Riding the Omnibus

I bought some books by my favourite author, Graham Masterton, recently. One particularly difficult one called "Innocent Blood" I had to order from Amazon.com. I waited and then they cancelled it, can't get it in paperback. That sent me looking for used copies. Oh, I can get used copies, but the prices start at $100 US for a paperback. Man oh man, I love his books, but that's crazy. Why exactly do people think they can get that price? I then did what any fan of Masterton would do, I went to Amazon.co.uk. Same deal there. No new paperbacks, used copies, same pricey range. Okay, fine then, I thought to myself. How about hard cover? Amazon.com had 1 copy left. I'm expecting it any day now.

Now as to other books of his. Some browsing at Amazon.co.uk awarded me with some of the old books—out of the fiction ones, as opposed to his huge selection of horror novels. These old books have been given new life in Omnibus editions. What's an omnibus you ask? It's more than one novel printed as a single book. There is only one front cover, one spine, and one back cover. Most omnibus (the word is plural in Latin already) books, or omnibuses (in English anyway) in my experience contain three books/novels. Sometimes they are two like my new, obviously recently printed copy of "Corroboree" and "Empress" together. Other times they are large four like my used, but perfect, new condition copy of "Tengu", "The Devils of D-Day", "The Mirror", and "Charnel House" together. Just to be showy I'll add that I scored a new recent printing stand-alone copy of Famine too.

Some omnibuses have their stories collected on a thematic basis, whether or not they are all stories written by the same author, or different authors. On a tangential note those movies which are more than one self-contained or semi-related stories can also be called omnibuses though they typically go by the more common name of anthologies. Of course some books are called anthologies as well, though I believe those are collections of only short stories. A prime example would be the Hot Blood anthologies (Hot Blood, Hotter Blood, Hottest Blood, each with more than one volume). Other than Graham Masterton in the UK (the omnibuses anyway) the only other author I've seen omnibus books for is Dean Koontz, but that was a while ago and in hard cover.

Mood: lethargic.
Music: Innocent Exile by Iron Maiden and All By Myself by Green Day.

Buy these at Amazon.ca Click Images to Buy