Blood Lines by Tanya Huff is the third book in a series.  I haven't read the first two.  I think I should have.Sometimes you can pick up a sequel and know that there were things that came before but not feel like you missed them.  In this case I did.  This story centers around a... Continue Reading →

Summer of Night by Dan Simmons is a long book.  But so worth turning every one of those pages. The story begins in 1960 with an elementary school eating one of the students.  Things rapidly go downhill from there.  By the end of the novel, several (I lost count) people are dead, including main characters. At the... Continue Reading →

Tidings of Great Joy by Sandra Brown was not so great.  This is another of her early romance novels.  And perhaps, my least favorite.   Boy, can you tell it's early in her career. Characters are flat.  Plot is ridiculous.  I struggle to find a redeeming feature.  I'll sum it up with this:  you can't replace a baby as... Continue Reading →

I've decided that people who classify Stephen King as some sort of pop culture sell-out just haven't read his books. I thought I had read The Shining before.  Soon after I started reading it this time, I realized I was wrong.  I was remembering the movie.  Not a bad movie.  But not the same as the book. Yes,... Continue Reading →

Francesca Lia Block's novel I Was a Teenage Fairy is a story about a girl (Barbie) and her fairy (Mab) growing up.  Barbie is forced to be a model by her wanna-be mom (Yes, she named her daughter after the doll) at the age of eleven.  Big surprise, she and several other children are molested.  The... Continue Reading →

Nope, it's not just an Alfred Hitchcock movie.  Psycho, by Robert Block, was just as creepy and weird before Hitchcock got ahold of it.  Actually, the movie follows the book very tightly.  Block gives us more insight into Norman's head than the movie does (though some of the info in the novel appears in the... Continue Reading →

Wave-Swept Shore by Mimi Koehl is one of those books that people flip through, looking at pictures and maybe reading a few captions.  You should sit down and read the whole thing.  This book takes a very up-close look at an environment that most people may not know even exists.  Of those that do know it... Continue Reading →

Burying a loved one is never easy.  William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying is a study on that statement. Addie's burial begins before she is even dead, with her approving each plank that is used to make her coffin.  She also demands to be buried in the town she came from, several days journey away.  When she... Continue Reading →

All is not well in Kingdom Come.  Tom Piccirilli's A Choir of Ill Children is just as strange as November Mourns.  But I'm starting to figure out the lay of the land.  There are several similar features in these two novels: voodoo, cults or other interpretations of religion, offspring who fall outside the normal range, and a man haunted... Continue Reading →

I finished reading My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult over 24 hours ago.  I had to sit and stew on this one for a while, because I couldn't say what I wanted to say. What I really want to talk about is the ending.  But, I can't talk about the ending, because I want people to read... Continue Reading →