2020, edited by Erik Secker; Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, March 1969, edited by Ernest Hutter

Mark Baker: What Happened at Midnight by "Franklin W. Dixon"

Paul Barnett/"John Grant": The Hypnotist by Lars Kepler (translated by Neil Smith)

Brad Bigelow: An Unknown Woman by Alice Koller; O Western Wind and You've Gone Astray by Honor Croome

Les Blatt: A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie; Sunday the Rabbi Stayed Home by Harry Kemelman; The Yellow Room by Mary Roberts Rinehart

Paul Bishop and Richard Prosch: television tie-in novels

Elgin Bleecker: The Captain Must Die by Robert Colby

Joachim Boaz: The Best SF Stories from New Worlds 6 edited by Michael Moorcock

John Boston: Amazing: Fact and Science Fiction Stories, June 1965, edited by Cele Goldsmith Lalli; Amazing Stories, August 1965, edited by Joseph "Ross"/Wrzos;
World's Best Science Fiction: 1965 edited by Donald Wollheim and Terry Carr (and in comparison to the Bleiler/Dikty annuals, and Judith Merril's, and the one-volume false start of Wollheim's Prize Science Fiction)

Ben Boulden: The Haunted by "Robert Curran" (Ed Gorman), Janet and Jack Smurl, and Lorraine and Ed Warren; The Tenth Virgin by Gary Stewart

Brian Busby: The Darling Illusion by Margerie Scott; "The Voyage to Kleptonia" by "E. M. Scott" (apparently E. Margerie Scott), Amazing Stories, October 1928, edited by Hugo Gernsback, among other Scott work

Bob Byrne: "Have One on the House" by Norbert Davis, Dime Detective, edited by Rogers Terrill

Jason Cavallaro: The Summer That Melted Everything and Betty by Tiffany McDaniel; Best and Worst Reads: June; and July

David Cramner: The Soft Machine by William S. Burroughs

Doug Cohen: Realms of Fantasy, August 1995, edited by Shawna McCarthy

Alan Cranis: The Best of Manhunt 2 edited by Jeff Vorzimmer

my response to Cranis's review of the first volume, since the Bookgasm blog won't accept comments:
Cranis: "From 1952 until 1967, Manhunt magazine was the most popular and revered crime fiction magazine in the USA; succeeding its well-known predecessor, Black Mask." --Well, yes and no...from its first issue, featuring the first fragment of a serialized(!) novelet by Mickey Spillane at the height of his popularity, Manhunt was the best-selling and most influential (particularly on other crime-fiction digest magazine publishers) of the 1950s...but by the turn of the '60s, it was already on the long slide into oblivion. The magazine continued to run the cover line describing itself as the bestselling mystery magazine in the world up to the last, not well-produced, bimonthly 1967 issue, while such other titles as Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine and, in the UK, the London Mystery Selection, all continued to plug along (the other US magazines as monthlies), among other shorter-lived titles, The Saint Mystery Magazine (also monthly in the '60s) and others; Queen's and Hitchcock's are still publishing, and Shayne and London would continue into the 1980s. (And Black Mask wasn't the only crime-fiction pulp to make a big impression before Manhunt made its digest-sized debut...Dime Detective perhaps most obviously.)

Liz Dexter: The Serial Garden by Joan Aiken

Scott Edelman: Michael Dirda; Sarah Pinsker

Martin Edwards: These Names Make Clues by "E. C. R. Lorac" (Edith Rivett); The Case of the Four Friends by J. C. Masterman

Peter Enfantino and Jack Seabrook: Batman comics in the 1980s; Warren Comics, February/March 1973

Barry Ergang: A Jade in Aries by "Tucker Coe" (Donald Westlake); Swan Dive by Jeremiah Healy

Will Errickson: Summer Quarantine Reads: Familiar Spirit by Lisa Tuttle; Dearest aka Jacqui by Peter Loughran; The Midnight Club by Christopher Pike; Wicked Angel by Taylor Caldwell and Night Train by Thomas Monteleone; Nine Horrors and a Dream by Joseph Payne Brennan

