From 1978 to 1991 Charles L. Grant edited a series of anthologies titled Shadows, published by Doubleday, followed by a number from 1 to 11. The first volume in the series won the World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology. There was also a Best of Shadows anthology published in 1988. I found most of the stories in the Shadows series dealt with psychological suspense for the most part. Yes, there was some violence in some of these stories, but it was more of the toned-down variety.

My favorite stories in Shadows 4 (1981) are Tanith Lee’s “Meow” and “The Spider Glass” by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. I had already read “Meow” when I reviewed a short story collection by Tanith Lee last year (you can read my review here). “Meow” features a moody magician who engages in a torrid affair with a beautiful young woman who loves cats.

“The Spider Glass” is one of those discursive stories where you don’t really know where the plot is heading. Over brandy, Charles Whittenfield tells his dinner guests a weird story of an antique Venetian mirror and a woman who encounters Yarbro’s popular vampire protagonist, le Comte de Saint-Germain!

This type of anthology is rarely published today. Charles L. Grant not only selected the stories for these volumes, he wrote insightful essays to engage the reader and wonderful introductions to the stories. I recommend the books in series if you can find them. GRADE: B

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

• Introduction – (1981) – essay by Charles L. Grant — vii
• The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands – (1981) – short story by Stephen King — 1
• Yours, -Guy – (1981) – short story by Robert F. Young — 18
• The Belonging Kind – (1981) – short story by John Shirley and William Gibson — 27
• Calling Collect – (1981) – short story by Barry N. Malzberg and Arthur L. Samuels — 39
• Hearing Is Believing – (1981) – short story by Ramsey Campbell — 46
• Threshold – (1981) – short story by Deirdre L. Kugelmeyer — 55
• A Visit to Brighton – (1981) – short story by Alan Ryan — 58
• Echoes From a Darkened Shore – (1981) – short story by Cherie Wilkerson — 68
• The Blue Chair – (1981) – short story by Tabitha King — 80
• Meow – (1981) – short story by Tanith Lee — 95
• The Giveaway – (1981) – short story by Steve Rasnic Tem — 106
• Need – (1981) – short story by Lisa Tuttle — 111
• Waiting for the Knight – (1981) – short story by Beverly Evans — 122
• Under My Bed – (1981) – short story by Al Sarrantonio — 129
• The Hour of Silhouette – (1981) – short story by Juleen Brantingham — 133
• Snow, Cobwebs, and Dust – (1981) – short story by John Keefauver — 142
• The Spider Glass – (1981) – novelette by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro — 145

Forty-four years ago, I read James Clavell’s 1000 page novel, Shogun, and then watched Richard Chamberlain in the 5-episode TV version of Shogun. Set in 1600, the story of a shipwrecked English “pilot” (aka, navigator) taken prisoner by the Japanese, is full of action and adventure. This new FX version of Shogun (10 episodes) paints a much more complete picture of Clavell’s epic novel with a much broader canvas.

The story starts with a Dutch trading ship Erasmus and its barely surviving crew blown ashore by a violent storm at Anjiro on the east coast of Japan. Pilot-Major John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis), the ship’s English navigator, is taken prisoner by samurai warriors. The Catholic foothold in Japan puts Blackthorne, a Protestant and therefore a heretic in this situation, at a political disadvantage that might cost him his life.

The influential Lord Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada), mistrusts this foreign religion now spreading throughout Japan. He is competing with other samurai warlords of similar high-born rank, among them Catholic converts, for the very powerful position of shōgun, the military governor of Japan. Toranaga, under political stress that might cost him his life, sees John Blackthorne as a wild card that might change the balance of power among the warlords–and maybe save his own life.

My favorite character is Lady Markiko Toda (Anna Sawai), a tormented aristocrat who balances her Catholic religion and her loyalty to Lord Toranaga, who becomes the interpreter and eventual lover of Blackthorne.

Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks (co-writer of Top Gun: Maverick), show runners of Shogun, present a feudal and beautiful Japan full of treachery and political intrigue. The scope and power of Shogun with its bold drama and scale makes this series one of the year’s best! GRADE: INCOMPLETE but trending toward an A

“One morning I woke up with my head in the shower and my feet by the toilet. The children were with their grandparents for the weekend, and I used that as an excuse to binge. My knuckles were bleeding, my face was red, my body was bloated, and my mind was on edge. It scared me. All the rules I had set years before when I reentered the drinking world had gone out the window by the end of that first year of the pandemic. I was drinking away my crippling fears about the end of the world and how the children I’d brought into it would navigate it. Meanwhile, I couldn’t navigate it myself.” (p. 267-268)

Margo Price, a Nashville-based singer and songwriter with three albums, a nomination for a Grammy for Best New Artist, and a performance on Saturday Night Live, narrates this harrowing story of her difficult life.

Margot struggled as a kid, never fitting in. But she was drawn to music and taught herself how to play the guitar. For years, Margot worked as a waitress while she pursued her dream of becoming a singer. She wrote songs and performed on street corners. She fell in love with another musician, Jeremy, but their relationship was stormy.

The music industry, as Margot describes it, is harsh and difficult. As a result, she and Jeremy turned to drugs and alcohol. That did not improve their relationship. As far as I can tell, it did not improve their chances at success in the the music industry, either. Only years of persistent performing and touring finally brought some acclaim and a growing audience for Margot’s songs.

If you want to read a no-holds-barred description of life as a performer today with endless tours and a myriad of problems navigating life on the road, Maybe We’ll Make It is the Real Deal. GRADE: A

Last year, TURBOTAX refused to allow me to e-file my Federal and State returns. When I called the TURBOTAX help line, they wanted to charge me $50 to tell me how to fix that. “Go to Hell,” I told them and printed out my tax returns and mailed them in, vowing I’d never use TURBOTAX again!

Well, Time heals some wounds and last week I decided to give TURBOTAX one more chance. It took me about an hour to install the program, input our tax data, and fill in the New York State tax data. Finally, the Moment of Truth: would TURBOTAX allow me to e-file or would I never use TURBOTAX again? Fortunately, both the Federal and State returns were e-filed successfully. We owed some money to the Feds and a bit more to NY State.

Do you have your taxes done? Do you do it yourself or do you farm the tax preparation out?

As usual, I know very little about the politics of the Oscars. Here are my best guesses for the winners:

BEST PICTURE:  “Oppenheimer”

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE: Lily Gladstone (“Killers of the Flower Moon”)

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE: Cillian Murphy (“Oppenheimer”)

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE: Da’Vine Joy Randolph (“The Holdovers”)

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE: Robert Downey Jr. (“Oppenheimer”)

BEST DIRECTOR:  Christopher Nolan

Who do you think will win?

The Bad Batch, Season 3 is the final season of this Star Wars series. The elite clone unit is on the run from the Empire and trying to stop a secret, experimental project. I’ve watched five of the 15 episodes in this series. The Bad Batch is going out with a bang!

I’m impressed by the story-telling and cast of this series. Michelle Ang, who portrayed the young clone Omega perfectly from the beginning of this series, continues to dazzle in this final chapter. The dissension among the clones is partial resolved as the threats from the Empire grow. The clone squad–Omega, Crosshair, Echo, Hunter, and Wrecker–face dire danger as Project Necromancer ramps up.

