I do believe The Universe is directing me towards @Wiswell's books again. Wearing The Lion is resonating in my world again, so I am quite curiously which message I will hear freshly again from this treasure!

I am SOOO excited for The Dragon Has Some Complaints, which is coming out on July 14th, just after my birthday! Squeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!

#bookstodon

Quasit's Daily Book Recommendations: "The Nightmare People" (1990) by Lawrence Watt-Evans is a good, imaginative horror story with a different slant; with the death of the last member of a classic horror species, a new species of horror gets to arise.

Ed Smith is awake one night when he sees the face of a horrifying •thing• outside his window. The next morning he's woken by the police. They tell him it's a missing persons case.

[“Who’s missing?” he asked.
The cop hesitated again, almost glanced at his partner, and then thought better of taking his eyes off the open door. “Your neighbors,” he said quietly.
“Which ones?”
That drew the longest hesitation yet.
Finally, the cop took a deep breath and answered, in a voice that almost shook.
“All of them,” he said.]

In the days that follow Ed discovers the truth behind that mysterious face and joins up with others who've encountered the Nightmare People as well. The supernatural aspect of evolution plays a VERY interesting role in the story; it's a neat idea, and I enjoy the way it's dealt with.

Watt-Evans has a very broad range, and this book really demonstrates that. He also tends to create protagonists who are intelligent and basically decent people, and that's certainly the case with Ed Smith. It's a refreshing and satisfying horror story.

I'm a long-time Watt-Evans fan; he's written a lot of great books, although this is the only horror novel he's written to date. Most of his books are fantasy, and I'll be recommending some of them soon.

"The Nightmare People" is available from the major ebook producers. There are also physical copies for sale, although I'm not sure if it's still in print. But you can also borrow it for free from the Internet Archive.

https://archive.org/details/nightmarepeople0000watt

Happy reading! 🤓📖

⁨#Books⁩ ⁨#Bookstodon⁩ ⁨#horror⁩ ⁨⁩ ⁨#BookRecs⁩ ⁨#BookRecommendation⁩ ⁨#QuasitBookRecs⁩

There was once a cobbler, who worked very hard and was very honest: but still he could not earn enough to live upon; and at last all he had in the world was gone, save just leather enough to make one pair of shoes.
Then he cut his leather out, all ready to make up the next day, meaning to rise early in the morning to his work.His conscience was clear and his heart…

— David Jardine
https://palimpseste.vercel.app/#text/7f2bd1b8-09f6-4641-8afd-118a098ac4f5
#love #bookstodon #books #literature

L’instruction n’aurait pas de peine à établir les manœuvres concertées qui relient les différents délits et dont quelques éléments sont déjà entre nos mains. IIla mort d’henry
Lettre adressée par le commandant d’armes du Mont-Valérien au général commandant la place de Paris:

— Joseph Reinach
https://palimpseste.vercel.app/#text/456c15f1-8889-4e0d-b244-c4e935f7e098
#gothic #bookstodon #mastolivre #litterature

●●●○○ Sun-Dappled - P.A. Choi (2020 ss)   ִ
I'd guess this tale takes place during the Depression. In any case, Jeremiah had been drifting, looking for a good job, and had recently gotten one with Mr. Stevenson's grocery. A customer's big party had almost cleared the store out of milk and eggs, so Stevenson had sent his new employee to get more: a three-hour walk to the farm where Old Tom (and his red-headed daughter — “she's a sight, alright”) lived.

When Jeremiah got to the farm, he saw Old Tom wearing just overalls with nothing underneath, and (minding a horse near the barn) his daughter, wearing nothing at all. Tom said he'd normally be nude like Greta, since it was hot and no one else lived in the area, but he'd been moving hay, and he didn't like it itching him.

Greta volunteered to take the horse-drawn carriage and drive Jeremiah back to town, since the case of milk in glass bottles and the box of eggs atop them were heavy. Greta drove nude, with Tom sitting beside her. She told her father she'd put her dress on when they got to more populated areas, but she never did. Several men enjoyed the view as she passed, and then Greta let her passenger off at the edge of town. Jeremiah henceforth looked forward to seeing Greta every week when he fetched eggs and milk.

