I’m always admirative of authors that can bring entire worlds, depict insanely convincing characters and trigger numerous emotions with only a few words, a few strokes of the pen. Barbara Byar is one of those authors. In Some Days Are Better Than Ours, she takes us through the tragic lives of numerous characters – families
Steve Stred with his novel The Stranger offers us a detailed meditation in horror. Stred has been able to siphon off the tropes of various horror sources such as films, books and real life horrors – of what makes monsters of men; and blended them to perfection with his offering of The Stranger. The Stranger
Do you believe in ghosts? Leah didn’t, she was recovering from a catastrophic event in her life, so moved herself away to a new area and a rundown empty house, to escape her grief, but as these things tend to do, it followed her to the house she was supposed to have had with her
Lewis Carroll’s extraordinary vivid dream world of Alice In Wonderland is as old as the day is long – it’s a story that has been told over and over again, and honestly it never loses its appeal. As a child I don’t remember when I first discovered it, it seemed to have always been there,
‘All stories are ghost stories, about things lost, people, memories, home, passion, youth, about things struggling to be seen, to be accepted by the living.’ I’m not going to apologise for being a little quote heavy in this review of Sarah Jane by James Sallis, such is the beauty of the prose on every page.
Skein Island is a fricking masterpiece. Right now I’ve got that out of the way we can continue; so, Skein Island is the next novel from Aliya Whiteley, and it’s an old novel, which has been repurposed and republished by Titan Books and I for one am so very thankful that this has happened – I had
Despite having more access to information than ever before, there are some topics which the West cannot seem to grasp. One of these is the history of, and current situation in Palestine, a misunderstood and often-overlooked nation. We frequently hear shocking developments and benign platitudes from the mouths of politicians and newsreaders, yet become bored,
First published in 1994, John Berendt’s account of the 1981 killing of 21-year-old Danny Hansford in the city of Savannah, Georgia by local antiques dealer Jim Williams, ‘Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil’ received massive success on its debut, remaining a New York Times best-seller for over two hundred weeks. What made William’s
Wow, what a ride! That is the first thing I think of after reading Million Eyes: Extra Time by C.R.Berry. This compilation of short stories is set in the universe of Time Travel where conspiracies are explained through the lens of time travelers changing time to suit their purpose. It is part of a trilogy whose
Another book about a Wizarding school? The beginning of this novel definitely has similarities to the other very famous Wizardry School and weirdly the author’s other fictional character: about a private investigator down on his luck, but I thought the twist in the tail, that of a ‘non wizard‘ being summoned to investigate a ‘magic