I watched The Bad Batch from the beginning ( you can read my review here) and enjoyed the steady progression of improvement from episode to episode. This animated series captures much of the excitement and thrills of the original Star Wars series. If you’re in the mood for some “sense of wonder” entertainment, give The Bad Batch, Season 3 a try. GRADE: Incomplete, but trending towards a B+

The Tigress (1961) opens with a corpse of a young secretary found in the coffin meant for the wife of her boss. Lieutenant Al Wheeler investigates this bizarre crime while an impressive array of suspects provide conflicting accounts to baffle him. My favorite part is when Wheeler is stalked by a deadly black panther! A sex club, a nymphomaniac, and cunning killer make this Carter Brown mystery as sharp as the claws of a tigress. GRADE: B+

In The Exotic (1961), County Sheriff Lavers, Al Wheeler’s boss, is outraged when a cab delivers a corpse to his house. Lavers orders Wheeler to find the culprit and determine why the dead body was sent to him. Wheeler discovers a crime committed years ago led to the murder of an investment professional who was framed for embezzlement. Two thugs who search for the missing $100,000 rough Al Wheeler up…but Wheeler gets his revenge. Plenty of plot twists in this one! GRADE: A-

Angel! (1962) opens with a bang! A small plane explodes from a time bomb and the pilot is killed. Al Wheeler is one of the witnesses. But, was the pilot the intended victim…or was some else the real target? Wheeler investigates a group of retired fighter pilots and the women in their lives. With a million dollars at stake, Wheeler has no problem with finding a motive among a group of men who learned to kill in the military. GRADE: B+

Carter Brown’s Al Wheeler series mixes wild mysteries, beautiful women, sarcasm, action, and clever investigation into a blend that has entertained readers for over a half a century! Don’t miss this excellent Stark House omnibus edition!

Remember when MTV was a hot cable channel? And remember the MTV UNPLUGGED series?  The show aired regularly from 1989 to 1999. From 2000 to 2009, it aired less frequently and was usually billed as MTV Unplugged No. 2.0. Bob Dylan showed up on MTV UNPLUGGED in 1995 and shortly there after the Bob Dylan MTV Unplugged album showed up in record stores.

The year before that, Tony Bennett showed up on MTV UNPLUGGED with guests k. d. lang and Elvis Costello. While Dylan performed a selection of his songs, Bennett went with the Great American Songbook.

“The new audience reached its height with Bennett’s appearance in 1994 on MTV Unplugged.(Bennett quipped on the show, ‘I’ve been unplugged my whole career.’) Featuring guest appearances by rock and country stars Elvis Costello and k.d. lang (both of whom had an affinity for the standards genre), the show attracted a considerable audience and much media attention. The resulting MTV Unplugged: Tony Bennett album went platinum and, besides taking the Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance Grammy award for the third straight year, also won the top Grammy prize of Album of the Year.”

“Now MTV is a ghost. Its average prime-time audience of 256,000 people in 2023 was down from 807,000 in 2014, the Nielsen company said.” Even worse is The Disney Channel which has lost 93% of its audience, from 1.96 million in 2014 to 132,000 last year. Cable TV is sinking fast.

Are you a Bob Dylan and Tony Bennett fan? GRADE: B+ (for both)

TRACK LIST:

Tombstone Blues	4:54
		Shooting Star	4:06
		All Along The Watchtower	3:36
		The Times They Are A-Changin’	5:48
		John Brown	5:26
		Desolation Row	8:17
		Rainy Day Women # 12 & 35	3:29
		Love Minus Zero / No Limit	5:22
		Dignity	6:29
		Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door	5:36
		Like A Rolling Stone	9:09
		With God On Our Side	7:07

TRACK LIST:

