Five For Friday!

Thanks to Little Red Reviewer for giving me this idea.  Basically, the idea is to grab five books off my bookshelf, take a picture of them and post it here, and open up the discussion.  If you read this post, take a look at the books listed below and drop a comment.  Have you read them?  Do you like them?  Would you recommend them to someone else?  Or, do you hate them? (a perfectly valid response)

Gil’s All Fright Diner, by A. Lee Martinez.  This one I have not read yet.  I picked it up at a used bookstore a month ago, after the title and cover art caught my eye.  I have a huge TBR pile, but I’m hoping to get to this one this year.

Riddle-Master, by Patricia McKillip.  This is actually an omnibus of the Riddle-Master of Hed trilogy.  I first read the series as a teenager and loved it.  Aside from Tolkien, McKillip’s trilogy is one of my favorite fantasy stories, and I reread it every few years.

The Complete Stories, by Flannery O’Connor.  I recently got into a discussion about O’Connor’s work the other day on Twitter, and I had to get my hands on this collection.  If you’ve never read O’Connor’s stories, you’re definitely missing out.  Her story, A Good Man Is Hard To Find, is one of the most powerful short stories of the 20th Century.  I strongly encourage you to find a copy and give it a read.

The Black Stranger and Other American Tales, by Robert E. Howard.  Howard is most famous for his Conan stories, but he has written tales in several genres.  This book is a collection of some of his horror stories, including Pigeons From Hell.  If you enjoy horror, especially Southern Gothic, you need to read this story.  Howard is still one of my favorite authors.  He had some serious writing chops.  If you’ve never read him, or dismissed him as “that guy that wrote Conan”, you need to check him out.  He’s written sword and sorcery, boxing stories, westerns, mysteries, and adventure tales.  Check him out!

Patient Zero, by Jonathan Maberry.  A friend introduced me to Maberry’s stories back around 2010, particularly his Joe Ledger series.  Patient Zero is the first Joe Ledger book, and I love that series.  Ledger is a snarky police detective who gets hired by a classified government agency, the DMS.  In Patient Zero, Ledger finds himself going after a shadowy terrorist organization that has come up with a formula that turns people into zombies, and that plans to unleash an apocalyptic outbreak in America.  It’s a fast and furious read, and kicks off one hell of a wild ride of a series that I’ve enjoyed reading.  I’ve read Patient Zero and many of the other novels of the series over five times now.  Well worth the money and time to grab yourself a copy.

That’s it for today.  Y’all have an awesome weekend!