Booked (and Printed): October 2025

 

Booked (and Printed) October 2025     October came and went with the same dreariness as a solitary night cap. The shortening daylight and crisp temps marked the passage from summer into autumn. Halloween was a blast, but with mixed emotions since it was the first year our sweet daughter spent the holiday with her friends rather than her dear old parents. But keep in mind my complaints are, at worst, superficial since I truly am a lucky man. I have a home, a family, a good job, and— Almost everything a man could want. Including more reading material than anyone could finish in a long, long lifetime. My reading was shallow again: two books—both novels—and seven short stories. This sparsity was due, mostly, to my continued eye troubles, which I’m not going to talk much about here but for the curious you can always read my prior Booked (and Printed) post here. Those same eye issues are why this post is so late, too. The month opened with a return to John Keyse-Walker’s brilliant Caribbean-set Teddy Creque mystery series. REEFS, ROYALS, RECKONINGS (2023), which is the final (so far at least) of four books. But hopefully not the last. In this one, a royal in direct line—albeit a distant one—to the throne of England is visiting the British Virgin Islands. At Government House welcome party, the royal and her husband, an American of little worth, are thrust into a murder investigation after a woman attending the gala is gunned down. Teddy is his usual affable and brilliant, if insecure, self. The mystery is tightly wound. The plot is fun and unique. And while I guessed the culprit earlier than I should have, the journey into Teddy’s world was a blast. If you enjoy BBC’s Death in Paradise, you’ll love Reefs, Royals, Reckonings, as well as the other three Teddy Creque mysteries. The other book-length mystery was the unorthodox WE CAN’T SAVE YOU, by Thomas E. Ricks (2025). We Can’t Save You is part mystery, part thriller, and part political manifesto. When a group of Maine First People organize a recurring protest on a bridge that routinely floods it gives rise (yeah, pun very much intended) to a larger movement: a First People’s protest against industrial caused climate change. The bulk of the narrative follows a peaceful march of natives down Maine’s coast. The issues We Can’t Save You discusses are interesting and relevant, but there wasn’t much of a mystery, or any suspense, either. But it still pulled me to the last page without more than a few complaints along the way.

Now for those seven short stories. Peggy Wurtz Fisher’s “THE PICKUP”—which appeared in the Department of “First Stories” in the October 1984 issue of EQMM—is a dazzling dark suspense tale about a single mother and a drifter. The perfectly ironic twist will bring a smile to even the most jaded reader. There is a touch of James M. Cain about “Pick Up”—and wow did I like it. “THE BOOK CASE,” by Nelson DeMille (2012), features DeMille’s recurring character, John Corey. The tale—the plotting, narrative, etc.—is pedestrian but readable. The real pain is Corey’s constant reminders of his brilliance as a detective. He had to remind us how damn good he is because it surely never surfaced in the narrative. Oy vey. It was like watching a Pink Panther movie without any of the humor. Joe Hill’s “THE PRAM” (2023), is as entertaining as any story I’ve read this year. About a married couple mourning a miscarriage, it is haunting and spooky with a dry wit and a lively and clever style. It is a horror story and a very, very good one. “BIG DRIVER,” by Stephen King (2008), is a revenge tale about a midlist cozy mystery writer—Tess Thorne—and her turn with a psychopath nicknamed Big Driver. The action, from almost the first page to the last, is brutal. There is a rape and an attempted murder. But Tess comes through the far side with a do-it-yourself kind of justice. I liked this one a bunch, but if violence and fear bother you, Big Driver is one you should skip. As an aside, “Big Driver,” was filmed as a Lifetime movie starring the always watchable Maria Bello. October ended with a trio of Jack Ketchum shorts—in honor of Halloween—culled from his brilliant collection Peaceable Kingdom (2003). “THE RIFLE” (1996), is a tale of fear and motherhood—what would you do if you discovered your child was evil? “THE BOX” (1994) is about a box with a secret so dark it ruins anyone that looks inside. “The Box” won a Bram Stoker Award from the Horror Writers of America. And the final tale, “LUCK” (2000), is a weird western with a handful of hardcases stranded in an anonymous camp waiting for a comrade to die. My favorite story of October? It is most certainly, Joe Hill’s “The Pram.” Fin— Now on to next month…

