This fifth volume of Robert Silverberg’s short stories collects his work from 1980-1982. Silverberg was in his prime, writing award-winning novellas and producing dozens of excellent short stories effortlessly. I read most of these stories as they were published. “Our Lady of the Sauropods” is a puzzle story that involves seemingly intelligent dinosaurs. “Homefaring” explores the far distant future. “The Pope of the Chimps” features a scientist investigating the rise of religion among chimpanzees. Nothing was too extreme for Silverberg during these years. He welcomed the challenge to write about the unconventional. If you haven’t read Silverberg’s short stories, you’re missing one of the best writers in the genre. GRADE: A
Table of Contents
* Introduction
* Our Lady of the Sauropods
* Waiting for the Earthquake
* The Regulars
* The Far Side of the Bell-Shaped Curve
* A Thousand Paces Along the Via Dolorosa
* How They Pass the Time in Pelpel
* The Palace at Midnight
* The Man Who Floated in Time
* Gianni
* The Pope of the Chimps
* Thesme and the Ghayrog
* At the Conglomeroid Cocktail Party
* The Trouble with Sempoanga
* Jennifer’s Lover
* Not Our Brother
* Gate of Horn, Gate of Ivory
* Dancers in the Time-Flux
* Needle in a Timestack
* Amanda and the Alien
* Snake and Ocean, Ocean and Snake
* The Changeling
* Basileus
* Homefaring

Jean Carper’s insightful book gives you an action plan to help prevent Alzheimer’s. Carper is a medical reporter who’s researched the latest approaches to dealing with Alzheimer’s and dementia. Simple actions like drinking more 100% fruit juices (Carper recommends Concord grape juice) to increase blood flow to the brain and going on the DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diet can help postpone or prevent Alzheimer’s for some of us. Carper lists the danger signals of Alzheimer’s and where to seek treatment that will actually help. I found plenty in 100 Simple Things You Can Do to Prevent Alzheimer’s to explore. If you want to maintain your cognitive abilities during aging, you’ll want to read this book. GRADE: A

Although this book isn’t forgotten–it’s just been published–many of the stories inside these covers have been forgotten. Loren Estleman should be part of any conversation that includes Hammett, Chandler, and Ross Macdonald. Estleman’s long and varied career produced excellent mysteries, westerns, and short stories. Now, we have all the Amos Walker stories in one fine volume. The Amos Walker series brings Detroit and its environs to life. If you haven’t read this series, you’re missing some the finest private eye novels ever written. These 33 short stories capture the excellent writing and sharp characterization of Estleman’s novels. After reading the stories (published from 1982 to 2010) in Amos Walker: The Complete Story Collection you’ll see why Estleman’s work compares with the genre’s greatest.

Jack Gaughan was one of my favorite SF artists. His covers for Jack Vance’s The Dragon Masters and The Last Castle as well as Harlan Ellison’s Paingod and Other Delusions and Philip K. Dick’s Dr. Bloodmoney are classics. Luis Ortiz gathers those wonderful artworks with hundreds of sketches in Outermost. This book captures Jack Gaughan’s life with its successes and failures. The slow collapse of science fiction magazines, the changing tastes of paperback editors, and the new markets for artwork on children’s books mirror Gaughan’s career. Sadly, Gaughan died of cancer in 1985. But his marvelous work lives on. Outermost crystallizes Gaughan’s work and life. GRADE: A

I’m a sucker for a book like Bound to Last. Thirty writers pick their most cherished book. Ray Bradbury admits in his Introduction that reading Poe’s Tales of Mystery & Imagination turned him into a writer. For Francine Prose, it was Anderson’s Fairy Tales. For Karen Joy Fowler, it was The Once and Future King. Sigrid Nunez picks Mythology as the book she most cherishes. Reading the essays these writers wrote about the books they love make me want to drop everything and read the books they recommend. I bet you’ll feel the same way, too. GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Tales of Mystery & Imagination (Poe): Ray Bradbury
The Crying of Lot 49 (Pynchon) & In the Heart of the Heart of the Country (Gass): Jim Shepard
Anderson’s Fairy Tales: Francine Prose
The Stranger (Camus): Anthony Swofford
Speak, Memory (Nabokov): Danielle Tussoni
The Shadow of the Sun (Kapuscinski): Nick Flynn
The Bible: Joyce Maynard
Les Miserables (Hugo): Louis Ferrante
Naked Lunch (Burroughs): Elissa Schappell
The Story and Its Writer (Ann Charters): Anthony Doerr
Invisible Man (Ellison): David Hajdu
Roar and More (Karla Kuskin): Julia Glass
Das Kapital (Marx): Shahriar Mandanipour
The Viking Portable Dorothy Parker: J. Courtney Sullivan
The Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy: Terrance Holt
For Whom the Bell Tolls (Hemingway): Philipp Meyer
The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel: Karen Green
Mason & Dixon (Pynchon): Jim Knipfel
Emily Dickinson (Belinda Knapp): Xu Xiaobin
Dungeon Masters Guide: Ed Park
Sula (Toni Morrison): Susan Straight
Ulysses (Joyce): Sean Manning
Believe It or Not!: Sarah Manguso
William Trevor: The Collected Stories: Victoria Patterson
The Once and Future King (White): Karen Joy Fowler
The Carpetbaggers (Robbins): Rabih Alameddine
The New Professional Chef: Michael Ruhlman
Mythology (Hamilton): Sigrid Nunez
Another Country (Baldwin): Chris Abani
Heart’s Needle (Snodgrass): Christine Shutt
Ship of Fools (Porter): Jonathan Miles

