New Friends in the House, and School

Just to note, I start back to school tomorrow. So at least for a while I won't be visiting blogs quite as regularly as I have during the summer. That's not what I want to talk about, though. I want to talk about books. Here goes:

New Friends in the House:

I mentioned the wonderful Mystery Cove Book Shop that we found on our Maine trip. Let me tell you what I picked up there. I would have bought a lot more if we’d not had luggage constraints. But they do have a webpage so I will probably order more through that.

First up, I got The Rat Bastards #4: Meat Grinder-Hill. They didn’t have #1 or I’d have gotten that one. This series was published by Jove Books in the 1980s and there were sixteen total books. They were written under the name John Mackie, whose real name is Len Levinson. Levinson talks about these books on his blog, and the whole series has been rereleased as ebooks. I’d heard about this series for a long time but had never actually seen a print copy. I was glad to pick this one up and look forward to reading it.

Second, I got Renegade #14: Harvest of Death. The blurb on the front reads, “Captain Gringo cuts a hot path of love and fury through a jungle in hell!”  How could I resist? This was a series of western novels written by Lou Cameron under the name Ramsay Thorne. There appear to be 36 volumes in the series. Again, I’d heard of this series for years but never seen a print copy of one. They only had #14 so that’s the one I got. I’ve read quite a lot of Cameron under his own name.

 Third, I picked up Nazi Paratrooper: Storm Belgium. This is the first in a series by Gunther Lutz. I’d never heard of this series before, but apparently there are at least five books in the series, and they tell the story of WWII from the German perspective. I couldn’t find anything on Lutz himself or on this series. The one I have is published by Sphere Books. I’m pretty curious about this but so far nothing informative has turned up. (Note: I've actually started reading this one and it is pretty weak.)

Fourth, I got Phantom Regiments, a collection of ghost war stories. The stories were selected by Robert Adams and there’s a great cover by Ken Kelley. Baen did quite a few of this kind of collection and I’ve generally enjoyed them. I see this one has quite a few negative reviews so I’ll have to see what my take is on it.

I do love talkin' 'bout books!