Booked (and Printed): October 2024

 

Ah, my old friend October skated by with hardly saying hello; or so it felt because the entire month passed in a week. A windstorm stripped the trees of their coloring leaves and the nighttime lows plummeted from the 50s to near freezing. Brrr… But my reading—as it always does this time of year—improved over last month with five books, four novels and a story anthology, and three shorts. My first of the month is Gavin Lyall’s splendid aviation thriller, SHOOTING SCRIPT (1966). Lyall’s work is defined by his imaginative plotting, literate style, and Raymond Chandler-esque dialogue. And Shooting Script, which is Lyall’s fourth published novel, is amongst his best. Keith Carr—a Korean War RAF fighter pilot—operates a struggling one plane Caribbean air cargo service. After Carr is gray-listed by the U.S. Government for false rumors he is flying supplies to revolutionaries in the fictional Republic Libra, he is forced to take a gig flying a camera plane for an American movie crew filming in Jamaica. But as one would suspect there is more going on than meets the eye. There are echoes of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, a bigger-than-life actor with a resemblance to John Wayne, right-wing politics and all, and a creative use for a rusting old B-25 bomber. Shooting Script is about as good as a mid-century thriller gets. Chuck Dixon’s vigilante tale, LEVON’S TRADE (2012), came next. I’d heard good things about Levon’s Trade and its eleven sequels. It is well-written and entertaining, but there’s not much original here. It’s the same book that has been written over and over since Don Pendleton introduced The Executioner in 1969, but if you like this stuff, you can do a lot worse than Levon’s Trade. EIGHT VERY BAD NIGHTS, edited by Tod Goldberg (2024), is a solidly entertaining anthology featuring eleven new crime and thriller stories set during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah. In a phrase, it’s good fun—check my detailed review here. There was a time when I read horror; a lot of horror. And one of my favorite writers from that long ago era is Jack Ketchum. His most popular work tends to be gross-out, ultra-violent slasher stuff; e.g. Off Season (1980), Offspring (1991). But categorizing Ketchum’s writing, even at its most depraved, with the norm in the slasher and splatter-punk subgenres is like comparing a BMW with a Yugo. Ketchum wrote with vigor and style. His tales unfailingly revealed something about humanity; even if that revelation is uncomfortable. So for Halloween this season I reread Ketchum’s 1984 novel, HIDE AND SEEK. I originally read it twenty years ago and I had forgotten almost everything except the climactic sequence and its Maine setting. It’s a demented haunted house tale about five kids playing a game of hide and seek in an abandoned house. It’s damn good, too, but only if you like horror and don’t mind a bit of graphic violence. PENANCE (1996) is David Housewright’s first novel. You’ve likely noticed—if you read the blog regularly—I’m a fan of Housewright’s Rushmore McKenzie mysteries. But Penance features a former St. Paul, Minnesota cop turned P.I. named Holland Taylor. It’s obviously a first novel. The voice isn’t as strong as Housewright’s subsequent books and the plot is overly complicated. But it’s fun watching Taylor spin around a murder investigation that takes him all the way to the State House. And Penance really is good (just not as good as Housewright has become in the decades since).