●●●◐○ Three Faces of Time {Many Worlds 2} - Sam Merwin Jr (1955 nov)   ִ
Three years after H. Beam Piper published his first Paratime book, Merwin published his own, though his time police are far less ancient and powerful. In this sequel (which I didn't know was a sequel when I started it)¹, Time Watcher Elspeth Marrever is assigned by her boss to go to a strange world code-named "Antique" where it's 80 ᴀᴅ, the time of Emperor Vespasian in Rome.²

The Watchers are not a powerful organization, but they try to study newly discovered Earths, to prevent undue exploitation of low-tech worlds by high-tech ones, and to forestall war between timelines. In this case, they've found evidence that an advanced world (code-named "Heartland") that's exhausted its resources and suffered a nuclear war is going to exploit this time-slowed world.

"Marina Elspetia" poses as a noblewoman and poetess, and infiltrates Roman high society, with the help of Pliny the Elder, a Watcher Resident, a local who's not been told any outtime secrets, but who agrees to help those he's been convinced are helping his people. Elspeth learns that Vespasian's son Titus, who's been carrying on a relationship with Jewish princess Berenice, has met a red-haired barbarian queen in Germania.

Elspeth also finds that Gnaius Laconius, a patrician in her social circle, is in possession of a blaster and a plastic map. Either Heartland worries less about culturally contaminating it Residents, or he's from Heartland, though as a spy, he seems inept.

After avoiding an assassination attempt, Elspeth and a pilot (from the Watcher troop hiding out in a nearby villa, awaiting intel from Elspeth on what to do next) follow the map to Silesia, where they find a large facility mining and processing uranium. Their aircar is hit by a laser rifle, but they manage to get back to Rome.

Soon thereafter, Elspeth hears that Titus's barbarian princess is to visit Rome, and that "Anna Martina" — really Ana Kai-Martenez, red-haired Amazonian warrior from a matriarchal world — is about to make her move. Can Elspeth and the Watcher troop stop Ana's far larger and more advanced force?

●●●◐○ The Devotee of Evil - Clark Ashton Smith (1941 ss)   ִ
It's not unusual for authors to attract odd people who wish to speak to them. In this case, novelist Philip Hastane is approached by a man who says he appreciates how the writer deals with evil in his stories. The man, Jean Averaud of New Orleans, says that he studies Evil. He believes it's a physical force, as real as magnetism. He invites Hastane to his home to see some of his work.

The home is Larcom Manor, site of murders, madness, and suicides. Averaud says he bought the place because it's a focal point for Evil, and thus a good place to build his machine. He shows the incomplete machine to Hastane, and demonstrates it. The odd contraption, made of tubes and boxes and cones of different-colored metals, interspaced with shapes of various crystals, begins making a cacophonous sound, but as it powers up more, the sounds somehow interfere with each other, leaving an impression of great noise, with little actual sound produced.

The machine conjures up a triangular column of darkness that grows to encompass the room. Hastane is struck with a feeling of dread, and feels as if the floor has opened up and he's falling. He is enfolded by horror and madness, then after a moment, his host turns off the machine. Averaud says the machine should be complete in two weeks, and invites Hastane back to observe it at full power…

●●●○○ The Cards Also Say {Blood Bank 3} - Tanya Huff (1997 ss)   ִ
Vicki, a vampire detective, usually feeds on people, then glamours them to forget. This book starts with a young man telling her his grandmother — a Romani seer who apparently has real abilities — wants to talk to her. The woman tells the vampire that one of the men Vicki fed on recently had mental issues, and the glamouring didn't take. Since her reading also showed that the man would somehow be a danger to the Romani, Madame Luminitsa expects Vicki to correct her error.

In this storyverse, vampires are dead to the world during daylight hours. Vicki's neighbor, who lives across the hall, notes that someone was fiddling with the lock on Vicki's steel door, but he chased the man away. Luminitsa had told Vicki that the unstable man would make an unsuccessful first move, so Vicki believes the prediction, and knows the man knows where she lives.

Vicki finds a church where communion wafers and holy water were stolen. Now she must find the man and deal with this loose end.

●●○○○ Oakwood Haven - Mel Cowan (2025 ss)   ִ
When Sally's judgmental husband died, she'd donated his clothes and cleaned the house and done all the normal things, but she still didn't feel alive. Then she remembered a solo hike she'd taken after a college breakup, where she'd taken a wrong turn and ended up at a secluded cove where a dozen naked people were enjoying the beach. They'd seemed so relaxed, so comfortable. Sally had watched from behind a boulder for a half hour, wishing she could feel that way, but lacking the courage to join in, she'd left.

