At first blush, Robin Gerber's BARBIE FOREVER: HER INSPIRATATION, HISTORY, AND LEGACY might appear to be another beautifully designed coffee table book, packaged to appeal to fans of the Mattel maven whose fashions and careers have delighted and motivated children for decades -- six of them, to be precise!

You've seen the banners. You've seen the tweets and the Facebook postings. BULLETPROOF is coming...

But what is BULLETPROOF? And when is it coming?

The average  person today, when asked about Greek history, will probably recall the days of Plato and Socrates -- as though the country leapt straight from the days of philosophical and mathematical breakthroughs and went straight into the 21st century.

The Internet has made famous the Darwin Awards -- people who died in such fashion as to have done a benefit to humanity by removing themselves from the gene pool.

Ian Fleming's MI-5 agent James Bond has thrilled and chilled readers and moviegoers for decades. But despite all that history, how well does anyone truly know the man?

I grew up in an era where baseball cards were things to chase, where sealed packs kept you from knowing what you were going to get. The cards smelled like bubblegum and the bubblegum tasted like cardboard.

In a colorful kingdom, the king takes a walk with his advisor, and discovers there are many people in the land who do not look like him. Wishing not to see them, he orders them banished, and when that is not enough, he calls for a wall to be built.

Sir Maurice Newbury and Veronica Hobbes are special agents to the Queen who specialize in the outre. Their world may seem to be another steampunk genre adventure, but it is much, much more than that.

Our apologies, dear readers, for the glacial pacing of our announcements for the 2018 Best Of awards. Our focus has been on our relocation efforts, and sadly some of our other duties have suffered in the wake of that.

How often have you wished you could get just one more story out of a favorite author who has passed on to that great bookbinding plant in the sky? One more Ray Bradbury thriller, one more Agatha Christie whodunnit.

One more Edgar Rice Burroughs adventure with Tarzan.