![](\"http:\/\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/51l5gsWulRL._SL500_AA300_.jpg\")
<\/p>\nLet\u2019s take a quick look to see what\u2019s arrived in the mail here at the Geek Compound. <\/p>\n
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Johnny Halloween: Tales of the Dark Season<\/span><\/a> Promo copy:<\/span><\/p>\n Norman Partridge’s Halloween novel, Dark Harvest<\/span><\/a>, was chosen as one of Publishers Weekly<\/span>‘s 100 Best Books of 2006. A Bram Stoker Award winner and World Fantasy nominee, Partridge’s rapid-fire tale of a small town trapped by its own shadows welcomed a wholly original creation, the October Boy, earning the author comparisons to Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, and Shirley Jackson.<\/p>\n Now Partridge revisits Halloween with a collection featuring a half-dozen stories celebrating frights both past and present. In \u201cThe Jack o’ Lantern,\u201d a brand new Dark Harvest novelette, the October Boy races against a remorseless d\u00f6ppelganger bent on carving a deadly path through the town’s annual ritual of death and rebirth. \u201cJohnny Halloween\u201d features a sheriff battling both a walking ghost and his own haunted conscience. In \u201cThree Doors,\u201d a scarred war hero hunts his past with the help of a magic prosthetic hand, while \u201cSatan’s Army\u201d is a real Partridge rarity previously available only in a long sold-out lettered edition from another press.<\/p>\n But there’s more to this holiday celebration besides fiction. \u201cThe Man Who Killed Halloween\u201d is an extensive essay about growing up during the late sixties in the town where the Zodiac Killer began his murderous spree. In an introduction that explores monsters both fictional and real, Partridge recalls what it was like to live in a community menaced by a serial killer and examines how the Zodiac’s reign of terror shaped him as a writer.<\/p>\n Halloween night awaits. Join a master storyteller as he explores the layers of darkness that separate all-too-human evil from the supernatural. Let Norman Partridge lead you on seven journeys through the most dangerous night of the year, where no one is safe\u2026and everyone is suspect.<\/p>\n I’ve long been a Norman Partridge fan. I reviewed the above referenced Dark Harvest<\/span><\/a>, declaring that "[it] thrills with staccato scenes of action, ideal for a horror novel. Using a quick, lean prose reminiscent of the finest Gold Medal-era fiction and, at the same time, as fresh as a Quentin Tarantino film, Partridge packs more into this slim volume than most authors do in a bloated 600-page epic."<\/span><\/p>\n \n Salute the Dark (Shadows of the Apt, Book 4)<\/span><\/a> Promo copy:<\/span><\/p>\n The vampiric sorcerer Uctebri has at last got his hands on the Shadow Box and can finally begin his dark ritual–a ritual that the Wasp-kinden Emperor believes will grant him immortality–but Uctebri has his own plans for both the Emperor and the Empire. Tisamon the Weaponsmaster is faced with a terrible choice: a path that could lead him to abandon his friends and his daughter, to face degradation and loss, that might possibly bring him before the Wasp Emperor with a blade in his hand–but is he being driven by Mantis-kinden honor, or manipulated by something more sinister?<\/p>\n \n All Clear<\/span><\/a> Promo copy:<\/span><\/p>\n In Blackout<\/span><\/a>, award-winning author Connie Willis returned to the time-traveling future of 2060\u2014the setting for several of her most celebrated works\u2014and sent three Oxford historians to World War II England: Michael Davies, intent on observing heroism during the Miracle of Dunkirk; Merope Ward, studying children evacuated from London; and Polly Churchill, posing as a shopgirl in the middle of the Blitz. But when the three become unexpectedly trapped in 1940, they struggle not only to find their way home but to survive as Hitler\u2019s bombers attempt to pummel London into submission.<\/p>\n Now the situation has grown even more dire. Small discrepancies in the historical record seem to indicate that one or all of them have somehow affected the past, changing the outcome of the war. The belief that the past can be observed but never altered has always been a core belief of time-travel theory\u2014but suddenly it seems that the theory is horribly, tragically wrong.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, in 2060 Oxford, the historians\u2019 supervisor, Mr. Dunworthy, and seventeen-year-old Colin Templer, who nurses a powerful crush on Polly, are engaged in a frantic and seemingly impossible struggle of their own\u2014to find three missing needles in the haystack of history.<\/p>\n Told with compassion, humor, and an artistry both uplifting and devastating, All Clear<\/span> is more than just the triumphant culmination of the adventure that began with Blackout. It\u2019s Connie Willis\u2019s most humane, heartfelt novel yet\u2014a clear-eyed celebration of faith, love, and the quiet, ordinary acts of heroism and sacrifice too often overlooked by history. <\/p>\n RevSF Books Editor wrote this<\/a> about Blackout<\/span> and All Clear<\/span>:<\/span> <\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Let\u2019s take a quick look to see what\u2019s arrived in the mail here at the Geek Compound. Johnny Halloween: Tales of the Dark Season by Norman Partridge Promo copy: Norman Partridge’s Halloween novel, Dark Harvest, was chosen as one of … Continue reading
\nby Norman Partridge<\/span><\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/51fLbGe0ueL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg\"){kind=icon}
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\nby Adrian Tchaikovsky<\/span><\/p>\n
\nThe massed Wasp armies are on the march, and the spymaster Stenwold must see which of his allies will stand now that the war has finally arrived. This time the Empire will not stop until a black and gold flag waves over Stenwold’s own home city of Collegium.<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/ecx.images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/516TcY1fe-L._SL500_AA300_.jpg\")
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\nby Connie Willis<\/span><\/p>\n\n
\n Quote:<\/b><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \n Despite its cliffhanger of an ending, Blackout is an engaging and suspenseful read. I have no doubt that when All Clear is released, Willis will give us a satisfying ending.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n