New This Week

I've been meaning to start taking part in this series, but I always forget. So my entries in it may be sporadic. This was an unusual week for me. A lot of weeks I don't get anything except an e-book or two. But these are all print books that came in during the past week:

Dan Cushman – JEWEL OF THE JAVA SEA (Cushman's first book for Gold Medal), NAKED EBONY and SAVAGE INTERLUDE (a pair of African adventures that are rewrites/expansions of a couple of Armless O'Neil stories, with an adventurer named Crawford taking O'Neil's place), THE FORBIDDEN LAND, and PORT ORIENT, all of them published by Gold Medal.

Tom Phillips – ALL ABOUT AMY, a Monarch book that's actually by Tom Ramirez, a.k.a. Tony Calvano.

Richard Meade – TWO SURGEONS, an early medical novel by Ben Haas, published by Lancer.

W.C. Tuttle – TROUBLE AT THE JHC (Hillman) and GUN FEUD (Popular Library, and an abridgment of WANDERING DOGIES), a couple of Westerns by one of my favorite authors.

Tom Curry – GUNS OF DODGE CITY, a Curtis Books paperback reprint of a Rio Kid novel from the August 1942 issue of the pulp magazine.

Walt Coburn – ONE STEP AHEAD OF THE POSSE, together with Nelson Nye's THE NO-GUN FIGHTER, an Ace Double Western I bought mostly for the Coburn novel, only to discover when I got it that I'd already read it in a fairly recent large print edition called THE SQUARE SHOOTER. (Don't ask me my opinion of literary agents handling the estates of dead authors who make a practice of selling novels under new titles with no mention in them that they were ever published previously under different titles, or I might say things I shouldn't.)

William Chamberlain – TRUMPETS OF COMPANY K, a cavalry novel from Ballantine by an author whose World War II fiction I've enjoyed.

F.X. Toole – ROPE BURNS, a collection of boxing stories including the one on which the movie MILLION DOLLAR BABY was based.

Frank Gruber – QUANTRELL'S RAIDERS, a Signet Civil War Western with Quantrill's name misspelled in the title, but probably pretty good anyway considering that it's by Gruber.

Hal G. Evarts – COLORADO CROSSING, a Dell Western from the early Sixties in really good shape. I've seen books by Evarts around for decades but don't recall ever reading anything by him.

Richard Jessup – TEXAS OUTLAW, hardboiled Gold Medal Western from the Fifties.

Giles A. Lutz – OUTCAST GUN, hardboiled Gold Medal Western from the Fifties.

Lewis B. Patten – HOME IS THE OUTLAW, hardboiled Gold Medal Western from the Fifties. (Sensing a pattern here?)

Al Cody – THE HEART OF TEXAS, a Western by Archie Joscelyn under his Al Cody pseudonym, from late enough in his career that it might be good or it might not. This is a Leisure reprint of a book originally published by Arcadia Press.

Max Brand – HUNTED RIDERS, a Faust Western I didn't have, in a nice Pocket Books edition in the small size from the early Sixties.

Michael and Don Congson,eds. – ALONE AT NIGHT, Ballantine fantasy anthology from the early Sixties with stories by Robert Bloch, Henry Kuttner, Richard Matheson, Frank Belknap Long, August Derleth, and others.

Francis Leary – FIRE AND MORNING, a Fifties Ace historical novel about the War of the Roses by an author I've never heard of. But it has guys on the cover with swords.

Clive Cussler and Justin Scott – THE WRECKER, the third book in the Isaac Bell series. I have the first two but have never read them. One of these days.

That's too many books, especially for somebody who doesn't have room for any of them. But some of them are so cool! Ah, let's face it: I'm hopeless. Tell me again, Bill, about how you never regret the books you buy, only the books you didn't buy . . .