My favorite time of year has at last arrived. Scant days had passed after my return from Lisdoonvarna when I uncovered the last remaining love-tokens from my suitcase and discovered that in all of my souvenir shopping and gallivanting about, I had somehow neglected to purchase a Halloween costume. Unthinkable. You can imagine how quickly I set about rectifying the situation.

In years past, I have spent not inconsiderable effort in locating a costume both suitable to my taste and appropriate to my stature. I remained unsurprised throughout the first few weeks of my search that no solution immediately presented itself: this vampire costume was too vulgar, that werewolf costume too hirsute, the various feminine options simply too demoralizing. Thus, it was not until recently, when a sign in a store window caught my attention, that I found my heart's desire.

I was sifting through various bulbs and wires in a hardware store, trying to determine which would best fit atop my helm to simulate headlights—part of a nascent idea I had for a Knight Bus costume—when suddenly I espied a window display across the street, in which a shadowy silhouette was prominently featured. I hurried out of the hardware store, strode quickly past the high-end department store nearby (in which I had previously wandered for a good quarter hour contemplating the merits of purchasing a Knight Gown) and came to a halt beneath the display, struck dumb with delight. After I had made thorough notation of the figure's salient features, I scurried away to complete my shopping.

The assembly was more difficult than I had anticipated. It took several days to scrub my armor down to a thoroughly matte black, and altering my own helm to the shape I required proved impossible: I was forced to spend a day or two modeling the necessary ear-points out of foam, which I then attached. The cape took my squire the better part of a week, as did my squire's butler costume, during which time I fiddled about with tiny crossbows, swordbelts, and throwing stars until I had fitted them all to the overarching design. At last, only this morning, I have completed my Halloween costume: I shall venture forth as that greatest of heroes, the Dark Knight.

Until that wondrous Hallows Eve arrives, this month will keep me well occupied with a number of excellent titles. There's Jim Butcher's original graphic novel set in the world of the Dresden Files, Welcome to the Jungle, an adventure both creepy and riveting; the harrowing novel of the Mutant Chronicles, based on the soon-to-be-released movie of the same name; the paperback release of Michael Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road, as well as a collection of terrifying stories by H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth; and perhaps most timely of all, a new Joe Pitt novel from Charlie Huston, master of the macabre: Every Last Drop, a vampiric noir truly appropriate to the season. It will provide a much-needed distraction as I create the rest of my costume. I suspect sewing a Batmobile costume to fit a grumpy warhorse will be a rather daunting challenge.

Sir Kaitlin
kheller@randomhouse.com

Between normal, everyday life and the unseen supernatural world, one man is out to solve crimes and dispense justice.

An original adventure set in the New York Times bestselling Dresden Files universe.

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Climb aboard, buckle up, and prepare to jump to hyperspace for the ultimate flight of the ship that launched a thousand fates.

In their third collaboration, Anne McCaffrey and her son, Todd McCaffrey, spin a tale of a mysterious illness that may succeed in doing what centuries of Threadfall could not: kill every last human on Pern. Arising suddenly, as if out of nowhere, the contagion decimates hold after hold, paying no heed to distinctions of birth. In this feverish crucible, friendship and love will be tested to the breaking point and beyond. For with Threadfall scant years away, the Dragonriders dare not expose themselves to infection, and it will fall to Kindan and his fellow apprentices to bravely search for a cure and save humanity. The price of failure is unthinkable. But the price of success may be even harder to bear.

"I know who your father is . . . Gestalt." A shocked Flinx hears these dying words from one of the renegade eugenicists whose experiments with humans twenty-odd years ago shocked the galaxy . . . and spawned Flinx. So Flinx and his minidrag, Pip, venture to Gestalt, an out-of-the-way planet perfect for someone who never wants to be found-disregarding the advice of those who think Flinx could make better use of his time locating the ancient, sentient weapons platform that could be the galaxy's only chance of stopping the exterminating scourge that's fast approaching. Flinx might agree with them-but the quest for patrimony wins out. (Sorry, galaxy!) Unfortunately for Flinx, Gestalt also hosts a resident bounty hunter who's just learned about the stupendous reward offered for a certain dead redhead. Flinx gets a chance to test his adversary's skills when our hero's skimmer is blasted out of the sky and into a raging river in the middle of nowhere-a nowhere of impassable terrain and ravenous, carnivorous beasts. But hey, what's one more impossible challenge for someone who's spent his life defying the odds and escaping the inescapable? Flinx has one thing going for him . . . plenty of experience.

