The latest Stark House omnibus edition of Al Wheeler mysteries (#25, #26, #27) brings The Hellcat, The Lady is Transparent, and The Dumdum Murder–all published in 1962–back to readers who enjoy mirth, mayhem, and mystery.

The Hellcat challenges Al Wheeler to solve the case of a decapitated head that has been waiting–in the Morgue preserved in formaldehyde–for five years. Where is the rest of the body? What is the identity of the decapitated head? Wheeler has to deal with a rich, powerful family with plenty of secrets, two underworld hit-men–one of them blind–and alluring temptresses with hidden agendas. GRADE: A-

Al Wheeler confronts a locked room mystery in The Lady is Transparent. A man is murdered in a cursed room locked from the inside. The suspects in the house believe the victim was murdered by a ghost called The Gray Lady. Wheeler explores the cursed murder room and finds a tape recorder with a chilling message. Fitting the pieces together leads Wheeler to a deadly confrontation. GRADE: A

The Dumdum Murder opens with a corpse shot with a dumdum bullet. The corpse rests on the hood of an antique car in a garage. The residents of the house adjoining the garage are: the surviving half of a song-and-dance act, a sexy female contortionist, an Amazon woman wearing a leopard skin outfit, a sharpshooting illusionist, and an aging comic. There’s also a killer who has just been released from Alcatraz after a 30-year stay. Al Wheeler discovers the motive for the murder, but learns–almost too late–that he’s on the execution list! GRADE: B+

Whether it’s a decapitated head or a murderous ghost or a group of odd vaudevillians, Al Wheeler deals with the screwball murders, the glorious ladies, and the conniving killers in this triple treat!

With St. Patrick’s Day just around the corner, I decided to listen to some Irish songs. I’ve always enjoyed the Irish group, Celtic Woman. Diane and I attended one of their concerts and came away with their songs on our lips and joy in our hearts. I have many Celtic Woman CDs, but if you were to ask me which Celtic Woman CD to listen to, I’d recommend Decade.

Decade is basically a Greatest Hits set with 4 CDs full of Celtic Woman hits. Some are contemporary, many are traditional Irish songs, and some are classics. These CDs present the best works of the Celtic Woman group while celebrating 10 years of success.

Are you a fan of Irish music? Any favorites here? GRADE: A

TRACK LIST:

		The Songs
1-1		You Raise Me Up	4:30
1-2		Caledonia (2013 Version)	4:57
1-3		Orinoco Flow	3:30
1-4		Fields Of Gold	3:47
1-5		Danny Boy	3:24
1-6		A Woman’s Heart	4:24
1-7		When You Wish Upon A Star	3:14
1-8		Amazing Grace (2013 Version)	5:47
1-9		Harry’s Game	2:29
1-10		When You Believe	4:27
1-11		Bridge Over Troubled Water (2013 Version)	2:56
1-12		May It Be	3:45
1-13		The Moon’s A Harsh Mistress	3:13
1-14		Isle Of Inisfree	3:25
1-15		The Parting Glass	4:15
		The Show
2-1		The Sky & The Dawn & The Sun	5:19
2-2		Awakening	5:14
2-3		The Voice	3:06
2-4		Newgrange	3:06
2-5		The Call	4:16
2-6		Songs From The Heart: Walking The Night/The World Falls Away	6:41
2-7		One World	3:47
2-8		Galway Bay	4:12
2-9		Green The Whole Year ‘Round	4:46
2-10		Follow On	4:48
2-11		You’ll Be In My Heart	3:59
2-12		Beyond The Sea	3:19
2-13		The New Ground / Isle Of Hope, Isle Of Tears	6:38
2-14		O, America!	3:47
2-15		The Soft Goodbye	3:58
		The Tradition
3-1		Mo Ghile Mear	4:49
3-2		Black Is The Colour	3:43
3-3		Dúlaman	3:04
3-4		The Butterfly	3:00
3-5		Téir Abhaile Riu	4:03
3-6		Siúil A Rún	3:43
3-7		Scarborough Fair	3:12
3-8		Granuaile’s Dance	3:39
3-9		Níl Sé’n Lá	3:34
3-10		Carrickfergus	3:42
3-11		Spanish Lady – Live From Slane Castle	2:22
3-12		The Coast Of Galiçia	3:34
3-13		She Moved Thru’ The Fair	3:29
3-14		My Lagan Love	2:49
3-15		The Foxhunter	3:27
		The Classics
4-1		The Last Rose Of Summer	3:36
4-2		Non C’è Più	4:48
4-3		The Blessing	3:48
4-4		Ave Maria (2011 Version)	4:17
4-5		Lascia Ch’io Pianga	3:30
4-6		You’ll Never Walk Alone	3:57
4-7		Pie Jesu	3:28
4-8		Nella Fantasia	3:39
4-9		The Prayer	4:18
4-10		Somewhere	2:11
4-11		Vivaldi’s Rain	2:10
4-12		The Lost Rose Fantasia	2:16
4-13		Over The Rainbow	2:36
4-14		Walking In The Air	3:28
4-15		Nocturne	3:32

