I just finished John Harwood's The Ghost Writer, and while there's a lot to process, I quite liked it. It's a bit like The Woman in Black or Sarah Waters' The Little Stranger, with a creeping sense of wrongness and dread that keeps building. Lots of lovely gothic detail, too-- family secrets and mysterious photographs, unsettling paintings that ( Read more... )

It's been warm and humid this week and I've been worse than usual about concentrating on reading anything serious, so... I'm about halfway through Boyd Morrison's The Loch Ness Legacy and let me just tell you what this novel has so far (spoilers ( Read more... )

Finally read Scott Lynch's Republic of Thieves and I'm reminded all over again of the by-the-seat-of-your-pants chronology jumps and all the sarcasm and humor that makes me giggle. In addition to that, today was unexpectedly warm and sunny, almost as if spring might be on its way ( Read more... )

Stores aren't marking it down as quickly as they used to. It's almost as if they don't want you to enjoy a hedonistic wallow in the 50% off chocolate aisle or something, when really, they ought to be more magnanimous because it's the only thing getting some of us through the winter. In the meantime, it's getting more spring-like here in the sense ( Read more... )

I don't often find a new series I like enough to sit down and mainline all the books, but I'm enjoying this one. Set in Regency England, the Sebastian St. Cyr mysteries deal with espionage, assassination plots, government machinations and murder. Lots and lots of murder. The books are touted as sort of a Mr. Darcy meets James Bond kind of thing, ( Read more... )

You know how Time Life Books used to publish collections of books about weird stuff? UFOs, ghosts, fairies, things like that. I loved those damn things when I was a kid, but my parents refused to invest in such additions to the family library on the grounds that it was tacky, tasteless garbage. So imagine my geeky delight when I found a copy of The ( Read more... )

Growing up on Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House series, I think I probably read Farmer Boy the most. Hardship on the frontier was exotic and interesting, but... Almanzo had a much cozier life. And of course, there was the endless stream of food pr0n, most of it stuff I'd never heard of. Laura's stories of maple sugar candy, crackling, roasted pig ( Read more... )

It's been on my list for a while now, but I finally read Gregg Olsen's Starvation Heights. It was excellent and thoroughly chilling. "Starvation Heights" was the nickname locals gave to the Wilderness Heights sanitarium in Olalla, Washington, and in the late 1800s it was run by Dr. Linda Hazzard, a woman who believed in the "fasting cure" for what ( Read more... )

Do not click if the idea of swarms of stinging insects bothers you: Florida entomologist battles gigantic yellowjacket nest. The nest was over six feet tall. There's a video, which you should watch in order to provide more fuel for your nightmares. At one point, you can hear enraged yellowjackets pinging off his face mask like hail ( Read more... )

Plot bunny: Egyptian statue in Manchester Museum rotates by itself. *cue Twilight Zone theme*

Sure, there's a rational explanation. But when I hear stories like this, I think about restless demons, nosy archaeologists and ancient conspiracies... sort of like Elizabeth Peters' Vicky Bliss mysteries. Somebody get on that, stat!

( Dracula: The Un-Dead, lots of spoilers )