The number of short stories I read in October dropped from the previous month, but two of the three were novellas. The first is Ed Gorman’s post-apocalyptic, “SURVIVAL” (1995). A novella that was originally published in Gorman’s collection, Cages, “Survival” is a rare so-so tale from Ed. The idea is cool: Fascist religious terrorists demolish humanity with nuclear weapons and the survivors band together in hospitals where they are treated, without medicine, for the after-effects of the blasts. The plotting is a bit confusing, but the premise and characters are interesting enough to make it worthwhile. “DRACULA WINE,” by David Housewright (2021)—the 22nd installment of the multi-author A Grifter’s Song series—is a satisfying caper about a con-woman taking a businessman to the cleaners. It’s good fun with a smooth twist. Jeremiah Healy’s “BATTERED SPOUSE” (1990) is my favorite of Healy’s John Francis Cuddy shorts. Cuddy is called in when a jogger is killed by a hit-and-run driver to drum up something the police may have missed, which he does, of course—read my detailed review here. Fin— Now on to next month…

Halloween Reading

This is a post that went live in October 2007. It is far from a complete list, but I still really like the novels and authors I chose to include. If I were to do it over I would also include a few other authors / books that have brought a nasty bit of entertaining fright and horror since I wrote this. A few—Cage of Night by Ed Gorman; Stir of Echoes by Richard Matheson; Terminal by Brian Keene; and Afraid by Jack Kilborn.

Also, the numbering next to the authors name means absolutely nothing. It is simply a means to separate the authors into their own tidy category.

The end of October is in sight, and that means one thing: Halloween. Halloween is a favorite holiday of mine, and as it approaches I find myself filled with an unexplainable sense of excitement—it is the twelve year-old boy in me craving a past that no longer exists, but it is also more than that. It is the excitement of autumn—the days are shrinking, the shadows are lengthening, and nights are deepening. I love the cool crisp air, the idea of coming winter, but mostly the spooky chill that is Halloween.

So in honor of Halloween I’m going to list a few of my favorite horror writers—five to be exact. The only rule in this selection of authors is: there are no rules.

1. Jack Ketchum. The work of Jack Ketchum is truly frightening. He generally doesn’t employ the horror norms of demons, goblins, and poltergeists, but instead he creates truly frightening evil in the form of humanity. He shows us the worst elements that can exist in us all, and then unleashes it on the characters of his stories. If you haven’t tried Ketchum, do it soon.

My favorite Jack Ketchum novels are: The Girl Next Door, Off Season, Red, and his short story collection Peaceable Kingdom.

2. Richard Laymon. I discovered Richard Laymon in the autumn of 2000, and I quickly found and read every novel that was available in the United States for less than the price of a small automobile, which at the time was about sixteen of them. His work can be gross, violent, and very nearly pornographic in places, but somehow—especially in his better novels—he lightens it with humor, and adolescent innocence.

My favorite Laymon novels are: In the Dark, The Traveling Vampire Show, One Rainy Night, Night Show, Into the Fire, and Among the Missing.

3. Stephen King. This is a writer who truly needs no introduction, but I’m going to give him one anyway. Mr. King writes with a power that few modern writers have—he creates working class characters so real and vibrant that when he eases mysticism and fantasy into the stories it doesn’t feel forced or unreal. It is simply part of the story, and very believable.

My favorite King novels—specifically aimed at Halloween are: The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, The Stand, ‘Salem’s Lot, and his short story collection Skeleton Crew. I have never read a Stephen King novel I didn’t like, but the aforementioned titles are spooky enough for any Halloween.

4. Douglas Clegg. Mr. Clegg probably has more raw talent than any other horror writer currently producing mainstream horror. His voice is strong, clear, and very frightening. His work runs from chilling ghost stories to vampires, to the more cinematic and gory. I have yet to find a Clegg novel I didn’t like.

My favorite Douglas Clegg novels are: The Infinite, The Attraction, The Hour Before Dark, and Nightmare House.

5. Dean Koontz. Mr. Koontz is another writer who needs no introduction. His work is difficult to categorize because he is able to mix and match genre elements with ease. His early work was mainly in the science fiction genre, but he also wrote in the suspense, horror, romance, and mystery genres—now all of these genres can be found in his work. I especially enjoy his work from the 1980s, but I really haven’t found a Koontz book I didn’t enjoy.

My favorite Dean Koontz novels--with a Halloween twist--are: Lightning, Midnight, The Bad Place, Twilight Eyes, and The Face of Fear.