My favorite story in Great Irish Tales of the Unimaginable (1994) is “The Last Warrior Quest” by Peter Tremayne. I’ve read several of Tremayne’s mysteries featuring Sister Fidelma and enjoyed all of them. But this short story concerns an older warrior on his Last Quest. Moving and compelling.

I also enjoyed Julia O’Faolain’s “Legend for a Painting” about a lady living with a dragon and a knight who wants to “save” her.

I’ve read several anthologies edited by Peter Haining. My one criticism of Hailing’s choices is that sometimes he chooses very old and very dated stories that I find tedious. You might struggle with this, too. GRADE: B

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Introduction — 9 

I. GODS AND HEROES

Hound of Ulster / Standish James O’Grady –17

Wisdom of the king / W. B. Yeats — 22

Call of Oisin / Lady Gregory — 29

Laughing stranger / James Stephens

Balor and the wonder-smith / Ella Young — 44

Death of Macha Gold-Hair / Dermot O’Byrne — 61

Outlaw / Joseph O’Neill — 72

Earth-bound / Dorothy Macardle — 80

II. THE ROMANTIC SAGAS

Flight of angels / Austin Clarke — 91

Midir and Etain / Sir Shane Leslie — 109

A prince in disguise / Sinead de Balera — 116

Legend for a painting / Julia O’Faolain — 122

The Kiss / Michael Scott — 126

Woman without mercy / Maurice Walsh — 135

Bewitching of Fursey / Melvyn Wall — 145

A fable / Mary Lavin — 159

III. THE WONDER QUESTS

Voyage of Maildun / P. W. Joyce — 173

Hero of Michan / James Joyce — 207

Return of Cuchulain / Eimar O’Duffy — 212

End of the rainbow / Lord Dunsany — 231

Crotty Shinkwin / A. E. Coppard — 247

Ark of Cashelmor / T. H. White — 257

Devil and democracy / Brian Cleese — 266

Last warrior quest / Peter Tremayne — 281

Acknowledgements — 310

I saw the movie version of The Wiz with a cast starring Diana Ross, Michael Jackson (in his feature film debut), Nipsey Russell, Ted Ross, Mabel King, Theresa Merritt, Thelma Carpenter, Lena Horne and Richard Pryor.  Although the movie was a commercial failure, it became a cult classic years later.

Diane and I traveled to Sheas Performing Arts Center to see the touring version of The Wiz. As you can see from the photo above, it is flashy, colorful, and a bit kooky. The musical follows the L. Frank Baum novel, The Wizard of Oz, with Dorothy taken by a tornado to a world of witches, magic, and The Yellow Brick Road. Dorothy’s house squashes The Wicked Witch of the East, Evermean, and Dorothy is rewarded by The Good Witch of the North with silver slippers (with magical powers).

Dorothy want’s to return to Kansas, so The Good Witch tells her to go to the Emerald City and ask The Wizard of Oz for help. Along the journey, Dorothy meets a talking Scarecrow who wants a brain, a Tin Man who wants a heart, and a cowardly Lion who wants courage. They arrive at the Emerald City and speak with The Wiz who proclaims that he will only grant their wishes on the condition that they kill Evermean’s sister, Evillene, the Wicked Witch of the West.

