Book Reviews

I remember as a kid reading a YA thriller about some sort of sentient, evil fog that was enveloping and destroying the souls of everyone in a damp New England town. It must have been dreadfully written, but I think I rather liked it, and I’m afraid that memory predisposes me in favor of Vanessa Morgan’s elemental horror/thriller Drowned Sorrow, which runs along more or less the same lines.

Megan Black was a high-powered TV journalist with a seemingly perfect family. But when her son accidentally kills himself during a botched attempt to get her attention, and her husband […]

Honey McGuinness has seen it all, and willingly indulged in most of it. The child of a crazed mother who died apparently trying to kill them both, Honey once followed a path of willful self-annihilation.

I’d ingested, digested, shoved up my ass, and shot into my bloodstream every kind of consciousness-numbing intoxicant, narcotic, and medication known to man – and whatever I missed in my later years my sick-o mother shoved down my throat in the first sixteen. I was experienced, stoned and beautiful.

Honey was also “the most unreasonable kind of addiction” her many lovers ever abided: “a real […]

There’s been a lot of discussion on this site about the value of editing, and whether it’s worth it to have your book professionally edited before self-publishing. Jaunt, a sci-fi adventure by Erik J. Kreffel, is a perfect example of a story with plenty of potential that could have been enormously improved by editorial input.

The novel’s premise reads something like the back-story of an arcade game. Two hundred years in the future, mysterious alien jewels are found in a crater in the Himalayas. The jewels possess the ability to travel in time, and a top science institute for […]

We often hear that writers should write what they know and this is quite in evidence with Krista Tibbs’s The Neurology of Angels who really knows her subject matter. Tibbs studied neuroscience at MIT and also holds an MBA in health sector management from Duke University. She is presently employed in the biotechnology industry conducting clinical research for diseases with unmet medical needs.

With this in mind, we can readily understand how she was able to craft a fascinating realistic novel focusing on the pharmaceutical industry as she accurately depicts the dilemmas and conflicts that arise among all of the […]

I have to admit, I devoured Fairy Senses in two days, curled up in my room feeling like a happy little girl again. Frances Ruiz has crafted a delightful little story here, mixing elements of Harry Potter and Anne McCaffrey with a batch of likeable characters in an imaginative fairyland.

The story unfolds around Kelly, who wakes up on the eve of her fourteenth birthday to find a fat little winged man raiding her refrigerator. The reason she can see him turns out to be that she is, much to her surprise, half fairy herself. Her mixed heritage makes her […]

When I featured What Happened to the Indians by Terence Shannon a few months ago as part of my “Discovery Showcase” program, several things hooked me. One was the military setting. Another was the political suspense feel. And the aliens were merciless; just shooting down military aircraft, almost like a test.  Here’s the blurb. This isn’t the blurb on my copy; which I can’t find in electronic form. This is the blurb that the author sent me.

Aliens make themselves known only to the United States government through a small series of hostile acts. They shoot down a couple of

In 1866, Thomas Brash flees across Canada to escape the pain of losing his wife and children to cholera. Along the way he meets Frank Clement, a youth haunted by his own recent past. Tom is well educated, and Frank is ignorant of everything but survival in the wilderness of the Canadian Rockies. By the unique combination of their skills and qualities, they form a partnership to survive. Tom’s diplomatic approach wins friends among the Blackfeet, while Frank’s skill with a pistol deals effectively with enemies. As they journey through the wilderness, they meet up with two other men, and […]

Meet Calvin Wheeler – thirtysomething and unhappily married to Karen, his childhood sweetheart, who in Chapter 1 reminds him that the proper name for his unsightly cold sore is “herpes”. A former actor, one-time traffic school instructor, and presently a courier for Healthfirst clinical laboratories, Calvin’s day consists of driving around Stockton, CA and environs making deliveries and pickups at various labs, hospitals and doctors’ offices.

Calvin hates his job and hates his colleagues even more: they’re all fat, stupid, ass-kissing, job-stealing or, in one case, afflicted with an hilarious speech impediment. Calvin amuses himself with violent road-rage fantasies, listening […]