Stars, Won’t You Hide Me? by Ben Bova

For a last installment in a very good collection this one was mind-blowing in its scale.

Holman wakes with the ship's computer AI asking for instructions.  Where should we go?  The ship has been damaged in an attack but it is repairing itself.

Humanity has been at war with The Others and they have come back to exterminate every last person left alive.

Not only did the include faster-than-light travel but  it is an intergalactic chace story.  Humanity has been judged as unworthy to continue existing.

This was a terrific epic that could easily have been made into a complete series of novels.  Bova did a great job of succinctly telling a giant story by showing us what happened to one single man.

Book Review - The Girl with the Long Green Heart by Lawrence Block

First published in 1965 (what a great year that was) Hard Case Crime has republished it in 2005.

It's a great real estate swindle, yea, sounds boring but it's not. Plus a lot of the action takes place in Toronto. Part of the fun of reading this book besides the wonderful pulpy lines like "I wanted to make her purr" is also just how different travel was back in those days. In a post 9/11 world its fun to read about people carrying guns on board a plane and steak knives being used with the meal service.

Lawrence Block has long been one of my favorite authors. He's been writing for decades and is a Grand Master of crime fiction. He's always easy to read and his stories have always kept me turning pages.