Most of you know how that turns out. I’m sure this touring company version is being boosted by the success of Wicked, Part One. If you’re a fan of The Wizard of Oz, this musical will take you over the rainbow! GRADE: B

MUSICAL NUMBERS:

1.	“Overture Part I”			2:36
2.	“Overture Part II”			1:57
3.	“The Feeling That We Had”			3:26
4.	“Can I Go On?”	Quincy Jones, Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson		1:56
5.	“Tornado / Glinda’s Theme”			1:10
6.	“He’s the Wizard”			4:09
7.	“Soon As I Get Home / Home”			4:04
8.	“You Can’t Win“			3:14
9.	“Ease on Down the Road #1″			3:55
10.	“What Would I Do If I Could Feel?”	Luther Vandross		2:18
11.	“Slide Some Oil to Me”			2:51
12.	“Ease on Down the Road #2”			1:31
13.	“I’m a Mean Ole Lion”			2:24
14.	“Ease on Down the Road #3”			1:26
15.	“Poppy Girls Theme”	Anthony Jackson		3:27
16.	“Be a Lion”			4:04
17.	“End of the Yellow Brick Road”			1:01
18.	“Emerald City Sequence”	(music: Jones, lyrics: Smalls)		6:44
19.	“Is This What Feeling Gets? (Dorothy’s Theme)”	(music: Jones, lyrics: Ashford & Simpson)		3:21
20.	“Don’t Nobody Bring Me No Bad News”			3:03
21.	“Everybody Rejoice / A Brand New Day“	Luther Vandross		7:49
22.	“Believe in Yourself (Dorothy)”			2:55
23.	“The Good Witch Glinda”			1:09
24.	“Believe in Yourself (Reprise)”			2:15
25.	“Home (Finale)”			4:03

“Science fiction plucks from within us our deepest fears and hopes, then shows them to us in rough disguise.” (p. 109) This quote from W. H. Auden sets the mood for many of the chapters in Gareth L. Powell’s useful About Writing: The Authorized Field Guide for Aspiring Authors (2022). The “field guide” format means Powell invites readers to browse his book in any order they like.

I’ve read over a hundred books on writing. Every time I write, I try to improve my writing. Gareth Powell provides tips from years of writing, some of which might help me…and you.

My favorite chapter in About Writing is “Ten Books That Changed My World.” I’ve read six of the ten. Powell has good taste in books.

What is your writing process? GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Foreword 1  

