Arch-Conspirator by Veronica Roth (Myth-Based SF Novel, 2023). At 110 pages, Veronica Roth’s latest is somewhere on the borderland between a novella and a full-length novel. Set in a bleak future where only a single struggling city survives on a radiation-scarred post-apocalyptic Earth, it is nonetheless an explicit retelling/variation on the ancient Greek play Antigone. […]
Read more "BOOK REVIEW: Arch-Conspirator"Mango, Mambo, and Murder by Raquel V. Reyes (Cozy Mystery Novel, 2022). The short mystery stories of Raquel V. Reyes have been nominated for the Agatha Award and this, her debut novel, won a Lefty for Best Humorous Mystery. As is typical in the food-oriented mystery sub-genre, it’s the first of an ongoing series. In […]
Read more "BOOK REVIEW: Mango, Mambo, and Murder"Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett (Fantasy Romance Novel, 2023). This fun novel is set in 1909 in an alternate version of our world where faeries and their magical ways are an accepted reality. In fact, England’s Cambridge University has an entire department dedicated to the study of these elusive beings. Emily Wilde […]
Read more "BOOK REVIEW: Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries"Vampire Weekend by Mike Chen (Modern Horror Novel, 2023). Louise Chao is a mostly self-isolated punk rocker, hospital worker, and, oh yes, a vampire. Aside from the UV-light sensitivity that makes working the night shift mandatory, she’s been told that all the pop culture stuff about vampire powers is pure bunk. She doesn’t have super-strength, […]
Read more "BOOK REVIEW: Vampire Weekend"Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris (Fact-Based Historical Novel, 2022). This one proved both educational and entertaining to me. It’s a thoroughly researched account of the 17th century manhunt for two of the Puritan revolutionaries who participated in the overthrow, trial and final execution of the British Empire’s King Charles I. Going in I knew […]
Read more "BOOK REVIEW: Act of Oblivion"Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy (Novel in Dialogue, 2022). Alicia Western is a young, brilliant mathematician, previously diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. In 1972, she checks herself into a psychiatric facility in Wisconsin. The facility’s name: Stella Maris. She arrives with $40,000 cash in a plastic bag, a history of what the medical community considers hallucinations […]
Read more "BOOK REVIEW: Stella Maris"The House in the Pines by Ana Reyes (Psychological Thriller, 2023). In this atmospheric debut novel, Maya, a young woman with bizarre blanks in her memory, happens upon a You Tube video of a stranger’s unexplained death that closely matches her best high school friend’s equally inexplicable demise years before. Besides the mystery of what […]
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