In a certain part of Denver, there is a courtyard that holds four houses. Two of them are empty now, but when they were first built, they belonged to a quartet of sisters who had done plenty of traveling over their surprisingly long lifetimes: The sisters had come most recently from wooded, green, and rainy […]
Read more "A Family Saga with Bones in the Cellar: Melanie Tem’s Wilding"In the early 1990s, Jeanne Cavelos spearheaded a new enterprise over at Dell. It was a horror themed line that tried to move away from the expectations associated with the term horror fiction and zero in on newer, darker visions. “It’s not about haunted houses or evil children or ancient Indian burial grounds,” the statement […]
Read more "It’s Weird to Think of the World Not Being Solid, Isn’t It? Melanie Tem’s Prodigal"To climb a mountain that leads to paradise, Dante Alighieri (Salvaore Papa) must first descend into the Inferno at its foot. When his way is blocked by three hideous beasts, the beatific Beatrice request pious poet Virgil (Arturo Pirovano) guide the still living mortal on his journey, and Virgil agrees, descending from Paradise just when […]
Read more "Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here: Dante’s Inferno (1911)"Joshua and Maise Evans are a kindly couple with an extra room in their flat. They enjoy taking care of elderly folks who might not be able to take care of themselves. When their latest charge passes away, they go on vacation to Italy with their windfall—a little bit of coin taken in exchange for […]
Read more "It Comes To Us All, Sooner or Later: Celia Dale’s A Helping Hand"Linda Addison is one of the best kept secrets in speculative poetry, bar none. She has a terrific sense for language, a playfulness that veers into the darkest pockets of human experience and back out again into the realm of surreal whimsy. Who can fashion a punchline that also serves as a revisionist fairy tale […]
Read more "Just Me and the Forever Dead: Linda Addison’s How to Recognize a Demon Has Become Your Friend"On Thanksgiving night in 1983, in the midst of a hurricane, the estranged son Marty (Josh Hamilton) is coming home. No one is happier about this than his fraternal twin sister, Jackie-O (Parker Posey), until she learns that he is bringing a friend. Younger brother Anthony (Freddie Prinze Jr.) was the one to speak with […]
Read more "A Person Gets Her Heart Set on a Certain Thing: The House of Yes (1997)"Christi Nogle’s name is not a familiar one for me, and this is the first concentrated dose of the author’s short fiction I’ve had. The writing is lyrical, poetic. The characters are drawn well. The circumstances they find themselves involved in run a gamut from the chilling to the warmly inviting. Her characters live in […]
Read more "A Vague Sense of Unease: Christi Nogle’s One Eye Opened in That Other Place"To wrap up Black History Month, why not pick up a heavy hitter of a novel from one of the grandmasters of speculative fiction? Yes, Kindred has a weighty premise and an unflinching gaze at the horrible realities of the African American experience in the antebellum South, but it also has a lot of emotional […]
Read more "Seeing With Eyes Unclouded: Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred"Taking a big step back from the 1960s for the sixth Ezekial “Easy” Rawlins book, Walter Mosley delves into the past when nineteen-year-olds Ezekial “Easy” Rawlins and Raymond “Mouse” Alexander are living in Houston Texas. As it turns out, Mouse is interested in putting down roots and marrying his sweetheart EttaMae, but he doesn’t have […]
Read more "Road Trip to Pariah: Walter Mosley’s Gone Fishin’"
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