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By the end of the twenty-third century, Earth is a plague-ridden, war-ravaged cesspool dominated by megacorporations whose ruthless armies fight one another for power and for the very scarce resources there are left. Capitol fighters Mitch Hunter and Nathan Rooker are battling the opposing forces of the Bauhaus corporation when a cannon blast exposes and destroys an ancient stone seal in the ground. From the bowels of the Earth crawl hordes of necromutants with razorlike boneblades for arms, hideous humanoids that thrive and multiply by commandeering the bodies of dying soldiers. Mitch barely escapes-only to discover that both the rise of the mutants and the "Deliverer" who will save humanity have been prophesied. Unless Mitch and a group of warriors from each of the megacorporations succeed in reaching the hidden horrors and wiping out the mutant scourge, ouir world will literally become a hell on Earth.

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They're an odd pair, to be sure: pale, rail-thin, black-clad Zelikman, a moody, itinerant physician fond of jaunty headgear, and ex-soldier Amram, a gray-haired giant of a man as quick with a razor-tongued witticism as he is with a sharpened battle-ax. Brothers under the skin, comrades in arms, they make their rootless way through the Caucasus Mountains, circa A.D. 950, living as they please and surviving however they can-as blades and thieves for hire and as practiced bamboozlers, cheerfully separating the gullible from their money. None of which has necessarily prepared them to be dragooned into service as escorts and defenders to a prince of the Khazar Empire. Usurped by his brutal uncle, the callow and decidedly ill-tempered young royal burns to reclaim his rightful throne. But doing so will demand wicked cunning, outrageous daring, and foolhardy bravado . . . not to mention an army. Zelikman and Amram can at least supply the former. But are these gentlemen of the road prepared to become generals in a full-scale revolution?

It's like this: A series of bullet-riddled bad breaks has seen rogue Vampyre and terminal tough guy Joe Pitt go from PI for hire to Clan-connected enforcer to dead man walking in a New York minute. And after burning all his bridges, the only one left to cross leads to the Bronx, where Joe's brass knuckles and straight razor can't keep him from running afoul of a sadistic old bloodsucker with a bad bark and a worse bite. Even if every Clan in Manhattan is hollering for Joe's head on a stick, it's got to be better than trying to survive in the outer-borough wilderness. So it's a no-brainer when Clan boss Dexter Predo comes looking to make a deal. All Joe has to do to win back breathing privileges on his old turf is infiltrate an upstart Clan whose plan to cure the Vyrus could expose the secret Vampyre world to mortal eyes and set off a panic-driven massacre. Not cool. But Joe's all over it. To save the Undead future, he just has to wade neck-deep through all the archenemies, former friends, and assorted heavy hitters he's crossed in the past. No sweat? Maybe not, but definitely more blood than he's ever seen or hungered for. And maybe even some tears-over the horror and heartbreaking truth about the evil men do no matter who or what they are.

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Venture at your own risk into a realm where the sun sinks into oblivion—and all that is unholy, unearthly, and unspeakable rises. These rare, hard-to-find collaborations of cosmic terror are back in print, including

* Wentworth's Day: A fellow figures his debt to a dead man is null and void, until he discovers just how terrifying interest rates can be.

* The Shuttered Room: A sophisticated gentleman must settle his grandfather's estate, only to find that the house shelters dark secrets.

* The Dark Brotherhood: A beautiful woman and her companion meet the likes of Edgar Allan Poe, in a tale as terrifying as anything Poe himself ever created.

* Innsmouth Clay: A sculptor returns from Paris to create a statue not entirely of this world-and not at all under his control.

* Witches' Hollow: A new schoolteacher puts his soul in peril while trying to save one of his students from a ravenous creature.

In Heroes Die and Blade of Tyshalle, Matthew Stover created a new kind of fantasy novel, and a new kind of hero to go with it: Caine, a street thug turned superstar, battling in a future where reality shows take place in another dimension, on a world where magic exists and gods are up close and personal. In that beautiful, savage land, Caine is an assassin without peer, a living legend born from one of the highest-rated reality shows ever made. That season, Caine almost single-handedly defeated-and all but exterminated-the fiercest of all tribes: the Black Knives. But the shocking truth of what really took place during that blood-drenched adventure has never been revealed . . . until now. Thirty years later, Caine returns to the scene of his greatest triumph-some would say greatest crime-at the request of his adopted brother Orbek, the last of the true Black Knives. But where Caine goes, danger follows, and he soon finds himself back in familiar territory: fighting for his life against impossible odds, with the fate of two worlds hanging in the balance. Just the way Caine likes it.

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