How to Use This Book 5 

The Artist’s Prayer 7 

Part 1 About Getting Started — 9 

Getting Organised 11 

Getting Started 15 

Tools of the Trade 17 

Choosing Your Teachers 21 

Where Do You Get Your Crazy Ideas? 25 

55 Story Ideas 33 

When to Write and When to Edit 41 

Exercise the Storytelling Muscles 43 

Internalise the Identity 45 

Don’t Wait for Inspiration 49 

Beating the Blank Page: How to Jumpstart Your Story 51 

Three Ways to Breathe Life into Your Fiction 53 

Balancing Writing with Your Day Job 57 

Part 2 About Novels — 63 

The Real Secret to Writing a Novel 65 

When is a Novel Not a Novel? 69 

Understand What Your Novel Is About 73 

What Is Plot? 77 

Creating Authentic Characters 81 

World-Building 85 

Part 3 About Genres — 89 

A Note on Genre 91 

Crime 93 

Romance 95 

Horror 97 

Historical Fiction 99 

Young Adult Fiction 101 

Mainstream and Literary Fiction 103 

Fantasy 105 

Science Fiction 107 

Part 4 About Writing — 117 

How I Write 119 

The Essential Qualities of a Novelist 127 

Ten Tips for Novelists 131 

Daily Productivity Sheet 133 

Three Ways of Finding More Time to Write 137 

Five Essential Rules for Writing Better Fiction 141 

Five Lessons Writers Can Learn from Athletes 145 

Three Things to Remember When Writing Action Scenes 149 

Find Your Carnegie Hall 155 

A Simple Trick to Keep Your Creativity Flowing 157 

Saving What You Take Out 161 

A Trilogy of Things I Learned While Writing a Trilogy 163 

Everybody’s a Geek About Something 169 

Dealing with Writer’s Block 173 

Beating Writer’s Block with 100 Words 181 

How to Keep Being Creative in a Crisis 183 

Part 5 About Getting Published — 189 

Eight Steps to Becoming a Published Writer 191 

Publishing vs Self-Publishing 195 

Why Get an Agent, and What to Look For199 

Ten Tips for Finding an Agent 201 

How to Write a Novel Outline 205 

How to Write a Novel Synopsis 211 

The Secret Formula for Writing an Effective Elevator Pitch 217 

How to Write a Cover Letter 221 

How to Be More Confident 225 

Dealing with Rejections 229 

Imposter Syndrome233 

Part 6 About Being Published — 237 

Becoming a Full-Time Author 239 

What to Look for in a Publisher 243 

Advances: How Do They Work? 247 

Advances: What to Do with Them 251 

Dealing with Editors 253 

Being Edited 255 

Ten Tips to Deal with an Edit 259 

The Knee-Jerk ‘No!’ 263 

Covers – The Front Cover, and Cover Copy 267 

Publication Day 269 

Ten Ways to Maximise Your Publicity and Marketing 271 

Ten Top Tips for Selling Books on Social Media 275 

Dealing with Reviews 281 

Convention Tips 285 

Being an Author 291 

Part 7 About Gareth L. Powell — 303 

My Journey 305 

Where I Write313 

Ten Books That Changed My World 315 

An Open Letter to an Ugly Duckling 325 

Part 8 Frequently Asked Questions — 329 

Acknowledgements 343 

About the Author 345 

Credits 347 

“It is a common sentence that Knowledge is power; but who hath duly considered or set forth the power of Ignorance?” –George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

Many of my friends stopped watching the news on TV and reading newspapers and magazines after the November 2024 Election. And, given the chaos caused by Trump, Musk, and DOGE who can blame them?

Mark Lilla’s new book, Ignorance and Bliss: On Wanting Not to Know, explores both the positives and negatives of Knowledge. Lilla provides numerous examples of people whose lives fell apart after they learned the Truth about their situations. The prime example is Oedipus who finds out he murdered his father and married his mother.

Lilla makes a case for staying in ignorance. He cites James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA. “When Watson had his genome sequenced in 2007, he made sure that the value of his APOE4 genotype, which indicates the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, would not be published. He also stipulated that it not be revealed to him.” (p. 97-98) Too much knowledge can be hurtful especially if you can’t do anything about it.

Knowledge is risky business anyway. Lilla quotes Randall Jarrell: “A poet is someone who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.” (p. 138)

What stance are you taking today about Knowledge and Ignorance? How much do you want to know about what’s going on today? GRADE: B+

Table of Contents:

Introduction 3 

1 The Eyes of Oedipus  

On Evasion 19 

2 Veils  

On Taboo59 

3 The Hollow Men  

On Emptiness 103 

4 Lambs  

On Innocence 143 

5 The Once and the Now  

On Nostalgia 185 

6 Envoi 221 

Notes 229 

Acknowledgments 241 

Bill Knott’s friend and fellow poet, Thomas Lux, edited I Am Flying Into Myself and provides a moving Introduction to this quirky poet. Bill Knott lost his parents at an early age. He suffered abuse in orphanages. After a brief stint in the Army, Knott drifted from job to job. Knot took a poetry class from John Logan and started to write poems in the 1960s. His first book of poems, The Naomi Poems, was published under the pseudonym of “St. Geraud” who was “a virgin and a suicide.”

As you can surmise, Bill Knott was a weird dude. His poems are quirky and moody. Here’s a sample:

“Death”

Going to sleep, I cross my hands on my chest.
They will place my hands like this,
It will look as though I am flying into myself.

Bill Knott died in Bay City, Michigan after failed heart surgery in 2014. Who is your favorite poet?

Tony Tanner ((18 March 1935 – 5 December 1998) was a British literary critic of the 19th and 20th centuries, and a pioneering figure in the study of American literature. He was a fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, where he taught and studied for 38 years, from 1960 until his death in 1998. My first Tony Tanner book was The Reign of Wonder: Naivety and Reality in American Literature (1965).