An additional word on Dean Koontz. I have read several Dean Koontz novels in 2009, and with each reading I gain more and more respect for his work. He is the master of the big suspense novel. His style and ability allows him to write a large and complex novel without losing the intimacy of a smaller voice novel. He truly is the voice of modern suspense and his work, at least parts of it, should survive his and my generation. At least I hope it does.

Red -- Movie Trailer

Earlier this year the film adaptation of Jack Ketchum’s novel Red screened at Sundance Film Festival—a festival that’s pretty much in my backyard, but I was either too lazy or too tired to make the thirty-five mile drive and stand in line for tickets to see it. Maybe it was the standing-in-line part that kept me from seeing it. Probably.

I found the trailer for Red this morning and it looks pretty good. I probably should have bitten the bullet and seen it at Sundance…. If the trailer is any indication it appears to be a faithful adaptation of the novel. It was directed by Trygve Allister Diesen and Lucky McKee, written by Steven Susco, and stars Brian Cox and Tom Sizemore.

New Jack Ketchum Novel: OLD FLAMES

I have good news. Jack Ketchum has a new novel coming out from Leisure Books this May. It's title: Old Flames. And it looks like an original novel, not a reprint of one of Ketchum's earlier titles. Although I'm not certain. I've read all the Jack Ketchum novels I've been able to find, but there are a few I've had no luck with, so while the synopsis doesn't sound familiar it very well could be one of the two or three older Ketchum titles I've never laid eyes on. Either way, it sounds like vintage Jack Ketchum horror; the kind that feels real, like it not only could happen, but does happen every day.

The description over at the Dorchester website reads:

Burned again. Men never treated Dora well. This latest cheated on her and dumped her. The last decent guy she knew was her old high school boyfriend, Jim. He'd said that he loved her. Maybe he did. So with the help of the Old Flames Agency, Dora's found him again. Turns out he's married with two kids. But Dora isn't about to let that stand in her way...

Five Writers for Halloween

The end of October is in sight, and that means one thing: Halloween. Halloween is a favorite holiday of mine, and as it approaches I find myself filled with an unexplainable sense of excitement—it is the twelve year-old boy in me craving a past that no longer exists, but somehow it is also more than that. It is the excitement of autumn—the days are shrinking, the shadows are lengthening, and nights are deepening. I love the cool crisp air, the idea of coming winter, but mostly the spooky chill that is Halloween.

So in honor of Halloween I’m going to list a few of my favorite horror writers—five to be exact. The only rule in this selection of authors is: there are no rules.

1. Jack Ketchum. The work of Jack Ketchum is truly frightening. He generally doesn’t employ the horror norms of demons, goblins, and poltergeists, but instead he creates truly frightening evil in the form of humanity. He shows us the worst elements that can exist in us all, and then unleashes it on the characters of his stories. If you haven’t tried Ketchum, do it soon.

My favorite Jack Ketchum novels are: The Girl Next Door, Off Season, Red, and his short story collection Peaceable Kingdom.

2. Richard Laymon. I discovered Richard Laymon in the autumn of 2000, and I quickly found and read every novel that was available in the United States for less than the price of a small automobile, which at the time was about sixteen of them. His work can be gross, violent, and very nearly pornographic in places, but somehow—especially in his better novels—he lightens it with humor, and adolescent innocence.

My favorite Laymon novels are: In the Dark, The Traveling Vampire Show, One Rainy Night, Night Show, Into the Fire, and Among the Missing.

3. Stephen King. This is a writer who truly needs no introduction, but I’m going to give him one anyway. Mr. King writes with a power that few modern writers have—he creates working class characters so real and vibrant that when he eases mysticism and fantasy into the stories it doesn’t feel forced or unreal. It is simply part of the story, and very believable.

My favorite King novels—specifically aimed at Halloween are: The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, The Stand, ‘Salem’s Lot, and his short story collection Skeleton Crew. I have never read a Stephen King novel I didn’t like, but the aforementioned titles are spooky enough for any Halloween.