José Ignacio Escribano: A Pocket Full of Rye by Agatha Christie; The Case of the Murdered Major by Christopher Bush

Curtis Evans: The Scarlet Circle by "Q. Patrick" (Richard Webb and Hugh Wheeler), Detective Story Magazine, January 1936, edited by Frank Blackwell; The Scarlet Circle by "Jonathan Stagge" (Webb and Wheeler), substantially revised, Doubleday Crime Club, 1943

"Olman Feelyus": The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester; Out of Control by G. Gordon Liddy

Paul Fraser: Best SF: 1971 edited by Harry Harrison and Brian W. Aldiss ; Henry Kuttner: A Memorial Symposium edited by Karen Anderson

Cullen Gallagher: Who Has Wilma Lathrop? by "Day Keene" (Gunard Hjerstedt); By Hook or By Crook and 30 More of the Best Crime and Mystery Stories of the Year edited by Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg (2010 annual volume)

Barry Gardner: Mucho Mojo by Joe R. Lansdale

Aubrey Nye Hamilton: Death at the Medical Board by Josephine Bell; A Deceptive Clarity by Aaron Elkins; Nantucket Sawbuck by Steven Axelrod

Bev Hankins: A Client is Cancelled by Frances and Richard Lockridge

James W. Harris: "After the Fall" by Alec Nevala-Lee, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, May/June 2019, edited by Trevor Quachri

John-Henri Holmberg: Jack Vance ; stories with a woman as US President

Sandie Herron: The Silence of the Library by Miranda James

Rich Horton: stories of Jack Vance (John Holbrook Vance); Old New York by Edith Wharton; The Rachel Papers, Experience, and Heavy Water and Other Stories by Martin Amis; Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

Jerry House: Rocket to Limbo by Alan E. Nourse; The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, in five volumes, edited by Robert Silverberg, Ben Bova, Arthur C. Clarke and George Proctor, and Terry Carr; What's It Like Out There? and Other Stories by Edmond Hamilton

Kate Jackson: Don't Monkey with Murder by Elizabeth Ferrars; Murder in the Family by James Ronald; Uncle Paul by Celia Fremlin

Nick Jones: Ripley's Game by Patricia Highsmith

Tracy K: Shooting at Loons by Margaret Maron; Young Bess by Margaret Irwin

Colman Keane: Blood Dreams by "Jack MacLane" (Bill Crider); Bang Bang You're Dead by Evan Baldock

George Kelley: Violence is My Business and Turn Left for Murder by Stephen Marlowe; Science Fiction: The Great Years, V. 1, edited by Carol and Frederik Pohl

Mark Kelly: Sinister Barrier by Eric Frank Russell ; The Winds of Time by Chad Oliver

Joe Kenney: The Progress of an Affair by Felice Gordon; Gannon's Vendetta by John Whitlatch

Dana King: Remo Went Rogue by Mike McCrary; Burglars Can't Be Choosers by Lawrence Block; Left Turn at Alburquerque by Scott Phillips and other recent reads

Rob Kitchin: A Philosophical Investigation by Philip Kerr; The Lost Man by Jane Harper

K. A. Laity: Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith (image courtesy Nick Jones)

Karen Langley: English Climate: Wartime Stories by Sylvia Townsend Warner

B. V. Lawson: A Different Kind of Summer by Gwendoline Butler; Five Passengers from Lisbon by Mignon G. Eberhart

Xavier Lechard: the best reads of January-June

Des/D. F. Lewis: The Varvaros Ascensions by Forrest Aguirre

Evan Lewis: "A Gift of the Gods" by Carroll John Daly, People's Magazine, 1 January 1923; "The Dragon of Kao Tsu" by "Sam Walser" (Robert E. Howard), Spicy-Adventure Stories, September 1936