1		Old Devil Moon Written-By – B. Lane*, E.Y. Harburg	2:29
2		Speak Low Written-By – K. Weill*, O. Nash	3:10
3		It Had To Be You Written-By – G. Kahn*, I. Jones	3:13
4		I Love A PianoWritten-By – I. Berlin*Written-By – I. Berlin*	1:57
5		It Amazes Me Written-By – C. Leigh*, C. Coleman	3:03
6		The Girl I Love (a/k/a The Man I Love) Written-By – G. Gershwin*, I. Gershwin	4:05
7		Fly Me To The Moon (In Other Words) Written-By – B. Howard	2:57
8		You’re All The World To Me Written-By – A.J. Lerner*, B. Lane*	2:16
9		Rags To Riches Written-By – J. Ross*, R. Adler	1:24
10		When Joanna Loved Me Written-By – J. Segal*, R. Wells	3:16
11		The Good Life / I Wanna Be Around Written-By [I Wanna Be Around] – J. Mercer*, S. Vimmerstedt *Written-By [The Good Life] – J. Reardon*, S. Distel	3:21
12		I Left My Heart In San Francisco Written-By – D. Cross*, G. Cory	2:35
13		Steppin’ Out With My Baby Written-By – I. Berlin	3:12
14		Moonglow Vocals [Performed With] – k.d. lang Written-By – E. DeLange*, I. Mills*, W. Hudson	4:34
15		They Can’t Take That Away From Me Vocals [Performed With] – Elvis Costello Written-By – G. Gershwin*, I. Gershwin*	3:26
16		A Foggy Day Written-By – G. Gershwin*, I. Gershwin	2:15
17		All Of You Written-By – C. Porter	2:36
18		Body And Soul Written-By – E. Heyman*, F. Eyton*, J. Green*, R. Sour*	3:53
19		It Don’t Mean A Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing Written-By – D. Ellington*, I. Mills	3:38
20		Autumn Leaves / Indian Summer Written-By – A. Dubin*, J. Prevert*, J. Mercer*, J. Kosma*, V. Herbert	5:50

This is the latest volume of Sherlock Holmes pastiches edited by the capable David Marcum. If you’re a Sherlock Holmes fan some of these short stories will delight you. Others…not so much.

I was very moved by Michael Sims’s reflection, “The Dark Lantern,” where Sims writes about his battle with juvenile arthritis that left him wheelchair-bound. However, during a hospital stay, Sims discovered Sherlock Holmes and open a whole new area of interest in his life. You can read my review of Michael Sims’s latest anthology, The Penguin Book of Murder Mysteries here).

My favorite story in The MX Book of New SHERLOCK HOLMES Stories: Part XXXVII is David Marcum’s “The Abridge Disappearance” where a missing college student draws Holmes and Watson into a desperate search.

I’ve read several anthologies of Sherlock Holmes pastiches lately so I’ll be taking a break from this genre for a couple of months. GRADE: B

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Editor’s Foreword: The Sherlockian Reformation / David Marcum — 1

Dark Lantern / Michael Sims — 10

“What Is It That We Love In Sherlock Holmes?” / Roger Johnson — 14

An Ongoing Legacy for Sherlock Holmes / Steve Emecz — 16

A Word from Undershaw / Emma West –18

Moriarty (A Poem) / Kevin Patrick McCann — 33

The Adventure of the Improbable American / Will Murray — 35

The Return of Spring-Heeled Jack / Brenda Seabrooke — 49

The Incident of the Pointless Abduction / Arthur Hall — 72

The Adventure of the Absent Crossing Sweeper / Steven Philip Jones — 89

The Adventure of the Disappearing Daughter / Dan Rowley and Don Baxter — 125

The Abridge Disappearance / David Marcum — 142

The Adventure of the Green Horse / Hugh Ashton –170

The Adventure of Woodgate Manor / Sonya Kudei –183

The Incident of the Mangled Rose Bushes / Barry Clay — 208

The Sandwich Murder / DJ Tyrer — 226

The Adventure of the Wandering Stones / Mark Wardecker — 238

The Charity Collection / Paul Hiscock — 251

The Catastrophic Cyclist / Tom Turley — 268

The Adventure of the Sketched Bride / 282

The Adventure of the Downing Street Demise / James Gelter — 308

The Continental Conspiracy / Martin Daley — 338

The Belmore Street Museum Affair / Bob Byrne — 359

The Adventure of the Furniture Collector / Tracy Revels — 380

The Serpent’s Tooth — Matthew White — 397

About the Contributors — 415

A spinoff of a spinoff of a spinoff. That was the Wall Street Journal’s description of the new CBS mystery series, Elsbeth. Carrie Preston returns to her memorable, quirky character, Elsbeth Tascioni, in this new CBS series on Thursday nights at 10 P.M.