4. Douglas Clegg. Mr. Clegg probably has more raw talent than any other horror writer currently producing mainstream horror. His voice is strong, clear, and very frightening. His work runs from chilling ghost stories to vampires, to the more cinematic and gory. I have yet to find a Clegg novel I didn’t like.

My favorite Douglas Clegg novels are: The Infinite, The Attraction, The Hour Before Dark, and Nightmare House.

5. Dean Koontz. Mr. Koontz is another writer who needs no introduction. His work is difficult to categorize because he is able to mix and match genre elements with ease. His early work was mainly in the science fiction genre, but he also wrote in the suspense, horror, romance, and mystery genres—now all of these genres can be found in his work. I especially enjoy his work from the 1980s, but I really haven’t found a Koontz book I didn’t enjoy.

My favorite Dean Koontz novels—with a Halloween twist—are: Lightning, Midnight, The Bad Place, and Face of Fear.

A few honorable mentions: The Night Class by Tom Piccirilli, The Manitou by Graham Masterton, Cage of Night by Ed Gorman, I Am Legend by Richard Matheson, Curtains of Blood by Robert J. Randisi, and…so many more that I’m forgetting.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Halloween—I know I will.

The Girl Next Door -- Movie Trailer

The movie trailer for Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door has been floating around the Internet for a month or so, and I finally discovered it last week. It looks pretty good. There are even a few familiar faces in the cast: Grant Show from Melrose Place fame, and William Atherton.

The Screenplay was written Daniel Farrands and Philip Nutman, and it was directed by newcomer Gregory Wilson.



Click Here to visit the IMDB page for The Girl Next Door

THE GIRL NEXT DOOR by Jack Ketchum

This is the week of Jack Ketchum here at Gravetapping. I reviewed his novel Offspring earlier in the week, and now here is a review I wrote for The Girl Next Door when it was released by Leisure Books in the summer of 2005. It is long, and at times meandering--the review, I mean--but the book is absolutely terrific. It is a novel that should be read by everyone, and not just the genre regulars. Make sure to come back tomorrow when there will be something kind of cool about the film version of The Girl Next Door.

The horror genre, like any other genre of fiction, has a few legends, stars, and icons. Jack Ketchum is one those writers. He burst onto the scene in 1981 with the devilishly horrid Off Season--the story of a clan of cannibals living in a cave off the coast of Maine. The novel was instantly reviled and censored by all of the right people: a core group of do-gooders, and several mainstream newspapers. In spite, or perhaps because of the bad press, it went on to sell more than 250,000 copies and guaranteed a place for Ketchum and Off Season in the canon of horror literature.

Unfortunately most of Ketchum's early works are unavailable in affordable editions today. There is good news however: over the past several months Leisure Books has released in mass market paperback two of Jack Ketchum's early novels, She Wakes and The Girl Next Door. These titles have been long out-of-print, and their re-appearance is a welcome sight for readers. The Girl Next Door, released by Leisure Books in June 2005, is the best of Ketchum's early work. Warner Books originally published it in 1989, but its impact was negligible. It was out-of-print nearly before it hit bookstore shelves. With the new Leisure release this novel should reach a larger and more appropriate audience.

"You think you know about pain?" The novel opens with this line, and it is the main crux of the story. It is about pain. The pain one human being forces upon another. The pain one culture visits upon another--it is a story within a story. The small neighborhood setting fills in for the big, dangerous and mean world. It is the story of a twelve-year-old boy named David, as told by his adult self. A kind of epistle really. A confession.

"So here's my check. Overdue and overdrawn." It is revenge against his neighbor. The mother of his best friend: a woman he admired, and maybe even loved. Revenge against her acts--against her spiral into madness. It is revenge against the world--our world--for allowing terrible, violent acts to go unchallenged every day.

The Girl Next Door is Jack Ketchum's masterpiece.

