From Sarah Bernhardt to Peter Pavia

Another batch of the books I've bought recently, mainly before Xmas. My main haunt these days is the duplicate sale of the Swedish-speaking university of Turku. It's a bargain: five books for one euro (appr. 80 American cents), ten books for 1,50 and 20 books for two euros.

From there came these:

The Collected Stories of Dorothy Parker (I've never read any Parker and there are no translations (unless something in mags and anthologies), but her work has been regarded highly, at least once was)

Terry Southern & Mason Hoffenberg: Candy (I have this in translation, but this one is a paperback tie-in, with Ewa Aulin in the cover saying "Good grief! Me a movie!"; the book is actually one of the rare instances in the US in which a big prestige house is doing a paperback, this time it's G.P. Putnam & Sons)

Ed McBain: Big Man (originally published as by Richard Marsten in McBain's/Evan Hunter's early days in 1959)

Jerry Cohen & William S. Murphy: Burn, Baby, Burn! The Watts Riot (one of those books I don't know what I'm gonna do with them, but couldn't resist buying a book about the racial riots in America)

F. Van Wyck Mason: Proud New Flags (a Civil War novel, from an old pulpster and historical novelist; a Cardinal Giant paperback from Pocket Books that a previous owner had bound with ugly hardcovers, luckily having the original cover intact)

Robert B. Parker: Valediction (I haven't liked any of Parker's books I've read, but this one was only 20 cents, so what the heck? If I read it as quickly as the others, it will take only two hours... Sounds like we have to get the summer cabin we've been dreaming about recently so that I can take books like this there)

Susan Cooper: The Grey King, in translation (one of the books in the classical YA fantasy series; I haven't read this, but I've picked up other parts of the series very cheaply)

Cornelia Otis Skinner: Madame Sarah (the biography of Sarah Bernhardt; again, I won't probably read this, other than skimming it from time to time, but with 20 cents I couldn't resist, since the dustjacket was intact, albeit a bit spoiled)

Just before Christmas, I got from Tapani the Point Blank Press and Hard Case Crime books I'd asked him to order:

Peter Pavia: Dutch Uncle (a drug novel)
Max Phillips: Fade to Blonde (serious novelist's attempt at an old-style hardboiled paperback - I've heard nothing but good about this)
Domenic Stansberry: The Confession (controversial book about a serial killer who attacks women)
Anthony Neil Smith: Psychosomatic (pretty weird-sounding new noir debut)
Dave Zeltserman: Fast Lane (one of the most praised new private eye writers; said to mix Ross Macdonald and Jim Thompson's psychotic heroes)

I would've been interested in these no matter what, but I'm seriously digging into the new noir and hardboiled, since all of the mentioned (and others too, such as Ray Banks and James Reasoner) are on my possible list for the maybe-to-come paperback line in Finnish that I'm possibly about to start editing. (Sounds vague, doesn't it?)