Reviewing the Mail: Week of September 20, 2025

It tends to be feast or famine in the Reviewing the Mail fields - mostly because, when I do buy books, I tend to make a major frenzy of it. So then I often dole those out over several weeks, partially because I suspect no one wants to read a long list of books someone else just got and partially because doing a long list of books somebody (me) just got is tedious and tiring.

This week, I got one newly-published book in the mail, from the usual publicity channels: I'll give the details in a moment.

I also got a big box from Midtown Comics, which was my "local" comics shop on and off for maybe a decade and a half, when I commuted through the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Midtown recently had some sort of clear-out-the-overstock sale, with some big discounts on specific, mostly fairly obscure, books, and I took advantage of that to buy fifteen of them. Those books arrived this week, but I'm going to space them out over the next three Sundays, five at a time, for the aforementioned reasons.

I don't think you care, but I might read this myself, two or three years from now, trying to remember when I got The Disappearance of Charley Butters. And so now I'm telling future me, and you're welcome, future me.

The newly-published book is from Tachyon: The Essential Horror of Joe R. Lansdale. The official publication date is October 8th, but I have a real book in my hands, so you might be able to find yourself a copy right now, too. It assembles sixteen stories from Lansdale's whole career - including some of the obvious choices, like "On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks," "Bubba Ho-Tep," and "Night They Missed the Horror Show" - along with a new intro by Lansdale (as they say) hisownself and an appreciation by Joe Hill.

I am not much of a horror reader, but Landsale is one of the major names in at least one sub-segment of that area for the past four decades - I know that much. So I imagine this will be a welcome find for a lot of people - and, as is traditional for horror, it's being published just in time to read it at Hallowe'en.