It is set in rural New Jersey in the 1950's: a quiet street, perfectly manicured yards and houses, beautiful mothers and working fathers, the sound of neighborhood kids playing in the streets. It is idyllic. Ketchum's simple prose captures the mood of the time: The glossy innocence, as well as the seamy underside, the cover-ups. The quiet things polite people don't talk about. It is all here. Nothing is pure, the text seems to shout. Nothing is as wholesome, as inviting and open as it is seems.

David's small seemingly perfect world changes forever when two orphaned sisters move in with his next door neighbor and best friend, Donny Chandler. The girls were in an automobile accident. They lived, but their parents were killed. The older sister, Meg, is fourteen, strong and beautiful in that clean teenage girl way. Her little sister, Susan, was hurt badly. She can't walk without crutches and heavy metal braces on her legs. She is small and weak. The sisters are polar opposites. Meg is strong, athletic; Susan is broken, dependent.

Donny's mother, Ruth, takes the sisters in--they are the children of a distant cousin, and Ruth is their only relative. David--the narrator--instantly smitten with Meg. He meets her one afternoon at the brook, a place the neighborhood kids call the "Big Rock," hand fishing for crayfish. The two seem easy together. Their conversation is fluid and agile. The scene is light and friendly, but it is haunted with a feeling of doom. A darkness that is not shown, but hinted at. What starts out as an innocent, quiet memoir of childhood quickly turns into a horrific tale of madness and evil. It is the story of a woman's madness, and how that madness affects the neighborhood. Ruth is a woman who talks of a glorious past. She came from wealth, prosperity. She ran the office of a large company, but now she is stuck in a small New Jersey berg with no husband and three boys. She has failed, and is totally lost.

The sisters (Meg and Susan) become the targets of Ruth's rising anger, and later her brutal insanity. Meg, especially, can do nothing right. She is punished for her wrongs, both real and imagined. She is punished for being young, strong and female. The punishment and torment escalates quickly, yet somehow quietly (none of the adults in the neighborhood know what is happening, but the children all know and are involved either through participation or as willing voyeurs) through the summer months until the final, crushing, terrifying climax.

David watches the torture of Meg. "I was like an addict, and my drug was knowing. Knowing what was possible. Knowing how far it could go. Where they'd dare to take it all. / It was always they. I stood outside, or I felt I did." It begins with little disciplines: no dinner, no friends, a spanking, a derogatory word, mocking. But then things get scary. Hard. They take her into the basement, into an old bomb shelter. They take her there and leave her. Then they begin to play games with her. Punish her. Torture her, and even rape her.

David wants to be separate, apart from both Meg and her tormentors. He isn't participating, but only watching. It is like television: unreal, exciting. But everything changes when he is faced with a moral dilemma so powerful, so frightening that he must choose sides. The dilemma is real. It is a metaphor for much larger issues: genocide, fascism, war. It is the same dilemma a good German faced every time the Nazis stole away a Jew. The same dilemma we all face when we witness violence--random, horrible violence that affects more than just the victim. It affects society, casts a shadow over humanity and makes us realize: This is what it is to be human. This is what we are capable of.

Jack Ketchum is a master of technique, and The Girl Next Door is a prime example. The prose is tight, the plot fine tuned and quick. He understands the story, and he understands how the audience will react to it. He has a reputation for splatter and gore, but you will find nothing gratuitous here. In fact, at a moment of supreme violence, the narrator backs away from the action. The violence. "I'm not going to tell you about this. / I refuse." The memory is too harsh for him to share, to allow an outsider unfettered access.

The Girl Next Door should be on every reading list, but if that is too much to ask it should at least be on your reading list. Get it. Read it, and take it seriously. Mr. Ketchum is a brilliant writer who deserves more respect and a larger audience than he has.