Steve Lewis: The Gold of Troy by Robert L. Fish; "A Proper Santa" by Anne McCaffrey (first published in Demon Kind, edited by Roger Elwood); "The Problem of the Snowbound Cabin" by Edward D. Hoch, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, December 1987, edited by Eleanor Sullivan; "The Cardboard Box" by Terence Faherty, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, January/February 2019, edited by Janet Hutchings

Library of America: "The Circus at Denby" by Sarah Orne Jewett from her collection Deephaven; "The Water Baby" by Jack London, Cosmopolitan, September 1918, edited by Douglas Z. Doty

Robert Lopresti: "No Body" by Clea Simon, Shattering Glass edited by Heather Graham

Gary Lovisi: John D. MacDonald's later Fawcett Gold Medal editions

Walker Martin: The Hardboiled Dicks, edited and annotated by Ron Goulart; Black Mask Magazine, edited by Joseph Shaw et al. among its competitors

James McGlothlin: The Best of Jack Williamson

Mike McGonigal: Octavia Butler, interviewed in 1997 (scroll down)

Mike: An English Murder by Cyril Hare

Jess Nevins: H. P. Lovecraft: pro and con

John F. Norris: Harriet by Elizabeth Jenkins; The Woman in the Wardrobe by Peter Shaffer; Poison Unknown by Max Dalman (Binns)

Jim Noy: The D.A. Breaks the Seal by Erle Stanley Gardner

Juri Nummelin: "A Man Called Horse" and "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" by Dorothy M. Johnson

Ray O'Leary: Brunswick Gardens by "Anne Perry" (Juliet Hulme)

John O'Neill: So Bright the Vision by Clifford D. Simak; Tor.com novellas; To Open the Sky by Robert Silverberg; Poul Anderson's novels at David Hartwell's Berkley SF

"Paperback Warrior": Night Extra by William P. McGivern

Matt Paust: The Illegal: The First Mexican SuperHero by Steven Cortinas;
Symmetry: earth and sky by Tobi Alfier

Mildred Perkins: The House of Daniel by Harry Turtledove

Jordan Prejean: The Twilight Zone Magazine, June 1982, edited by T. E. D. Klein

James Reasoner: 14 Seconds to Hell by "Nick Carter" (Jon Messmann in this case); Infestation by William Meikle

Richard Robinson: First Step Outward edited by Robert Hoskins

Gerard Saylor: Rowdy in Paris by Tim Sandlin; The Fort by Bernard Cornwell

Jack Seabrook: "Summer Evil" by Nora H. Caplan, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, October 1960, edited by William Manners; The Hitchcock Project so far...

Scott: To Man Alone, The Blossom on the Bough, and Summer Cloud by Dorothy Clewes

Steve Scott: "The Golden World of Travis McGee" by Mike Baxter, Tropic, the Sunday supplement magazine in The Miami Herald, 14 December 1969

Robert Silverberg: City by Clifford Simak

Victoria Silverwolf: Fantastic: Stories of Imagination, June 1965, edited by Cele Goldsmith Lalli; Fantastic, September 1965, edited by Joseph "Ross"/Wrzos

Kerrie Smith: Thirst by L. A. Larkin

Marina Sofia: Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami (translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd)

Kevin Tipple: Crime Syndicate Magazine, May 2016, edited by Michael Pool and Dietrich Kalteis; The Hairy Potter and Other Al Quinn Detective Stories by Russ Hall

"TomCat": Death at the Château Noir by E. and M. A. Radford; The Whistling Legs by Roman McDougald

Prashant Trikannad: Able Team: Ironman by "Dick Stivers" (G. H. Frost?); Sudden: Apache Fighter by "Frederick H. Christian" (Frederick Nolan); Hanging Woman Creek by Louis L'Amour

Adam Wagner: The Last Child by John Hart

Bill Wallace: England's Lost Eden: Adventures in a Victorian Utopia by Philip Hoare; Evergreen Review, August 1967, edited by Barney Rosset

A. J. Wright: Truman Capote's book covers

Mark Yon: Science Fantasy, September 1965, edited by Kyril Bonfigioli and Keith Roberts; New Worlds, edited by Michael Moorcock