Tag: A Visit to October Country

The Ballad of Black Tom

November 4, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: Charles “Tommy” Tester is a hustler in Harlem in 1924. He takes care of his dad and makes an okay life for himself – but after he delivers a most mysterious package, he becomes increasingly caught up in a world of strange happenings. After he’s invited to play a white man’s party in Queens, he disappears – only to reappear as something far darker and far less himself… The Review: I was reading the transcript of a […]

Categories: Fiction • Tags: A Visit to October Country, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Fiction, H.P. Lovecraft, Horror, Literature, Lovecraft, New York, Novella, review, Reviews, The Ballad of Black Tom, The Horror at Red Hook, Tor Publishing, Victor LaValle, Weird Fiction

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Roundup, October 2016

October 31, 2016 by Drew

The Grownup by Gillian Flynn 3 out of 5 The Short Version: A young woman on the margins, working as a fraudulent psychic, lands a gig investigating a creepy house and creepy child for another woman. What ensues is a classic gothic battle for sanity. The Review: Flynn’s voice is unmistakeable and it was great to hear it again, seeing as it’s been awhile since Gone Girl and we’re likely to have to wait a while longer yet for her next […]

Categories: Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Literature, Mystery, Non-Fiction, Poetry • Tags: A Head Full of Ghosts, A Thousand Mornings, A Visit to October Country, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Contagion, Dana I. Wolff, Disease, Exorcism, Fiction, Gillian Flynn, Heidi Julavits, Horror, Literature, Mary Oliver, Metafiction, Mikhail Bulgakov, North Brother Island, Novella, Paul Tremblay, Peace, Poetry, Psychics, Religion, Review Roundup, Reviews, Roundup, Russia, Speculative, Stalin, The Devil, The Grownup, The Master and Margarita, The Prisoner of Hell Gate, The Vanishers, Thriller, Typhoid Mary

Mr. Splitfoot

October 28, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: Sometime in the 1990s, Ruth and Nat, two orphan children raised on a farm of other orphans, meet a mysterious stranger who begins to manage their budding career as psychic mediums. In the present, Ruth’s niece Cora is unexpectedly pregnant – and meets Ruth late one night, when she convinces Cora to leave on a trek with her. The two tales will intertwine in far upstate New York, across time and space… The Review: I knew next […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: A Visit to October Country, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Fiction, Ghost Stories, Ghosts, Gothic, Indiespensable, Literature, Mr. Splitfoot, Religion, review, Reviews, Samantha Hunt

Neon Green

October 27, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: It’s the same 1994 you remember, except in this one there are spaceships. They don’t do much – just land in the backyard and sit there for 9 months. But when the Allen Family wins a visit from a ship around the same time that Cynthia (the mother) is diagnosed with cancer, so begins a fracturing of their world that wouldn’t look too out of place in our 1994. The Review: There’s something pleasant about reading a novel […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: A Visit to October Country, Alternate History, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Fiction, Literature, Margaret Wappler, Neon Green, review, Reviews, TNBBC, Unnamed Press

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Fifty Feet of Trouble

October 24, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: Nick Moss, last human PI in Los Angeles, goes from having no cases to several in the blink of an eye. But what could two missing girls, a missing familiar, and a mysterious vampiric paramour have in common? Knowing this town, more than Nick can handle – and with a fifty foot woman and a Kong involved, boy is that ever the case. The Review: Sometimes, a simple concept is all you need to make something downright brilliant. […]

Categories: Fiction, Horror, Mystery, Noir • Tags: A Visit to October Country, Advance Review, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Candlemark and Gleam, Fiction, Fifty Feet of Trouble, Horror, Justin Robinson, Mystery, Nick Moss, Night War, Noir, review, Reviews

The Vegetarian

October 21, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: After a woman renounces meat and begins a strange and bleak mental spiral, those near to her – her husband, her brother-in-law, and finally her sister – must try to come to terms with/understand a woman they thought they knew. The Review: There’s nothing strange about vegetarianism, superficially. In the last eighteen months, I’ve become far less of a meat eater than ever before in my life, thanks in large part to cooking with a vegetarian all the time […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: A Visit to October Country, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Deborah Smith, Fiction, Fiction in Translation, Han Kang, Korea, Literature, Literature in Translation, review, Reviews, South Korea, The Tournament of Books 2017, The Vegetarian, Translation

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My Best Friend’s Exorcism

October 19, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: Abby and Gretchen have been inseparable best friends since elementary school. Now sophomores in high school, they (along with two other girls) pretty much rule the roost. But after Gretchen disappears in the woods during a rowdy party weekend, she comes back… different. Soon, things start changing in town and Abby’s the only one who notices that Gretchen has changed too – she’s not herself… The Review: Grady Hendrix’s first book, Horrorstör, was a visual object as much […]

Categories: Fiction, Horror • Tags: 80s, A Visit to October Country, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Fiction, Friendship, Grady Hendrix, Horror, My Best Friend's Exorcism, Quirk Books, review, Reviews

Crimson Shore (Pendergast #15)

October 17, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: Intrigued by the prospect of a low-key case (and the promise of a very rare bottle of wine as payment), Pendergast and Constance head to the Massachusetts coast. What they uncover there, however, is a dark scene from the town’s history – and an even darker scene playing out in the present… The Review: One of my favorite things about the Pendergast series was, especially in the early going, the willingness to tightrope along the line of the […]

Categories: Fiction, Mystery • Tags: A Visit to October Country, A. X. L. Pendergast, Aloysius Pendergast, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Constance Greene, Crime, Crimson Shore, Douglas Preston, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, Fiction, Horror, Lincoln Child, Mystery, review, Reviews, Thriller

Crooked

October 5, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: We all think we know the story of our thirty-seventh President, Richard Milhous Nixon – but what if Nixon wasn’t, in fact, a crook so much as the last in a line of sorcerer-presidents, standing firm against a tide of not just Communists but supernatural evil? Perhaps the world is far stranger than we’ve been allowed to believe… The Review: “…no one has ever convincingly established a motive for the Watergate break-ins.” This quote from The Arrogance of Power: […]

Categories: Fiction, Horror • Tags: A Visit to October Country, Alternate History, American Politics, Austin Grossman, Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, Crooked, Fantasy, History, Horror, review, Reviews, Richard Nixon

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Raging Biblio-holism

The overwhelming urge to collect, consume, and consider books

Tag: A Visit to October Country

The Ballad of Black Tom

Roundup, October 2016

Mr. Splitfoot

Neon Green

Fifty Feet of Trouble

The Vegetarian

My Best Friend’s Exorcism

Crimson Shore (Pendergast #15)

Crooked