OFFSPRING by Jack Ketchum

In 1981 a first time author published a slim horror novel that would change the genre forever. The novel: Off Season; the author: Jack Ketchum. Off Season was a paperback original published by Ballantine Books, and sold somewhere in the neighborhood of 250,000 copies. Unfortunately the novel was deemed as repulsive, and unfit for human consumption—his next novel, Hide and Seek sold less than 50,000 copies.
In 1989 Jack Ketchum published the sequel to his legendary Off Season, and it disappeared from bookstore shelves nearly as quickly as it arrived. And it has been almost impossible to find without getting a second mortgage on the house ever since. This June Leisure Books re-released Offspring, and I finally got my hands on it.

Offspring has taken a few hits over the years. It has been challenged by a few top critics in the horror genre as nothing more than a derivative jumble of over processed crap. I had never read it, and so I held judgment, and I’m glad I did, because I enjoyed Offspring a whole lot.

Offspring takes place eleven years after Off Season, and the books are very much connected. The Sheriff of Deep River, Maine—George Peters—is haunted by the events of 1981; he has retired, his wife and only friend died a few years earlier, and his only solace is in the bottle. That changes on the evening of May 12, 1992 when the new Sheriff of Deep River pays him a call with a story of two brutal murders. The Sheriff asks for Peters help, and the scene is eerily familiar. The murder victims have been disemboweled and literally cannibalized. George Peters knows who is responsible, and he fears they won’t be able to stop the clan before they wreak havoc on the town.

Offspring is a well-written tale of gruesome, violent, and horrifying terror. There are no vampires, ghosts, zombies or anything else of the netherworld here, there is just good old fashioned human evil. The type of evil Jack Ketchum does better than anyone else. And it is scary as hell simply because gruesome inhuman stuff like this happens.

Offspring has the feel of a well-executed horror movie, although the themes and underlying meaning has much more depth than many of the current crop of films. The characters are likable; the description is tight and serves the storyline well. Jack Ketchum is my favorite writer of horror tales, and Offspring lived up to my expectations. It wasn’t quite at the level of Off Season, but it was tight, scary and very well plotted.

Now if we could get Mr. Ketchum to churn out a new novel or two.

Leisure Set to Release Jack Ketchum's OFFSPRING

Leisure Books has become the leader in paperback horror. They have done it one author at a time: Richard Layman, Douglas Clegg, Brian Keene, Jack Ketchum, Graham Masterton and so many more I can't begin to think of them. Which brings me back to the point: Jack Ketchum.

Jack Ketchum is one of their better talents, and they have been doing a tolerable job of getting some of his older out-of-print titles back into print in affordable mass market paperback editions. Last summer they published Off Season, the summer before The Girl Next Door, and before that they brought She Wakes back into print. Not bad. Now we just need to get Jack to write a few new ones to go along with the vintage.

Fortunately, until Jack writes something new, we have his older work--much of which we, at least I, have never seen let alone read--and this summer, June to be precise, Leisure is scheduled to release Offspring. Offspring is the sequel to Ketchum's classic novel Off Season.

I haven't read Offspring, but I've heard about it. And I hear it rocks. At least I hope it rocks. I'll find out soon.

Jack Pot: A Few Lucky Finds

I have to be honest, I'm a poor student and the high cost of new books is often beyond my budget, which makes me a window shopper of the worst kind. The kind who buys only on special occassion. But yesterday I hit the motherlode! It wasn't a wide vein of gold or silver, but rather a table loaded with dozens of titles--new titles released in the past year--listed at 2 for $5.98. When I saw them my pulse quickened, my heart fluttered and that damn vein on my forehead began a morbid little dance. Hell, I probably even turned red from excitement. Maybe cut a few years off my life from the stress of surprise.

I found several titles I have wanted, but was too cheap to shell out hard currency for, including, Grave Descend by John Lange (a pseudonym for Michael Crichton), The Peddler by Richard S. Prather, The Guns of Heaven by Pete Hamill, Witness to Myself by Seymour Shubin, and Off Season by Jack Ketchum. These are all either Hard Case Crime, or Leisure titles. And they are all books I have wanted to read, or in two cases reread.

Woohooo!