Time to take a breather from mystery, dive into various genres and boxes and recommend two terrific reads. Okay, one very good and one terrific. Let's not overdo the superlatives (honest to gods, I have to watch myself. It's like the practice of everyone giving every performance a standing ovation. Pooey!)

Finding books to read in the"true crime"category tends to bug me. What I mean is I don't read Ann Rule (who for the record is a very cool lady) because I tend not to want to read about "real" crimes. Many fans of mystery fiction do, many don't. Some are devotees of "CSI" tv shows. Some cringe at them. That's why we go for fiction - even if and when the author uses a "real" event as her basis, as many do. (still with me? Little Ms. Run-on here).

But, so, er, um, I find fascinating stories abound out there. In reading about the thefts at the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum, for example. The realities of that heist is as complex, fascinating, stupid and weird as any fictional heist. The Gardner theft, unsolved for twenty-plus years, involved many well-known pieces of art that could not ever be sold openly. They included a Vermeer, a Manet, several works by Degas and Rembrandt. The Gardner still has empty frames on the walls where the paintings hung. That such a theft could happen and go unsolved this long? this story, as the story of the theft(s) of Munch's "The Scream" fascinate me and I read about the thefts when I can. Most recently,I'm finishing PRICELESS a sometimes overblown work by Robert Wittman, who essentially
WAS and created the FBI's Art Crime Theft bureau. Working for the FBI means often working with local cops and law enforcement from other countries who sometimes treat stolen Klimt like any other stolen material. Some lack an understanding of the place in culture or history that a ceremonial sword might have. Others come from a country with major art crime squads. This memoir talks about Wittman's most famous cases, from a battle flag that belonged to a Black regiment during the Civil War to a tiny Rembrandt self-portrait.

The other work I'm excited about is BREAKING WAVES. You gotta read this, guys. First off, well, second off, it's a fundraiser for one of my most favorite, best, most important causes - the lives and well-being of the residents of the gulf coast still struggling to recover from Katrina these five years AND the frikkin oil spill. (Points to Cherie Priest for eloquently stating "Jesus Christ. We broke the ocean." on hearing about the Deepwater Horizon disaster. And thank to BW editor Tiffany Trent for passing that one on.)

So disclosures - I was given a copy of BREAKING WAVES as a gift and did not exactly set out to review it but this isn't a review, exactly, it's a nudge, a push to read this anthology. I was sold the second I saw that James Sallis had work in it and didn't really care what it was. That there are stories by Vonda N McIntyre and Ursula K Le Guin was a huge draw. There are two writers who, essentially, lured me to the dark side. With cookies. I mean these are two of the reasons I began reading science fiction and still read it to this day.

It's my very first ebook. I admit to beginning with a friend because he's a friend and because I truly like his writing. so the first thing I read in BREAKING WAVES was "A Little Song, A Little Dance' by David Levine and Andrine de la Rocha. Oh. My. Gods. It was so damn beautiful. And a few days later, I got in touch with Howard Patterson (one of the founding members of The Flying Karamazov Brothers)(HO) to talk to him about the story. it's based on a trip taken by the FKB and friends to New Orleans. The story is co-written by Howard's wife (oh so that's who Andrine is!) who donated her journal entries to David so they could collaborate on this stunningly beautiful tale. I admit to feeling proud that I knew people who would do what they did.

BREAKING WAVES is an eclectic (or to use the editor's perfect adjective "esoteric") anthology with work by many authors you'll know. Most are sf and fantasy but not all. The editors got permission to reprint a chapter of Rachel Carson's THE SEA AROUND US.

If you don't know Jim Sallis, you should. And Laura Anne Gilman, and Judith Tarr. And Sue Lange and Lyda Morehouse. Stories, poems, articles, thoughts, memories, photos made into art abound in this anthology. Everything I have read so far has been worth reading. BREAKING WAVES is like no other collection I've read before and I like that very much. That it was all done out of concern and love for the gulf coast makes it shine.

Buy it. All funds go to the Gulf Coast Oil Spill Relief Fund to help people and animals affected by the disaster. It's $4.99. It's wonderful. Buy it. Read it.