Arroyo, by Chip Jacobs. Rare Bird Books, 2019You’ve got to figure that a book that starts out with an ostrich race is going to be kind of strange. But ostrich races really *do* take place, so this in itself doesn’t knock the book into complete fantasy land. It’s the psychic, highly intelligent dog that does that, and later, the reincarnation thing ( Read more... )

The Witch’s Kind, by Louisa Morgan. Redhook Books, 2019 ( Read more... )

The Lake Boy, by Adam Roberts. NewCon Press, 2018

This is an odd bit of storytelling. It’s part ghost story, part alien abduction, and part depiction of the perils of same sex relationships in the past ( Read more... )

Gaslight Gothic: Strange Tales of Sherlock Holmes, edited by J.R. Campbell and Charles Prepolec. EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing, 2018
This is a compilation of newly written Sherlock tales, which, as the title indicates, hae a gothic slant. And not just gothic, but supernatural gothic. In the various stories we have Elder Gods, Edger ( Read more... )

The Silent Companions, by Laura Purcell. Penguin, 2017

In 1865, Elsie Bainbridge, newly married, newly pregnant, and newly widowed, arrives at the family home of her late husband. Here she will wait out her pregnancy with only her late husband’s cousin, Sarah, and a bare handful of servants. This setting, far out in the country, is a new thing ( Read more... )

Creatures of Will & Temper, by Molly Tanzer. Mariner Books, 2017 When Evadne Gray catches her younger sister, Dorinia, dallying with another teen aged girl right after the man Evadne loves informs her that he is marrying someone else, Evadne runs to their mother to tell and assumes it will put a stop to Dorinia’s planned visit to their uncle in ( Read more... )

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, by Natasha Pulley. Bloomsbury, 2015 Thaniel Steepleton is a telegrapher at the home office, spending his working hours in a former broom closet, listening to the machines that have their wire tentacles all over Westminster. It’s a boring life. Then one night a bomb threat comes through, set for May. When he goes ‘ ( Read more... )

The Curious Affair of the Witch at Wayside Cross (From the Casebooks of Jesperson & Lane), by Lisa Tuttle. Hydra, 2017 The adventure starts when someone bangs relentlessly on the front door at the combined office and living quarters of detectives Jesperson and Lane in the small hours of the morning. When admitted, he is sweating and disheveled. He ( Read more... )

The Bedlam Stacks, by Natasha Pulley. Bloomsbury, 2017 In 1859, Merrick Tremayne is living in the ancestral home in Cornwall, doing the best he can with a ruined leg. The leg was ruined working for the East India Company, for whom he had done such varied services as run a tea plantation and smuggle opium. No longer of use to them, he lives with his ( Read more... )

A Secret History of Witches, by Louisa Morgan. Redhook, 2017 Starting in Brittany in 1821, this is the history of one family of witches, the Orchieres. They are Romani, and therefore automatically suspect whenever someone wants to persecute a witch. Which is why one night Grand-mere Ursule gives her life to hide the family from a witch hunting ( Read more... )