I’m sure there’s some long German word for when you’re eagerly awaiting a new book from a certain small press publisher, and checking their website each week you see nothing in the forthcoming books section from that publisher.

Around this time each year I’ve come to expect announcements of the latest installment in a certain series of books by a certain author, from a certain publisher. These are replacing my old and treasures paperback editions, but it looks like I need to wait a little longer.

I really hate buying books online. Even if I order from a major eCommerce site named after a river in South America, I don’t know what I’m getting. Is the book damaged? Is it scratched, or the cover bent? If I order from other online sites, such as auction places, is the book a first edition, or a second printing? The description is rarely clear on this.

When shopping in bookstores, the best bet is one that sells new books. Where I live we now only have one or two such books, at least ones that carry a decent amount of books. Otherwise, it’s used book stores. I never know what to say when cashiers at used book stores ask me whether I found what I was looking for. The easy answer is, “No.” I rarely find specific books in used book stores. I take a list with me of books I own, and check against this list if I find something of interest, but rarely will there be a book in the shelves there that match what I’m really looking for. But, at least I can hold the book in my hand and decide there and then whether I want to hand over money for that item. I’ve made a few mistakes, yes, missed remainder marks, or writing inside books, or thought I was getting a different edition. But, for the most part, if the book looks off, even though it’s one I don’t have, I’ll put it back in the shelf without a second thought.

When it comes to new book stores, I often as not walk out empty handed, for even the big stores don’t have the books I want. The exception is speciality stores. I was in Houston earlier this year, and stopped by Murder by the Book. I’d never been there, but I walked out with 10-15 books, and could easily have doubled or tripled that number, but I had to stop somewhere. On occasions where I visit San Francisco – over every few years – I’ll drop by Borderlands Books and find stuff that I like. Still, it’s as much the act of being in a book store, browsing the aisles, that makes it interesting. Online purchases aren’t quite as fun.

In Austin, when I lived there, I’d make regular trip to a corner of 6th Street and spend hours in Adventures in Crime and Space (Rest in Peace). Back then I couldn’t afford many books, but I always found books from new authors and old favorites. It felt like a community.

Here in the town where I live, there used to be a book store that specialized in mysteries – Remember the Alibi. This was before I really got back into mysteries, and it’s now long gone. A book store opened in my neighborhood last year, during COVID. Well, it didn’t really open, as you can’t go inside. This makes me sad, if not a little bitter. I’d read about the new place before COVID, and was excited that a book store would exist one mile from where I lived. I could walk there, browse, buy, and maybe get a snack or drink. In fact, I often walk past the closed doors. But, it remains closed to the public. Other bookstores in many cities are open. I visited one in Durango last summer. Mysterious Books in New York City is open, as are the ones that weren’t burned down in Minneapolis. I’ve been in a few others since the panic and lockdowns. Will this one near me ever open? I don’t know. I know that I miss visiting stores and reading the covers of books, or discovering new authors. I’d even planned to take a few hundred dollar bills I’d saved up over the years and plonk them down on the counter, then walk off with a bag full of books.

Instead, I bought a guitar.

Here’s another entry in the “haphazard collector” diaries. A few years ago I picked up a massive hardcover by Robert R. McCammon at a local used book store. I’d read read several McCammon books in the 1990s, both in paperback and hardback, from mass-market to small press editions. I have Swan Song in the Dark Harvest edition, signed by McCammon, some early paperbacks like The Night Boat, The Wolf’s Hour, Stinger, and Blue World, and as well as his mainstream hardcovers. Then he seemed to disappear.

The massive hardcover in question (700+ pages) is the novel, Speaks the Nightbird, a work of historical fiction set in the late 1600s in colonial America. The book was enjoyable, with young Matthew Corbett an innocent man struggling to find his place in the world, and fighting impossible odds. Probably a few years after I read the book I learned he’d continued the main character into a series of novels. At first these were published by Subterranean Press, and then Cemetery Dance picked up the baton. Those books are devilishly hard to find, at least at decent prices. A few of them have appeared in second printings, which means they’re expensive, but not insanely so. I bought a couple of these, one from each publisher. They’re out of sequence, of course, but I’m not sure I’ll ever find the others at prices I’m willing to spend.

The Providence Rider is the fourth book in the series, so I lack books two and three. I read this after Cardinal Black, which I think is the seventh book, meaning another gap. More are in the works, and maybe now I’ll be able to pick them up as they get published. If I’m lucky enough to find older copies, I’ll be able to fill in pieces of the overall story.

