Don’t you hate it when someone gets murdered on your honeymoon? To make matters worse, Tesla’s brand new husband gets accused of the crime in The Spare Man, a brilliant sci-fi mystery thriller from Mary Robinette Kowal, which came out last year. Continue reading Review of The Spare Man—Murder Mystery in Space
Month: July 2023
Review of A Mystery of Mysteries: The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe
Do we really need a new biography of Edgar Allan Poe, a man who has been continually talked about since his death nearly two centuries ago? It turns out—yes we do! There’s still plenty more to say about the father of modern horror. (And mystery. And true crime.) For one thing, we still don’t know exactly what caused Poe’s inexplicable death and the preceding three days of delirium in the city of Baltimore in 1849. For another, Poe’s image has loomed so large in pop culture that even what we can know about him has been largely obscured by stereotype, slander, and exaggeration. Mark Dawidziak sets out to shed some light on Poe’s shadowed life in his new biography, A Mystery of Mysteries: The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe, which came out back in February. Continue reading Review of A Mystery of Mysteries: The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe
Review of Camp Damascus—Horrors Real and Imagined
Summer camp is one of the last places you want to find yourself if you’re living inside a horror novel. But the scariest thing about Camp Damascus? Rose can’t even remember attending it. Internet-famous erotica author Chuck Tingle deftly pivots to serious horror in his first traditionally published novel Camp Damascus, out tomorrow, July 18. Continue reading Review of Camp Damascus—Horrors Real and Imagined
Review of Nettle & Bone—Fairy-Tale Fantasy
Marrying a prince seems like the ending of a fairy tale, but for Marra’s sister’s it is only the beginning of a nightmare. So, Marra sets out on her own fairy tale quest to find whatever magic or powerful allies can kill a prince in T. Kingfisher’s Nettle & Bone, which came out last year. Having thoroughly enjoyed Kingfisher’s Poe-inspired horror tale What Moves the Dead, I was excited to see what this author would bring to more straightforward fantasy. Kingfisher certainly has a gift for creating fantasy worlds that seem comfortingly familiar and yet also strange and unique. Continue reading Review of Nettle & Bone—Fairy-Tale Fantasy
Review of Starve Acre—Slow-burn Folk Horror
“There’s not an inch of soil that’s still alive.” Nothing grows on the land where the town hanging tree once stood in Andrew Michael Hurley’s folk horror novel Starve Acre. Originally published in the UK in 2019, Starve Acre is being newly released in the U.S. tomorrow, July 4. Continue reading Review of Starve Acre—Slow-burn Folk Horror