Tag: Horror

Roundup: February 2017

March 1, 2017 by Drew

The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch Rating: 3 out of 5 The Short Version: Locke Lamora is a young thief at the head of a band of merry misfits known as the Gentlemen Bastards. Alternating between tales of his rise to the head of the Bastards and an ongoing story in Camorr that starts as a simple job but quickly expands to be far more deadly, it’s time to meet Locke Lamora… The Review: I had the highest of hopes for this […]

Categories: Fantasy, Fiction, Graphic Novel, Horror, Literature, Mystery, Spy • Tags: All Hail God Mammon, All the Old Knives, CIA, Comic Books, Douglas Preston, Elizabeth Strout, Fantasy, Fiction, Gentlemen Bastards, Horror, Jonathan Hickman, Lincoln Child, Literature, My Name is Lucy Barton, myths, Neil Gaiman, norse mythology, Olen Steinhauer, Pendergast, Preston & Child, Review Roundup, Roundup, Scott Lynch, Spy, Storytelling, The Black Monday Murders, The Lies of Locke Lamora, The Obsidian Chamber, The Tournament of Books 2017, Thriller, Tomm Coker

The Literary Conference

January 13, 2017 by Drew

The Short Version: After solving a centuries-old puzzle and recovering a lost pirate treasure, author/translator (and Mad Scientist) César Aira sets out to put in motion a plan to dominate the world. Things go awry. The Review: In some ways, this is the most digestible Aira novel I have read so far. In his embracing of B-movie aesthetics, which are (I now realize) delightfully well-suited to his “flight forward” style of just inventing and inventing and inventing, he’s created something […]

Categories: Fiction, Literature • Tags: Book, Book Review, Book Reviews, Books, César Aira, Fiction, Horror, Katherine Silver, Literature, Literature in Translation, New Directions, review, Reviews, Surrealism, The Literary Conference, Translation

Leave a comment

“The Dancer” & “The Speckled God”: Two from Unsung Signals

December 2, 2016 by Drew

The Short Version: Penelope D’Silva is a world-famous dancer, perhaps the best alive. But attendance at her performances is dropping, even as her filmed performances continue to sell out. What can be done to recapture the magic of live performance – and how far will Penelope go to find it? The Review: This short is an episode of Black Mirror waiting to happen. I don’t mean that to say the story reads like a film treatment – it doesn’t, at all – […]

Categories: Fiction • Tags: Advance Review, Book, Book Reviews, Books, Fiction, Horror, Marc Joan, Rab Ferguson, review, Reviews, Sci-Fi, Science Fiction, Speculative, The Dancer, The Speckled God, Unsung Signals, Unsung Stories, Weird Fiction

Leave a comment

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

Leave a comment

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

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

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

Leave a comment

← Older posts

Raging Biblio-holism

The overwhelming urge to collect, consume, and consider books

Tag: Horror

Roundup: February 2017

The Literary Conference

“The Dancer” & “The Speckled God”: Two from Unsung Signals

The Ballad of Black Tom

Roundup, October 2016

Fifty Feet of Trouble

My Best Friend’s Exorcism

Crimson Shore (Pendergast #15)

Crooked