Reading The Reign of Wonder in the mid-Sixties when I was 16 years old was probably a too ambitious move on my part. I had read some of the writers Tanner analyzed–Twain, some Emerson, some Hemingway, some Thoreau, some Whitman–but none of Henry James, Gertrude Stein, or Sherwood Anderson. James, Stein, and Anderson would have to wait until I attended Marquette University in 1967 and those writers showed up in my required English classes.

But what I gleaned from The Reign of Wonder made me want to read more of Tanner’s writings. Over the years, I read several of Tanner’s books of literary criticism. I enjoyed his Henry James: The Writer and His Work (1985), a short work based on a series of pamphlets the British Council asked Tanner to write about Henry James. For a newcomer to Henry James, Tanner’s slim book guides the reader through James’s long and varied career while providing key insights into James’s works.

Although Tony Tanner wrote about many American writers, both old and new, it was obvious he was most fascinated by Henry James: “From a distance the theme of the blank, quivering American sensibility immersed and involved in the European order seems indeed to be basic to James’s fiction. From the wide-eyed, socially non comprehending condor of Daisy Miller to the perpetually open eyes of Adam Verver; from Daisy Miller’s death in the miasmic atmosphere of Rome to Milly Teale’s turn to the wall in Venice, from succumbing of Roderick Hudson to the suicide of Grace Mavis on board the Patagonia; from the undamaged return of Christopher Newman to the perverse yet enlightened renunciation of Lambert Stretcher; from the confident dismissal of Europeans by Betsy Alden and Pandora, through the precarious victory of Francie Dodson, on to the new kind of mastery of a shattered European society as managed by Mrs. Gracedew and Maggie Verver: in all these related and developed themes the dramatic interlocking of a new sensibility with an old civilization is the fulcrum.” (p. 264-265)

Henry James took risks by making women and children centers of his stories. Take What Maisie Knew (1897) where Maisie, a child abandoned by her real parents and exploited by adulterous step-parents, tries to figure out situations without understanding adult motives. As Tanner cleverly assesses the novel, “In a sense the book hinges on what Maisie does not know.” (p. 288)

In 2000, Cambridge University Press published The American Mystery: American Literature from Emerson to DeLillo. While the essays delve into Emerson, Melville, Hawthorne, Howells, Fitzgerald, DeLillo and Pynchon, the best essays in The American Mystery focus on Henry James. If you’re interested in astute literary criticism of classic American writers, The American Mystery, The Reign of Wonder, and Henry James are hard to beat. GRADE: A (for all three)

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Foreword — ix

Edward W. Said

Sources — xii

Introduction: Tony Tanner on American means of writing and means of writing America — xiv

Ian F. A. Bell

Lustres and condiments: Ralph Waldo Emerson in his Essays

1(8)

`A summer in the country’: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance

9(30)

`Nothing but cakes and ale’: Herman Melville’s White-Jacket

39(23)

`All interweavingly working together’: Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick

62(19)

Melville’s counterfeit detector: The Confidence-Man

81(23)

`The Story in It’ – and the story without it

104(17)

Henry James

Henry James’s `saddest story’: The Other House

121(11)

Henry James and Shakespeare

132(17)

`Feelings of middle life’: William Dean Howells’s Indian Summer

149(17)

`The story of the moon that never rose’: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby

166(35)

Don DeLillo and `the American mystery’: Underworld

201(21)

`The Rubbish-Tip for subjunctive Hopes’: Thomas Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon

222(17)

Index — 239

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Acknowledgements	viii
Introduction: the sleep of reason	1
The Transcendentalists
Saints behold: the transcendentalist point of view	19
Emerson: the unconquered eye and the enchanted circle	26
Thoreau and the sauntering eye	46
Walt Whitman’s ecstatic first step Transcendentalism and Imagism	64 87
Mark Twain
The doctors of the wilderness	97
A system of reduction	104
The voice of the outlaw	127
The pond of youth	143
Huck Finn and the reflections of a saphead	155
The Twentieth Century
Gertrude Stein and the complete actual present	187
Sherwood Anderson’s Little Things	205
Ernest Hemingway’s Unhurried Sensations	228
Henry James
The candid outsider	261
The range of wonderment	278
The subjective adventure	309
Afterword: wonder and alienation – the mystic and the moviegoer	336
References	362
Index– 381

