Hey folks! Here’s a look at new music and books hitting the shelves this week from your pals here at RazorFine! Today’s new books include a book of essays from Michael Chabon, new novels from Anne Perry, Jonathan Kellerman, and Elmore Leonard, plus a new Edgar Allen Poe mystery from Harold Schechter and an investigation into the darkest days of comic books by David Hajdu. The new music includes the first new album from the B-52’s in years, plus Morrissey’s Greatest Hits, and new albums from Libera, Day 26, and Temposhark.
The new music includes:
Greatest Hits – Morrissey
Funplex – B-52’s
It’s a Shame About Ray Collector’s Edition – The Lemonheads
Great Vengeance and Furious Fire – Heavy
The Invisible Line – Temposhark
You’ll Never Walk Alone: The EMI Years 1936-1966 – Gerry & the Pacemakers
Day 26 – Day 26
New Dawn – Libera
Planet Earth Soundtrack – John Powell
The new books include:
Maps & Legends by Michael Chabon
Compulsion by Jonathan Kellerman
Killshot by Elmore Leonard
Blue-Eyed Devil by Lisa Kleypas
House Rules: A Memoir by Rachel Sontag
Buckinham Palace Gardens by Anne Perry
Last Breath: A Novel of Suspense by Mariah Stewart
Dark Wraith of Shannara by Terry Brooks
Wish You Were Here by Catherine Clark
Tell-Tale Corpse: An Edgar Allen Poe Mystery by Harold Schechter
Feature Book
The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How it Changed America
David Hajdu examines the rise and fall of comics in the late 1940’s and 50’s and the events which almost destroyed them. Post WWII America found a new enemy in the “evils” of the pulp magazines and comic books which, it was argued, warped the brains of young readers and inspired anti-social behavior. Here’s how a psychiatrist named Frank Wertham and the United States Senate attempted to destroy the corrupting influence of the comic industry. Fear, censorship, regulation, culture war and the fight for art, and the creation of the Comics Code, would change comic books for decades.