Elsbeth was featured in 20 episodes of The Good Wife and The Good Fight. Writers of both series, Michelle and Robert King, binged on Columbo during the Pandemic and then came up with an idea: what if they made Elsbeth a female Columbo?

Along with show runner Johnathan Tolins, the Kings developed a format where Elsbeth moves from Chicago to New York City and works in concert with the police: investigating crime scenes and interviewing witnesses. Supposedly hired as an “outside observer” by the NYPD to monitor staff after too many wrongful-arrest lawsuits, Elsbeth uses her powerful analytics to solve baffling crimes.

Supporting characters include Wendell Pierce as a doubting police captain who is slow to appreciate Elsbeth’s skill set. Elsbeth uses patrol officer Kaya Blanke (Carra Patterson) as a sounding board for her theories of the crime.

Only one episode of Elsbeth has been broadcast so far. Here’s the description: “When a college theater student is mysteriously found dead in her high-rise New York City apartment, Elsbeth immediately suspects foul play and enters a game of wits against the victim’s popular theater director Alex Modarian, who she believes is involved.” Sounds like a Colombo episode, doesn’t it? Are you a fan of Columbo? GRADE: INCOMPLETE, but trending towards a B+

My favorite chapter in Colleen T. Murphy’s marvelous How We Age is Chapter 10: Dracula and Wolverine: How DNA Repair and Cell Replacement Can Help Us Live Long. Murphy discusses the latest research on DNA repair and Cell Replacement that may end up extending our lives and stalling the aging process.

I admit, Murphy sometimes gets deep in the research weeds with some of her descriptions of cutting-edge investigations into the mechanics of aging. But clearly, a lot of research dollars are funding all these exciting projects.

Most of my interest in How We Age centered around how can I affect the aging process so I can have better quality of Life in the years ahead. Murphy’s chapters on diet and longevity suggest some strategies. There’s also this: “…the widespread use of statins has already helped extend lifespans. One could make a similar argument for diabetes drugs, as metabolic disorders rise with age, and anti-diabetes treatments (like metformin) are some of the best candidates for systemic longevity drugs.” (p. 339-340) Bring on Trulicity, Wegovy, and Ozempic!

You can’t read How We Age without coming away with excitement because of the many new treatments and drugs being developed. If we can just hang in there a little longer, our lives can be a whole lot better! GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Acknowledgments — ix

Abbreviations — xi

Introduction — 1

1. Ethics and Economics of Longevity: Is It Right to Study Aging? — 6

2. Why Do We Age? — 15

3. Studying the Genetics of Human Longevity: Centenarians and What We Can Learn from Them — 37

4. Long-Lived Species and Longevity Mutants of Model Organisms — 51

5. What Is Aging (and How Can We Measure It)? Biomarkers of Aging and “Quality of Life” Metrics — 71

6. Insulin Signaling, FOXO Targets, and the Regulation of Longevity and Reproduction — 87

7. Dietary Restriction: Nutrient and Genetic Regulation of Longevity and Reproduction 8. Taking out the Trash: Molecular Homeostasis in the Regulation of Longevity — 107

9. Powering Longevity: Mitochondria’s Role in Aging and Longevity — 152

10. Dracula and Wolverine: How DNA Repair and Cell Replacement Can Help Us Live Long — 173

11. Use It or Lose It: Reproductive Aging, the Germline, and Longevity — 193

12. Sex, Flies (and Worms), and Videotape: The Battle of the Sexes — 214

13. I See Dead Flies: Neurons and Sensory Regulation of Longevity — 237

14. Don’t You Forget about Me: What We Are Learning about Cognitive Aging and How to Slow It — 250

15. Lamarck’s Revenge? Transgenerational Inheritance, the “Molecular Clock,” and the Epigenetic Regulation of Longevity — 279

16. Gut Feelings: The Microbiome and Aging — 303

17. Long Life in a Pill? The Future of Longevity: From Bench to Biotech — 319

Notes — 349

Index — 417