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Preface — ix

I. America and Europe, 1843-1881: ” A Complex Fate” — 3

II. London, 1882-1898: “The Compendium of the World” — 49

III. Lamb House, 1899-1916: “The Divine Unrest” — 97

A Select Bibliography — 133

My favorite movie of 2024 was A Complete Unknown. Timothée Chalamet plays Bob Dylan at the beginning of his career in the early 1960s in New York City. The movie is based on Elijah Wald’s Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night that Split the Sixties (2016).

The musical performances by Timothée Chalamet as Dylan, Edward Norton as Pete Seeger and Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez were convincing. Chalamet learned 35 Bob Dylan songs and some of them show up on this movie soundtrack.

If you’re a fan of Bob Dylan, you’ll enjoy this look at Dylan’s life from 1961-1965. GRADE: A (for both the movie and the soundtrack)

Track listing:

No.	Title	Performer(s)	Length
1.	“Highway 61 Revisited“	Timothée Chalamet	3:45
2.	“Mr. Tambourine Man“	Timothée Chalamet	2:31
3.	“I Was Young When I Left Home”	Timothée Chalamet	2:04
4.	“Girl from the North Country“	Timothée Chalamet, Monica Barbaro	2:04
5.	“Silver Dagger“	Monica Barbaro	2:33
6.	“A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall“	Timothée Chalamet	3:05
7.	“Wimoweh (Mbube)“	Edward Norton	1:51
8.	“House of the Rising Sun“	Monica Barbaro	2:08
9.	“Folsom Prison Blues“	Boyd Holbrook	1:44
10.	“Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right“	Timothée Chalamet, Monica Barbaro	3:08
11.	“Masters of War“	Timothée Chalamet	2:25
12.	“Blowin’ in the Wind“	Timothée Chalamet, Monica Barbaro	2:52
13.	“Subterranean Homesick Blues“	Timothée Chalamet	2:27
14.	“Big River“	Boyd Holbrook	1:41
15.	“The Times They Are a-Changin’“	Timothée Chalamet	3:14
16.	“When the Ship Comes In“	Timothée Chalamet, Edward Norton	2:19
17.	“There but for Fortune“	Monica Barbaro	1:43
18.	“It Ain’t Me, Babe“	Timothée Chalamet, Monica Barbaro	3:37
19.	“Maggie’s Farm“	Timothée Chalamet	3:08
20.	“It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry“	Timothée Chalamet	2:21
21.	“Like a Rolling Stone“	Timothée Chalamet	3:23
22.	“It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue“	Timothée Chalamet	2:21
23.	“Song to Woody“	Timothée Chalamet	2:20

I’ve enjoy Will Murray’s The Wild Adventures of Cthulhu, Volume 1 (you can read my review here) and The Wild Adventures of Cthulhu, Volume 2 (you can read my review here). The latest in the series, The Wild Adventures of Cthulhu, Volume 3 arrived and it features more original stories than the previous two volumes that mostly reprinted stories Will Murray wrote for various anthologies.

You’ll meet ghouls in “What Ghouls These Portals Be.” Dark forces threaten our world in “The House at One Tower Way.” The secret to time travel and reading the Future come together in “Kingsport Tea.”

I enjoyed “Cthulhu’s Garden” and was unnerved by “The Summoner of Khalk’ru.”

If you’re in the mood for another group of Lovecraftian horror stories, give Will Murray’s third volume a try. GRADE: B+

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Introduction

The Furnace of Yeb    

What Ghouls These Portals Be

Kingsport Tea

The Pokkuri Pattern

The House at One Tower Way  

The Shadow Over Uxmal 

Miss Hitchbone Reclaims Her Own 

Draculhu 

The Caller in the Cupboard

Cthulhu’s Garden

The Summoner of Khalk’ru

Into the Blackest Beyond