1: Mr. Monk On The Couch – Lee Goldberg: latest in the Monk series has Natalie playing detective on her own while Monk is working on a series of murders in the neighborhood tied to an old couch. The usual humor and mystery one expects from Lee Goldberg. Excellent.
2: Sidewinders: Deadwood Gulch – William W, Johnstone with J. A. Johnstone: the fifth adventure of Bo Creel and Scratch Morton. two partners that have roamed the west together going back to the days when Texas was owned by Mexico. Excellent.
3: Adventures of Cash Laramie and Gideon Miles – Edward A. Grainger: fine collection of western short stories by David Cranmer.
4 & 5: A Planet For Texans(H. Beam Piper and John J. Mcguire) and Star Born(Andre Norton): both sides of an Ace Double.
6, 7, & 8: The three books of John Ringo’s Troy Rising series. Not previously read a lot of Ringo and know people have had a problem with his writing. he likes to ramble on about the science with too many info dumps. In reading over some of the reviews on Amazon, some didn’t like these books, but the general consensus seemed to be he was back on track. We’ll see.
9: Hellhole – Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson: first book in a new trilogy. The Constellation, a group of twenty Human settled worlds are overcrowded. Expansion is opened up to fifty-four unexplored worlds. Hallholme, nicknamed Hellhole by the few humans living there is one of them. This one looks good.
10: Full Share – Nathan Lowell: third book in the Trader Tales of the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper. Nearly finished this one and it’s a nice recovery from the author’s sophomore slump.
11: The Classic Philip Jose Farmer: 1952-1964. Recommended by George Kelley one Forgotten Friday. Hard to resist.
Oh my, a LOT of great stuff! I have (or had) that Andre Norton STAR BORN with that great cover, and the other one, PLANET FOR TEXANS is a great cover. Also, I didn’t know the latest Nathan Lowell was out in print, will get it right away – I haven’t read Half Share yet, and appreciate the warning about the sophomore slump. I don’t much care for Ringo, I haven’t really liked the last couple I read so I stopped, too many other, better SF writers out there now.
Half share isn’t a bad book. There’s almost no conflict driving the narrative. And, having read the first one, you know I’m not talking about a lot of violent action.
A Planet for Texans! (as a Texan, I’m extremely curious — haha) — even more so as a University of Texas grad (the Longhorns on the cover)….
Norton’s Star Born is great fun!
I’ve got that Star born. I just read a Ringo collaboration with a writer named williams that wasn’t very good. I’m not gonna try any more of his collaborations.
I have heard MANY good things about HELLHOLE. KJA is currently blogging about writing the next one at his web site. Another great batch o’ books!