This time, she'd started searching for "naturist clubs near me" and the like online, and a few days later she'd made a reservation for a weekend. After a few hours she felt comfortable. She kept coming back, and soon became a permanent member. There seems to be only so much to say about first-time nudists, and Cowan has reached their limit. Only four stories left in the collection.

●●●●○ Problems with Planning {NBL Solutions 4} - Ted Bun (2023 nov)   ִ
One of Chief Constable Geraint Edwards’ Freemason lodge brothers is having a problem, so Geraint calls on problem-solving Melody of Naked Beach Lady Solutions. Jonathan Franks owns a holiday camp. It doesn't make him a fortune, but it supports thirty staff, and he gets by.

Harold Stanwick — someone blackballed from Freemason lodges nationwide, notes Geraint — made Jonathan a low-ball offer for his land. Jonathan refused, and since then all manner of small accidents and equipment breakdowns have been happening at the camp. No one has been hurt, but it's cutting into his slim profits.

Further, it looks like an upcoming Specialist Weekender (events that make the difference between the camp surviving or going under) might have been sabotaged. The South London Sun Club, a naturist group, has reserved the camp. But they're not large enough to fill it, so with permission Franks sent out flyers to his camp's mailing list in case any non-club nudists wanted to also come that weekend.

Someone sabotaged the flyer before the printer got it, removing "nude" from the description. A Canterbury seniors group booked the remaining slots, unaware that the weekend would be nude. Jonathan faces a clash, but the bad publicity of canceling either group would hurt the camp too much.

Melody investigates the seniors group (and find a man to have a fling with, naturally), and finds that he's also on the case, and is an MI5 agent. It seems that Stanwick is part of a local group — comprising him, some councilors, the planning office, and the local paper — doing dodgy real estate deals, and in this instance they attracted a Russian oligarch seeing to launder money.

Melody ends the case with a Hercule Poirot meeting of suspects. She also passes on her fling to a woman who had a crush on him (after discussing things with her on a nudist weekend), and has a new man by the end of this, what seems the last book in the series.

●●●◐○ To Have and to Hold - Brian Terence (2025 ss)   ִ
“Carry On does Star Trek,” says the author. ፨ Senior Planetary Survey Tech Jenkins finished his shift on planet, then transmatted back up to the ship in orbit. Now, transmat errors are a one-in-ten-million thing, but they do occur. Jenkins being a hypochondriac, Doctor Singh was prepared not to believe him, again, this time about his sudden "deformity". Then Jenkins dropped trou.

Mrs. Jenkins reacted sympathetically toward her husband's much longer penis. "In sickness and in health," you know. She helped him try it out, and found it quite functional. So she called the doctor and said her husband had decided to keep it. After all, who wants an operation on his penis if it isn't medically necessary?

●●●●○ The Anxious Lives of Edwin Miller {Middle Falls 17} - Shawn Inmon (2022 nov)   ִ
Anxiety ruled Edwin's lives. What to say, what to do, what not to say, what not to do. Near the end of his first life, 72-year-old Edwin found he had no food at home, so he was driving to Artie's for a burger. Except on the way he saw a new place, Mickey's Subs.

On a whim, he went in. But there were so many choices. What kind of bread, of cheese, of meat? Too many choices. Too much pressure. Too many people watching, judging. After getting in line — then out again to think more — several times, Edwin was forced to flee, heart thudding in his chest, covered in sweat. It may have contributed to Edwin dying of a heart attack that night.

Edwin came back as a fifteen-year-old in 1962. High school was hell, of course. But this time Edwin, with a bit more life experience, was less submissive to the school bully — who then caused Edwin trouble for decades thereafter.

With the help of his family, and his sole friend Moondog (who made an appearance in Book 12 of this series, The Many Short Lives of Charles Waters, where he helped a possibly-autistic man stuck in a 26-day-long reincarnation loop make progress), Edwin made some progress, though it literally took lifetimes. Therapy, which he was finally willing to try after several loops, also helped, as did painting, which Edwin took up one life.

This one hit hard, since I've also long found the world a scary place full of frightening people. I, too, prefer to be alone, because only then can I avoid all the negative reactions that come from being around people. And I'll never have the nerve to fix things in this lifetime, nor am I likely to have more lifetimes to try.

●●●●○ The Unreliable Perfumist - Margaret St. Clair (1953 ss)   ִ
Young Dirk Innes, late of Earth, was enjoying his time in Marsport, "the city of perfumes," when an upscale aircar landed next to him and the veiled woman inside motioned him to enter. They flew in silence for a moment, until he worked up his nerve and put his arm around her waist, at which point she laughed and removed her veil, revealing that she was over sixty.