Matthew Corbett, the main character, is in early twenties. He comes across as a lucky, plucky, but not always very bright person. At times he fades into the background, overshadowed by more interesting characters. In some blurbs he’s compared to an early James Bond. Bond, at least in the movies, was lucky to escape many dastardly traps due to his enemies not just killing him outright. The same seems to the case with Corbett. The historical aspect lends flavor this the novels. There’s a slight aspect of the supernatural, but mostly it deals with the darker aspects of humanity.

It’s too bad McCammon faded out of the mainstream publishing market. He’s a talented writer who knows how to weave a tale, how to keep the reader’s interest. I’ve since gone back and tried to get a few hardcovers of the books I read as paperbacks. I’ve not read all his books, which I guess that’s why I call myself a haphazard collector, as I get ’em when I find ’em.

In our new virtual reality (isn’t that a joke from twenty years ago?), I was on a video conference call recently when someone asked whether I sorted my books by color. In the foremost shelf in the background there were two or three rows of books from Soho Crime, a publisher specializing in mystery and crime fiction from across the world. This publisher gives each author a unique color for their books, and I happened to be in the midst of buying any such books that I found (not all bookstore display their books, so it’s a random act). Although my books were sorted alphabetically by author, they appeared visually as color-themed.

Since then, I’ve reflected a lot more about how I shelve my books, and why I do it that way. Sadly, I am limited in shelf space, and often find myself either resorting to double-stacking books, or sacrificing them to the used-book market (only the ones I don’t care about, as at best you get pennies on the dollar compared to what you spent for them). I don’t buy as many books these days. A few years ago, when I had lots of shelves, or the ability to add more shelves, or felt the rush of discovery more often, or lived in a city with a genre bookstore, I bought many more books than these days.

Currently, I have an island of bookshelves dedicated only to SF paperbacks, and these are alphabetical by author. Along my main wall I have three tall bookcases dedicated to SF, fantasy, horror hardbacks, many of them first editions or limited editions, mixed in with a few trade paperbacks that are associated with special authors. I’ve a near complete set of Golden Gryphon Press books (I’m missing two), and these are grouped together by that publisher, then sorted by author. There’s one shelf within a bookcase dedicated to Arkham House editions; collecting older works from this publisher is not for the faint of heart, as some prices are astronomical. Other than this, the rest of the books in those bookcases are generally grouped by author, but not alphabetically. I considered grouping my Subterranean Press books together, but for the most part these are with their respective authors.

At eye-level in this core set of bookcases are my favorite authors—Jack Vance takes up two whole shelves (many Underwood-Miller editions) and are books that I’ll always treasure; F. Paul Wilson takes up two shelves (his Gauntlet Press and Dark Harvest editions grouped together); James P. Blaylock fills ones shelf, including ones from Subterranean Press, Morrigan, some regular hardcovers, his Arkham House collection; Tim Powers takes up another shelf by himself, from a mix of publishers. As for the rest, there’s a scattering of others, such as Ray Bradbury, Michael Shea, Fritz Leiber, Robert R. McCammon, Neal Barrett, Jr., Lewis Shiner, K.W. Jeter, Bruce Sterling, William Gibson (authors I encountered in the 1990s and stuck with). Occasionally I move these around as space dictates, but unlike someone I know who has far more books and bookcases available, I don’t organize them solely by author.

To the side of this section of bookcases, I have some other hardcover SF editions, the B-team, so to speak. These are double-shelved, stacked haphazardly, and I never remember what’s in the hidden layer of books. I feel bad for these books and authors, as I’ve read most of the books, and I keep them around for a reason. If my study had more space, I’m sure it all would be different, though I don’t think I’ll ever separate my Golden Gryphon books.

In another corner of my study I generally have non-fiction books, though some fiction books end up there anyway. I’m not sure why my Harlan Ellison books are over there, as he’s a hugely important author in my life. (I do wish some publisher would re-print a nice, somewhat uniform set of his books. I think White Wolf tried, and ran into issues that ended the series.) Also, all my Haruki Murakami books are over there, and Jack Williamson (an incomplete set of his short stories). One day, I’ll organize all my mystery books into some coherent space, and maybe I’ll put my Murakami books more centrally located.

This all makes me wonder, how do people who own several thousand books across multiple genres organize their books? By author? By genre? By their own internal rules, like mine? How do they find their books? For the most part, I know where they are, aside from a few exceptions. I don’t know whether I would separate my Golden Gryphon books, or the Arkham House ones (there are two exceptions: Blaylock and Shea, whose Arkham House editions reside with the author, not publisher).

