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THE BLACK CAMELS by Ronald Johnston. 216 pages. Harcourt, Brace & World. $4.95. Sheik-to-sheik high jinks among the oil-rich and rapacious Bedouins.
THE DANJU GIG by Carolyn Weston. 195 pages. Random House. $4.95. A smart-mouthed Jewish agent and a black movie star play at espionage in a small West African dictatorship. Sample prose: "Again he belched. Lox and gin."
HOUSE ON FIRE by Arch Oboler. 249 pages. 8arfholomew. $5.95. A radio and film veteran, the author has produced a nasty little hybrid—part melodrama about two juvenile murderers, part philosophical twaddle about whether God is dead, blind or just out to lunch.
THE BIG WIN by Jimmy Miller. 241 pages. Knopf. $5.95. After the virtual depopulation of the U.S. and Russia by a Chinese poison plague in A.D. 2004, a tough New Yorker, a beautiful Parisian aristocrat and a hippie from Venus hunt for the missing Chinese war criminals. An overstrained, social-satire freak-out.
THE ANTIBODIES by Peter Baker. 377 pages. Putnam. $6.95. A transparent and pedestrian attempt to make the bestseller list, using the theme of medical malpractice in transplant surgery.
FOLLOW THE RUNNING GRASS by Georgia McKinley. 244 pages. Houghton Mifflin. $4.95. First novel about a Texas dynasty from pioneer grandfather to would-be-liberal grandson. Overdone.
THE GOVERNOR'S LADY by Norman Collins. 381 pages. Simon & Schuster. $6.95. The colonials, the natives, and death on safari in Africa of the 1930s, including a governor with a steel-claw hand and scruples to match.
ANGELS FALLING by Janice Elliott. 409 pages. Knopf. $6.95. Miss Elliott's three generation chronicle of a British family named Garland—many of whose members betray great emotion by throwing up —reads a bit like the Forsyte Saga eviscerated for television.
Short Stories
AT NIGHT ALL CATS ARE GREY by Patrick Boyle. 256 pages. Grove. $4.95. Filial infighting, the sound of sibling revelry by night, Irish wakes, corpse-rooms, tippling grannies, occasional flashes of savage perception and true humor.
A WESTERN BONANZA edited by Jod-hunter Ballard. 419 pages. Doubleday. $6.95. Slick fairy tales from everybody's Old West wholesomely packaged as "frontier folklore."
Mysteries and Science Fiction THE LONG TWILIGHT by Keith Laumer. 222 pages. Pufnam. $4.95. Sci-fi explanation of Thor, Odin, Loki and a few other figures from Norse mythology as the ageless earth agents of some intergalactic villains.
YOUNG PREY by Hillary Waugh. 206 pages. Doubleday. $4.95. Sophomoric sermonette about a detective stalking the black rapist-murderer of a blonde would-be hippie. No kin to Evelyn.
CIRCLE OF SQUARES by William Price Turner. 192 pages. Walker. $4.50. A flaccid mystery about clandestine middle-aged conspirators against the tyranny of youth who discover the titillations and limitations of Flab Power.
DAMNATION ALLEY by Roger Zelazny. 157 pages. Putnam. $4.95. A colloidal suspension of sci-fi death wishes, atomic warfare, erupting volcanoes, mutants and—for ultimate deadliness—motorcycle gangs. Light but lurid.
Poetry