Words & Music

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.