Is this a trivial exercise? Probably. Then again, things don’t stay that way forever. These days I buy mostly mysteries, though now and then I add a few limited editions to the “special section.” I’m halfway through collecting Centipede Press’ re-issue of Fritz Leiber, with four more planned. Today I added the Gauntlet edition of F. Paul Wilson’s Conspiracies (I probably won’t look for the two trilogies added later, the ones about the younger and young Repairman Jack, as I have these in other hardcover editions). I’d like to buy more Arkham House books, but not at some of the inflated prices I see listed. I’d like to find more Robert R. McCammon books, which I’d stopped reading for many years, and then recently re-discovered. Powers and Blaylock, when they publish new books, and instant additions, regardless of publisher. For new authors, it’s only in crime and mysteries that I venture there these days. Science fiction and fantasy these days has become boring and repetitive. I do wonder, if I magically added some empty bookcases, how would I fill these? Gone are the days I went to SF conventions, where I could browse the dealers’ room. Gone are the days of specialty bookstores, as least where I live. I could buy off the internet, but paying high prices for something you see only in an image isn’t my cup of tea. Maybe it’s a good thing I don’t buy a ton of books these days, anyway. Who has the time to read them all? Maybe that’s a thought for another day.

Michael Shea’s Nifft the Lean is one of the best fantasy books ever written. Sadly, you won’t see it on many so-called “best of ” lists. It won the World Fantasy Award in 1983, though it was unfamiliar to me until a few years later. I encountered Shea via Jack Vance, whose works I first read in 1985. I can’t remember if I bought the DAW edition of Nifft in Norway, as I lived there between 1983 and 1988. I know I bought at least two or three Shea books in Norway, including the Jack Vance-inspired novel, A Quest for Simbilis. I likely also bought In Yana, the Touch of Undying, and The Color out of Time there, but the rest of them I probably found in the US after I moved there in 1988. A book published in 1982 likely then either lingered on a shelf in specialty book stores, or in the many used paperback book stores found in Austin in the 1980s and 1990s (most of those bookstores probably died off after 9/11, as they’ve now all vanished, only Half Price Books remaining, at least the last time I checked).

The first Arkham House book I bought was Shea’s Polyphemus, which at $16.95 when I found it at Austin Books in 1988 or 1989 seemed an extravagance far beyond my means. At once point I tried to find every short story published, thinking I’d try my hand at publishing a book: the complete collection of Michael Shea stories. Of course, nothing happened as I had no experience in that field. Besides, Centipede Press beat me to that task (almost; not all published Shea stories were included in The Autopsy and Other Tales, a massive edition published in 2008; only 500 copies were printed, and I own # 106.)

I wrote a few reviews of Shea books over the years, and I know at least one of those reviews received a comment to the magazine editor from the author himself. I never got to meet Shea, as I didn’t attend many conventions outside Central Texas. It was truly a sad day for me when I learned of Shea’s death in 2014. What surprises me to this day is that at least two of his novels remain unpublished, as well as the nearly finished fourth volume in the Nifft series. This is according to Shea’s Facebook site, from a mention by his wife, Linda Shea. Publishers: please consider bringing these books to the world!

In 1994, Wildside Press published a limited edition of Nifft the Lean, a rare book to find even in the 1990s. BAEN Books reprinted it in a paperback edition along with The Mines of Behemoth, but that was years ago.

Then, in 2020, Centipede Press issued a new edition of Nifft the Lean. This edition has a foreword by Tim Powers (though an old one), as well as an afterword by Michael’s wife, Linda Shea. The book, as with all Centipede Press books, is a wonder to behold and hold. I’ve read the DAW edition from 1982 many times, each time holding it carefully as I turned the now-brittle and fading pages. Although the new book is a welcome edition (and addition) to my small library, it’s still sad that such a book only appears in limited numbers. Then again, maybe Shea’s an acquired taste. The prose is somewhat purple, the setting maybe to dark for some readers. Years ago a publisher called Pyr Books brought out SF and Fantasy books in trade paperback editions. I immediately knew which books were fantasy, as there always was a sword somewhere on the cover. Shea’s characters don’t always wield swords, yet there are other, more vivid (in my mind) elements of the fantastic within his stories, than in many “modern” fantasy tales.

The CP edition has the number “1” on the spine. I take it to mean there will be more hardcover editions to follow. I eagerly look forward to those; my wallet, not so much.

One thing leads to another. In one of the recent James R. Benn novels about army investigator Billy Boyle, the protagonist picks up a copy of Nevil Shute’s 1942 novel, Pied Piper. I have half a dozen Shute paperback in my library, but I didn’t recall having read this particular book. Naturally, I had to check whether or not this one of the books in my library, and found that indeed, I owned a copy.

