Category Archives: Books

Jennifer Armintrout’s Blood Ties, Book One: The Turning

With its cumbersome title and dependence on vampire clichés, this paranormal romance offers very little in the way of original, engaging story. From a turgid and silly beginning, it improves toward the end, but once the last page is turned, … Continue reading

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Caroline Graham’s The Killings at Badger’s Drift

A first edition of this novel, which inspired The Midsomer Murders series in Britain, will set you back some six hundred dollars! Fortunately Felony & Mayhem has published a new edition that costs considerably less. Now this an English mystery … Continue reading

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Jennifer St. Clair’s Nine Lives and Three Wishes

Misty is deeply devoted to his family, even though he’s not related to them by blood. He loves Carla, and it troubles him that she worries about the bills all the time. He loves Maddie, Carla’s small daughter, even though … Continue reading

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Madeleine Pelner Cosman’s Fabulous Feasts: Medieval Cookery and Ceremony

Michelle Erica Green wrote this review. Partly a history of medieval cooking, partly an illustrated guide to the harvesting and processing of food and partly a recipe book, Fabulous Feasts offers – well, to borrow an anachronism, a smorgasbord of … Continue reading

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Jules Watson’s The Swan Maiden

The Irish legend of Deirdre would seem to be ideal material for grand opera, full of romance, passion, high honor and deadly betrayal. Burdened at birth with a druid’s prediction that she will be extraordinarily beautiful but bring bloody doom … Continue reading

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Susan J. Napier’s Anime: From Akira To Howl’s Moving Castle

Napier, a professor of Japanese literature and culture, originally wrote this intriguing analysis of anime in 2001. Following the worldwide critical and commercial success of Miyazaki Hayao’s Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle movies, she decided to revisit and revise … Continue reading

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Deborah Grabien’s Still Life with Devils

Christopher White penned this review. Deborah Grabien is a writer with a style that is easy and pleasant to read; in short, she is a talented storyteller. Still Life with Devils is a potentially interesting genre mash-up, mystery meets supernatural. … Continue reading

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Ted Naifeh’s Courtney Crumrin Volume 1, The Night Things, and Volume 2, The Coven of Mystics

Rebecca Scott wrote this review. Let’s see: Plucky preteen girl? Check. Parents who don’t pay attention to her? Check. Spooky old house for them to move into? Check. Creepy, mean, elderly relative who lives there? Check Bullies at the new … Continue reading

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Robert Crumb & David Zane Mairowitz’s Kafka

First time I heard of Franz Kafka was when I read the liner notes to the Mothers of Invention album We’re Only In It For the Money. The one with the Sgt. Pepper parody cover! One track was entitled “The … Continue reading

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Joe Sacco’s Palestine: the Special Edition

This lovely edition of Joe Sacco’s classic graphic novel Palestine is being promoted as “celebrating fifteen years of … Joe Sacco’s groundbreaking work of comics journalism.” So, it’s not a graphic novel? It’s “comics journalism.” OK, I’ll buy that. Whatever … Continue reading

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