Return to Mateguas Island by Linda Watkins
The Mateguas Island novels are tailor […]
Review: Sisters of Moirai by Jill M. Lehman
★★★★ 
Three girls, Meg, Baby, and Carrie, are Sisters of Moirai. Trapped in a mysterious institution where writing is banned, they write their story at their own peril with a buried pen, blood, dirt. The Suits, those in charge, have a Code of Conduct, and those who do not follow the rules face severe punishment.
Moirai is a strange and dark place, and “Rooms” keep appearing in the building where the girls will face their demons, sometimes almost literally. As they work through their troubles from their pasts, the places they are forced into become psychological battlegrounds – and seeming […]
Review: Winter (A Crow Creek Novel) by Thomas Drago
★★★★★
With the third installment of the Crow Creek series, author Thomas Drago brings yet another high-octane story arc to his fans. After the Red Queen has been brought down, Amanda Simmons has rebuilt Carolina Entech, the corporation that built alliances with Carolina Energy and even the US Army. Now she’s hoping to bring back a powerful nuclear air carrier by harnessing the power of the sun. But things are about to get very weird very quickly, and yet again Sheriff Gleason of Crow Creek is going to have a fight on his hands – with mortality, this time in […]
Review: Eternally Haunted by Luigi Santo
★★★★½ 
The tale of Stasya Andersson is one of love, loss, and a long-standing question of identity. Growing up with only her widowed father for close company, she lives a sheltered existence under his wing. While happy for a time, her ancestral home seems to have some kind of sway on her, with memories that belonged to her mother Anastasya, who died in childbirth with Stasya, surfacing in the younger Andersson without reasonable explanation. Soon memories become apparitions, and Stasya is driven to understand the purpose for her mother’s return.
Hoping to make sense of her unusual and troubling circumstances, […]
Review: Return of the Dragon by Alex J. Webster
★★★★½ 
Return of the Dragon by Alex J. Webster is a bloody good ride from start to finish.
Vampires have no doubt made a comeback in popular fiction, but some critics have noted the toned-down nature of these depictions, as opposed to the more sinister and terrifying versions of generations past. Alex Webster is clearly a student of those older varieties, as his eccentric vampire novel, Return of the Dragon, boldly shows. Readers are given a small glimpse into reports that hint at the vampire’s bloody history, eventually stopping off in the 1950s, in Soviet-policed Romania, where there are […]
Review: Wyrd, TX by David Shawn
★★★★½ 
Wyrd, TX by David Shawn is a terrifying, stylish thriller.
Balancing humor, wit and terror is an ability that few authors ever master, but David Shawn releases a macabre tour de force in Wyrd, TX, a city that time seems to have forgotten, but demons have not. Shawn marvelously sets the tone for readers within the first few chapters – a supernatural first scene to cleanse the palette for fantasy, followed by patient, thorough introductions of the major characters populating this bizarre world.
Chief Butler is the perfect antihero for this type of setting; a good man with […]
Jacob’s Odyssey By Russ Melrose
Jacob’s Odyssey By Russ Melrose is an engrossing zombie novel in which a virus has decimated the country, and Jake, a fifth grade teacher, must travel across the Salt Lake Valley in Utah to survive – all the while haunted by more than world events. Jake has a troubled past, and he’s on a quest for redemption. When a woman and child are in need of help, Jake has found a way to redeem himself, just when the zombie apocalypse becomes even more dangerous.
While the set-up of Jacob’s Odyssey is not exactly new, the depth of Jake’s voice is. […]
Review: Ghosts of Mateguas: A Mateguas Island Novel by Linda Watkins
★★★★ 
Karen Andersen could be envied. She has a loving husband, wonderful children with a new arrival to light up her life, and a home near the coast to ease her mind on days when the gray sets in. Yet there’s a secret pain that Karen carries with her, carried from another coast of a place she can never forget: Mateguas.
After the terrifying ordeals of her time there, Karen knows she has to return; it’s the only way to put down her torments for good. Will Karen do what must be done? Is her son doomed to be cursed […]