Just in time for Halloween, Daedalus books has put these double DVD sets on sale for a mere $3.98 each. Count Dracula’s Great Love, Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks, The Doomsday Machine, Werewolf of Washington, Legacy of Blood, and The Devil’s Wedding Night accompanied by the insightful commentary of Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. What more could you want to make Halloween complete? Just click here to go to the Daedalus web site and pick up these gems before they’re sold out!

If you’re lucky enough to have a newspaper that reprints articles from the Washington Post, you may have read some of the dazzling pieces in The Fiddler in the Subway: The Story of the World-Class Violinist Who Played for Handouts. . . And Other Virtuoso Performances by America’s Foremost Feature Writer. The “fiddler” in question is Joshua Bell, the virtuoso violinist who played in the Washington, D.C. subway and was mostly ignored. Only a few of the commuters recognized him. Mystery fans will enjoy Weingarten’s article on Leslie McFarlane who wrote many of the Hardy Boy novels under “Franklin W. Dixon.” I’ve been a fan of Gene Weingarten for years. If you haven’t read his work, you’re missing out on a masterful writer. Fiddler in the Subway is a terrific collection of Weigarten’s work. GRADE: A

This season of MAD MEN sparkled with the energy of the first season. Once again, Don Draper is threatened. First, his false identity was almost revealed when his advertising firm attempted to do business with a defense contractor. The security check put Don into conniptions. Then the entire firm teeters on bankruptcy when their biggest client, Lucky Strike, dumps them. In a desperate move, Don Draper takes out an advertisement in the New York Times with the headline: “Why I Gave Up Tobacco.” Don sees the problems the cigarette companies are going to be facing before they do. Of course, Don’s partners think he’s insane. And, in Don’s personal life, plenty of women sleep with him. His wayward daughter, Sally, tests everyone’s limits. It’s going to be a long wait until next summer before anything this good appears on TV.

I’ve been an admirer of Tony Dungy for years. I liked his quiet, but firm style of coaching. Dungy brought the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to the brink of the Super Bowl (they won it the next year after Dungy was fired–Jon Gruden got the credit). Fortunately, the Indianapolis Colts hired Dungy and he took them to the playoffs and finally to a Super Bowl win. Tony Dungy’s The Mentor Leader: Secrets to Building People and Teams That Win Consistently holds plenty of great football stories. Dungy talks about helping Michael Vick rebuild his career and his life. He also talks about the huge effect Chuck Noll, coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, when Dungy was a player (and later a coach) had on his life. The chief secrets Dungy shares is that leaders must be teachers and role models. Nothing earth-shattering, but execution is everything. GRADE: B

Ed Gorman mentioned on James Reasoner’s blog that Clifton Adams had written five or six of the best westerns ever. Imagine my dismay at reading those words with the realization that while I had a stack of Clifton Adams’ novels, I’d never read one of them! Well, that deficiency has been rectified by my enjoyment of Clifton Adams’ Tragg’s Choice first published in 1969. Tragg is an aging performer. As a U. S. Marshal, he shot a desperado ten years before and then went on a lecture tour to cash in on his fame. But, after ten years, audiences have forgotten the desperado and Tragg finds himself looking for another profession. He meets Jessie Ross, girlfriend of a contemporary desperado with a $10,000 bounty on his head. Jessie tries to talk Tragg into helping her collect the bounty on her boyfriend, but Tragg wants nothing to do with it. A hired assassin, a crazed killer, and a lynch mob keep the plot of Tragg’s Choice unpredictable. Tragg’s Choice won the Spur Award in 1969 for Best Western Novel. It’s well deserved.