This Week's Acquisitions

• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Mystery of Cloomber (Dover, 2009).  Gothic thriller featuring, among other things, Buddhists (but no Holmes).  Reprint of the 1889 edition.  (Lift Bridge)
• Heinrich Boll, The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum: Or, How Violence Develops and Where It Can Lead, trans. Leila Vennewitz (Penguin, 2009).  Despite the academic-sounding subtitle, this is Boll's deconstruction of the detective novel, featuring a young woman under siege by journalists.  First published in 1974.  (Lift Bridge)
• Bruce Duffy, Disaster Was My God: A Novel of the Outlaw Life of Arthur Rimbaud (Doubleday, 2011).  What it says in the subtitle: a historical novel about the French poet Arthur Rimbaud.  (Amazon [secondhand])
• David Stacton, The Judges of the Secret Court: A Novel about John Wilkes Booth (NYRB, 2011).  Also what it says in the subtitle: Booth assassinates Lincoln, major fallout results.  Initially published in 1961, and #2 in the short-lived Stacton's "American Triptych." (Amazon [secondhand])
• Ron Hansen, Exiles (Picador, 2009).  Historical novel about the events memorialized in Gerard Manley Hopkins' "The Wreck of the Deutschland."  (eBay)

Comments

[Don Napoli]

A David Stacton revival? It's difficult to believe. I read his second novel, The Self-Enchanted (1956). It is mind-bogglingly terrible. I hope he does better with historical fiction.

[nbm]

I just read the Stacton. Very distinctive, I thought; let us know your take if you get around to reading it any time soon.