BSC Radar Screen: Things that look interesting

I’ve always liked my SF/F/H whatever books to be of the non-traditional variety (if not a little weird). So I’m always keeping an eye out for things like Laughin’ Boy by Bradley Denton, Ulrich Haarburste’s Novel of Roy Orison in Clingfilm or The Haunted Hillbilly by Derek McCormack.

With my skewed radar screen in mind I’d like to showcase two books that sound like they might interesting but may not be on too many radar screens, especially of the SF/F variety. All I can say is that I haven’t read either of these books yet but want to.

Charlie Williams is known in some crime fiction circles (the demented ones anyway) for his Royston Blake trilogy. His new book is called Stairway to Hell and will be published by Serpents Tail in August in the UK. The plot description is:

“Something very strange has been happening in Warchester, and local pub singer Rik Suntan is about to have his doors of perception blown wide open. It seems that during the 1970s, Jimmy Page’s experiments with the occult wandered into the art of soulshifting – namely, swapping the souls of celebrity rivals with those of newly born babies in the Warchester maternity ward. Obviously this news is a tad hard to swallow, and Rik’s got other problems on his plate – his regular slot doing Cliff Richard covers at the local nightclub is axed, and his girlfriend’s dumped him for a ginger bloke. But not nearly as jaw-dropping as finding out he’s the reincarnation of David Bowie…”

Will Christopher Baer is the author of the dark, transgressive and occasionally brilliant Phineas Poe Books. While the Poe books were like crime fiction books out their on the edge there was always a dream like quality to them. Baer’s next book, the perpetually pushed back Godspeed, sounds like it will be an insane book assuming it comes out this year.

“According to Milton, heaven and hell are but a hand’s breadth apart. In GODSPEED, there is no heaven or hell. There is only “the presidio,” a lawless noir purgatory populated by fugitive souls, fallen angels, demon children, immortals, and the undead. Moving among them is a complicated hero in Ryder Fell.mercenary thief, repentant womanizer, and sometime savior of lost children–afflicted with the “godspeed,” a dizzying array of paranormal talents he can neither control or explain. The worst of these are nightmare visions of black doors All hell breaks loose when an exiled undead soul, in the body of a young girl, borrows the godspeed from Ryder and plunges through the wrong door…Milton had one thing right–the next world is a heartbeat away from this one, an easy jump for the lucky few who know how to secure passage. For the rest of us, the real hell is in the journey.”

There you have it, two interesting sounding books that I hope you’ll at least take a look at when the time comes. And of course if I read them then I’ll review them and that will happen here at BSC.