Dalmas Throws His Characters Into Some Bizarre Circumstances

FOR THE RECORD CORRECTION: Ursula Hegi will read from her book “Stones From the River” at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Auntie’s Bookstore. The wrong date was reported in Sunday’s IN Life section. Correction published on June 20, 1995. COLUMN

Spokane author John Dalmas is back with a new novel, the first part of a projected three-part series that he’s titled “The Lion of Farside” (Baen Books, 441 pages, $5.99).

And, no, it has nothing to do with Gary Larson.

Dalmas, the author of such novels as “The Yngling,” “The Regiment” and “The Lizard War,” has this much in common with the retired cartoonist: a sense of the bizarre.

Only where big-minded Larson takes ordinary situations and peoples them with unusual creatures, science-fiction-minded Dalmas tends to place normal people in the “Twilight Zone” arena.

“The Lion of Farside,” for example, involves a farmer from the American Midwest whose wife is abducted by the rulers of her native world Yuulith.

And where is Yuulith? It is “a magical world separated from Earth by only a dimensional barrier that could sometimes be broached.”

Anyway, Dalmas is busy at work on the planned sequels as well as a non-fiction environmental project that he’s calling “The War for the Woods: A Case for Honesty and Optimism.”

He has high hopes for the “Farside” series. “My previous series just sort of happened, with no thought given to any possible sequel,” he says. “This should work better.”

Cruising the Green River

In his new novel “River” (Fawcett, 419 pages, $22), author Roderick Thorp tackles the Green River Killer murders. Thorp is probably best known as the author of the novel “Nothing Lasts Forever,” which was made into the Bruce Willis movie “Die Hard.”

A resident of Los Angeles, Thorp centers his novel partly in Spokane, a 1982 version of which he describes this way:

“Spokane was bisected by the narrow Spokane River, with old Protestant money locked into dark, heavily gingerbread Victorian houses on the high land on the south side. Working-class Catholics were packed in ninehundred-square-foot bungalows on the low-level north, where the neighborhoods were known by the names of the Catholic parishes. As beautiful as it must have been when it belonged to the Indians, Spokane was now a grimy, gloomy, aging burg cursed with a low-lying overcast that blotted the sun for weeks at a time, the perfect backdrop for the black, ugly B-52 bombers roaring loudly through landings and takeoffs at Fairchild Air Force Base a few miles to the southwest.”

Somebody better notify the chamber of commerce.

A ‘Bodacious’ treat

“The Bodacious Kid,” Kalispell cartoonist/author Stan Lynde’s first novel, is now available for order. Published by Lynde’s own Cottonwood Publishing, the 256-page Western carries various prices.

The regular retail price is $29, plus a $4 charge for shipping and handling. But a special limited-edition hardcover copy, signed and numbered and including a 10-by-10-inch autographed print, goes for $80 (plus the $4 service charge).

Early reviews of the book are good. Michael H. Price, a critic for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, wrote, “His great notions and his bold narrative gifts have all along seemed to strain at the boxy confines of the comic-strip idiom where he first established himself as a storyteller, and at last Stan Lynde has burst forth as a Western novelist of a high order. ‘The Bodacious Kid’ is what John Ford would have called a ‘cracking good yarn’…”

To order the book, call Cottonwood Publishing at (800) 937-6343.

It’s a mystery

Fans of Karen Kijewski’s “Kat Colorado” series of private-eye mysteries should be happy to know that the popular writer will be visiting Spokane on June 26.

Kijewski will read from her latest book, “Alley Cat Blues,” at 7:30 p.m. at Auntie’s Bookstore, Main and Washington. In this one, Kat tries to weather a suddenly shaky stretch with her boyfriend while solving the hit-andrun murder of a young woman.

And all the while a serial killer is stalking the streets of Las Vegas.

The reader board

Ursula Hegi, author of “Stones From the River,” will read from the newest novel at 7:30 p.m. Saturday at Auntie’s Bookstore. Hegi, whose previous works include “Floating in My Mother’s Palm,” teaches creative writing at Eastern Washington University.

, DataTimes