2021 was a boring year
WONDER IS A blasting cap. It is an emotion that goes off with a bang, shattering settled beliefs, rattling the architecture of the mind, and clearing space for new ideas, new possibilities. Wonder is often thought of as a peaceful emotion, a sense of resounding inner quiet. Of course we would associate it with silence. The world always assumes an eerie hush after an explosion.
Awe is TNT for the soul.
My name is Meghann O’Neill. I am a psychologist who specializes in treating victims of abusive relationships—particularly women and children. I am also a vampire, and for years I suffered the cruelty of the man who seduced and turned me into this immortal creature. His name was Simon Baldevar. Handsome and sophisticated, he claimed to loveContinue reading “Crimson Kiss book 1 by Trisha Baker”
Years and years ago when I was still a teenager, I was reading manga. A LOT. And among my incursions into the now defunct MangaTraders.com, I found some weirdly disturbing horror series that kinda stuck into my mind. They were tales about a spiral – people going crazy in a town where even their smokeContinue reading “Can we talk about Junji Ito?”
“Do you know,” he said, “do you know why I look to, why I cleave to, God? Why I cannot do without him? Because he is the only being toward whom I need not, I cannot, I must not, feel pity. Looking at all the other creatures of this life I am tortured, I amContinue reading “Seven Gothic Tales – Isak Dinesen”
John Bracken sat on the park bench and waited to make his hit. The bench was one of the many on the outskirts of James Memorial Park, which borders the south side of Hammond Street. In the daytime the park is overrun by kids, mother wheeling prams, and old men with bags of crumbs forContinue reading “Man With a Belly * Stephen King”
Stranded on a desert island, a young man yearns for objects from his past. A local from a small coastal town in England is found dead as the tide goes out. A Norwegian whaling ship is stranded in the Arctic, its crew threatened by mysterious forces. In the nineteenth century, a ship drifts in becalmedContinue reading “The Devil and the Deep: Horror Stories of the Sea by Ellen Datlow”
I absolutely love the books that Jeremy Bates brings out. I devoured Suicide Forest (World’s Scariest Places #1) by Jeremy Bates, then had some fun over Halloween last year reading World’s Scariest Places: ISLAND OF THE DOLLS and World’s Scariest Places: HELLTOWN and not so much fun trying to read about the Paris CATACOMBS. I thinkContinue reading “Mountain of the Dead * Jeremy Bates”
Ramses the Great lives! But having drunk the elixer of live, he is now Ramses the Damned, doomed forever to wander the earth, desperate to quell hungers that can never be satisfied—for food, for wine, for women. Reawakened in opulent Edwardian London, he becomes Dr. Ramsey, expert in Egyptology. He also becomes the close companionContinue reading “The Mummy or Ramses the Damned * Anne Rice”
Tonight is his night! Halloween belongs to the Prince of Darkness! It’s not a night for children, and it’s certainly not a night for celebration. No, it’s a night to be wary, a night to lock your doors and read your Bible. And I know that’s exactly what you good folks would be doing ifContinue reading “Johnny Halloween: Tales of the Dark Season * Norman Partridge”
Winner of the Bram Stoker Award and named one of the 100 Best Novels of 2006 by Publishers Weekly, Dark Harvest by Norman Patridge is a powerhouse thrill-ride with all the resonance of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery.” Halloween, 1963. They call him the October Boy, or Ol’ Hacksaw Face, or Sawtooth Jack. Whatever the name, everybody in thisContinue reading “Dark Harvest by Norman Partridge (2007)”
One Book a Week