Who knows where I picked up the British edition, with a list price of £3.99, printed in 1992. I read the back cover, which barely hints at the story within. Told as a story within a story, Pied Piper takes place in France just before and after the German invasion of France and the British evacuation at Dunkirk. An older man, near seventy, tells a story to a younger man in a club in London, as bombs from the Germans rain down outside.

Howard, by some strange decision, traveled to France in the Spring of 1940, even as Germany and Britain were at war. Perhaps in those days, people though France was safe, while Switzerland likely would suffer the fate of Austria. Howard traveled to the Jura mountains for a fishing expedition, carrying with him a special set of poles, and wet flies. While at the hotel, he learns of the German invasion of Norway, and their advance through Holland and Belgium. He decides it’s best to head back to England. A couple, the man working for the League of Nations in Switzerland, ask him to take their young children to England, thinking the journey safer than returning to Zurich.

Howard agrees, and begins a long journey toward Dijon and Paris, eventually the coast and over to England. En route, plans change. The Germans storm into France, throwing rail service into chaos. The youngest child catches a fever; they are forced to rest along the way, picking up a 10-year-old girl whose father works in England. They switch from trains to bus. The road gets bombed by Germans, and they continue on foot, picking up another child, an orphan as a result of the bombs. In another city, an additional child joins their band. Howard gains a helper, a woman who knew his son. As Howard later learned, that woman almost became his daughter-in-law, had his son not died in an RAF bombing raid, being a pilot in the midst of the war.

Will Howard and his band of children make it to the coast, and if they get there, will they evade the Germans and reach England? As the blurb on my book cover says, “You have to read on and on.” Shute’s style is basic, but he spins a compelling tale. Some of the mores are rooted in an earlier age, but the sketches of the French and French countryside uniquely French (at least from an outsider’s perspective). It’s a tale born of tragedy—Howard’s son’s death—love, courage, kindness, and fear.

There’s rarely a book series that I’ve started from the beginning. Often I pick up a book mid-way in a series, then if I like the book, try to locate the earlier books. James R. Benn’s Billy Boyle series might be an exception, as I read the first book in the series first, then skipped some of the sequels. I’ve read six of his novels to date, some out of sequence, and some in a row. It’s a strange method, hopping from one event to the next, not paying too much attention to what went before.

All the novels do fill in parts of the back-story, at least in terms of the main character. A former Boston police officer who made detective shortly before Pearl Harbor, the titular character is related to General Eisenhower, and gets a cushy assignment to the general’s staff, or so he thinks. He’s quickly assigned as a sort of roving detective for the general, sent here and there to investigate various crimes, usually involving murders, he finds himself in many of the crucial battles or locations of WWII.

The first novel, Billy Boyle, takes place mostly in England, but also in Norway. It’s not the strongest of the ones I’ve read. Others, like Death’s Door, takes place in the Vatican and Rome, still under German occupation. A Blind Goddess deals with racism, highly prevalent in the US Army despite its waste of resources. The Rest is Silence bring attention to preparations for Normandy, and how secrecy pervades everything, even massive disasters. A Mortal Terror veers into serial killer territory, while Rag and Bone alludes to the Katyn forest massacre, and how the British alliance with the Soviets covered up this horrible crime.

I think Benn’s written more than 14 novels in this series, so clearly I have a lot more to read. If you like historical fiction, with a focus on WWII, this is one series to bite your teeth into.

I’m slowly amassing a collection of mysteries published by Soho Crime. It’s not yet at the stage where I deliberately try to complete a collection. Rather, I pick them up as I find them. Sometimes I’m force to put certain books down and walk away, instead of starting a new series by a new author before I finish existing ones.

It all started four years ago with one book by Janwillem Van de Wetering, which led to Peter Lovesey, Cara Black, Mick Herron, and countless others. There are helpful listings in the back of most of the books showing other books and authors available, and the countries or cities where the action takes place. Most are outside the US, which gives me a chance to learn about many unfamiliar places.

One such book is by Matt Rees, formerly the Jerusalem bureau chief for TIME magazine. A Grave in Gaza is not the first book in the Omar Yussef series, but it’s the one I found and read first. I admit that I know little of this area in the Middle East. What I’ve read online and in newspapers seem to indicate things change quickly, usually for the worse, with civilians always in the role of collateral damage.

Rees’ book focuses mostly on the warring factions fighting for power in Gaza, a tiny strip of land, while trying to free an innocent man. It’s a tough read, with one death I fully expected and one that I did not. I suspect places like Gaza could always be portrayed in even more brutal ways, despite the book’s already vivid descriptions of torture, betrayal, murder, and terror. I didn’t know what to expect when I learned the protagonist’s age and background, but I was thoroughly impressed by both the character and the writer.