Category Archives: Books

Andrea Hairston’s Will Do Magic For Small Change

Andrea Hairston’s Will Do Magic For Small Change a stack of ideas including a mixture of metatextual novel and historical fantasy. There are also elements of family drama, amd even coming of age present. It is also a sequel to … Continue reading

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Elizabeth Penney’s A Treacherous Tale

Elizabeth Penney’s A Trecherous Tale is the second in her Cambridge Bookshop series. While a little time is spent catching up the reader with the lead, Molly Kimball, and her life the majority is spent upon the mystery itself.  Molly … Continue reading

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Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man, The October Country and Other Stories

Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man, The October Country and Other Stories is a glorious collection of short stories by one of the masters of the form released by the Library of America. The Illustrated Man gives one of the best … Continue reading

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The One Ring role playing game, Second Edition

The One Ring Role-playing in the world of The Lord of the Rings is an impressive and well built volume, featuring a nice mix of rules, lore, and art. Given the venerable nature of the world it is attached to, … Continue reading

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Anita Amirrezvani’s The Blood of Flowers

Toward the end of The Blood of Flowers, the unnamed narrator and main character says, “All our labors were in service of beauty, but sometimes it seemed as if every thread in a carpet had been dipped in the blood … Continue reading

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Tasha Alexander’s Secrets of the Nile

Tasha Alexander’s Secrets of the Nile is in many ways a throwback to classic Agatha Christie style novels. While the title makes clear a homage to one of the more well-known Hercule Poirot stories, it is more the general milieu … Continue reading

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Loren D. Estleman’s Paperback Jack

Loren D. Estleman’s Paperback Jack is an interesting turn on a lot of material that the author is more than familiar with. In the past Loren D. Estleman has written historical novels, mysteries, westerns, and others. He is best known … Continue reading

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Everina Maxwell’s Ocean’s Echo

Everina Maxwell’s Ocean’s Echo returns to the setting previously created for her Winter’s Orbit SF novel. While this book refers to the earlier one’s setting, overall it does not require an understanding of the previous piece. Tennel is the nephew … Continue reading

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Lavie Tidhar’s Neom

Lavie Tidhar’s Neom returns to the setting of his previous Central Station. In this case the title once again is taken from the key location in the story, an old city with a new mixture of people and tech that … Continue reading

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Al Sarrantonio’s Halloween and Other Seasons, Matt Warner’s Horror Isn’t a Four-Letter Word, and H. P. Lovecraft and S. T. Joshi’s The Annotated Supernatural Horror In Literature

Halloween and Other Seasons collects eighteen stories previously published in such venues as Cemetery Dance Magazine, Asimov’s, and (one of my favorite horror anthologies from last year) Midnight Premiere. While Sarrantonio’s stories range in style from science fiction Westerns to … Continue reading

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