Over dinner, she revealed that she'd thought he looked like an adventurer, and told him how she was the head perfumist of the city. Custom decreed that perfumers have equal access to ingredients, but after a personal dispute, another perfumist had managed to monopolize the world's supply of alaphronine, denying her any.

Alexandra wanted him to fly to the South Pole and cross several kilometers of swamp — waist-deep, and filled with leeches and poisonous snakes — to break into the non-forcefield-protected back of the other perfumist's home, to get her a bottle of alaphronine from his laboratory. It turns out Dirk was rather a romantic, and agreed to do this.

It also turned out that what Alexandra said was mostly false, and the situation Dirk found himself in when caught was most interesting.

●●●○○ Star Haven - E C Tubb (1954 nvt)   ִ
Captain Barker was transporting Commander Williams and his fifty scientists to Hyperon, a world which had had its initial allotment of 500 pioneers ten years before, and no visits since. And no contact now. The colony didn't respond to radio calls, nor to flares. Regulations said to assume the worst and carry on to the transport's next stop.

Commander Williams objected. He demanded Barker give him a tender to land his people. After getting waivers signed, and likely just to get rid of the annoying man, Barker agreed, though where Williams had planned not to tell his people that the colony world was silent, Barker insisted on informing them of the situation, and letting them decide what to do. Only half of the fifty decided to go down to the surface with Williams.

They found 52 graves, but no other colonists, alive or dead. They also found that the planet had an odd ecology, with many plant types — some always bearing fruit since the world had negligible seasonal variation — but only two insects — a type of bee, and a wingless beetle — and no other land animals.

This is also one of those old tales where Earth was suffering from overpopulation, and the point of founding colonies was to ship food back to the homeworld. When they found that Earth crops wouldn't grow on Hyperon, that notion went by the wayside, so decisions had to be made.

●●●◐○ The Logistics of Carthage - Mary Gentle (2002 nva)
In a timeline where Carthage defeated Rome, Yolande Vaudin is a female mercenary in a European Christian troop working for the Turks against the the Visigothic Carthaginians. (Where Vandals had conquered and been absorbed by Rome in our history, Visigoths did the same to Carthage in this history.)

When her troop's carrying fleet ends up near a monastery (nominally Christian, though the green-robed monks worshipped Christ as the Green Emperor, in the fashion of the Arian Visigoths — and it turns out, as a cover for a different deity), a dispute breaks out between the troop's captain and the monks.

One of their ships is heavily damaged, and they must wait for Turkish carpenters from Constantinople (for whom they're working) to arrive and repair it. Also, they needed to give a female soldier who died in their last battle a proper burial, their priest also having been killed.

The monks think it sacrilege to bury a woman warrior, and refuse. Captain Spessart insists. The body of Margaret Hammond lies in the chapel, rotting, during a standoff that lasts days.

Parallel to that, Yolande meets a swineherd who gives her a vision of a woman archaeologist in the future unearthing a woman's skeleton in chain mail. Yolande and the woman talk in the vision, and in a subsequent vision, and Yolande greatly needs to know if it's real, and if it means anything. Events work against that, with the fate of the swineherd determining how both the issue of the burial and the visions will end.

Week Twenty-One's numbers added to year-to-date totals:
164+6 ss | 09+1 nvt | 11+1 nva | 43+3 nov |
#books #Bookstodon #ScienceFiction

[1] Only belatedly found out this book is a sequel, but other than Agent Elspeth Marrever wondering why she was getting a solo assignment, rather than being paired with Mack Fraser as usual, there's no sense I'm missing something, and I've tracked down the previous volume, so I'll read it in a few weeks.

[2] Some extratemporal phenomenon affected a bundle of timelines, with most Earths having been destroyed. On this world, time's progression was merely slowed temporarily. And time isn't proceeding identically. For example, Vesuvius hasn't erupted, nor has the Temple in Jerusalem been destroyed, and Vespasian dies a year late.

Nearly 600 #newbooks are being released this week.

Highlights ✨

Dolly All the Time by #AnnabelMonaghan
His Game His Rules: A Power Dynamics Contract Relationship Mafia Romance by #JAHuss
Velveteen vs. The Consequences of Her Actions by #SeananMcGuire
Ghalen by #WalterMosley
The Glass Unicorn: Part 10 by #YasmineGalenorn

#bookstodon