Next SFF Author: A.M. Stanley

Previous SFF Author: Michael A. Stackpole

Series: Stand-Alone

These are stand alone novels (not part of a series).

The Lost Bookshop: Magic moves into women’s fiction, with enjoyable results

The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods

In the aftermath of the pandemic, fantasy caught the midtown bus and moved into the suburbs of women’s fiction. There, it’s set up shop and seems to be doing quite well, if paperbacks like The Lost Bookshop, by Evie Woods, are any indication. This pleasant story, following three characters and an elusive, magical bookshop, is enjoyable even if it didn’t fully satisfy this fantasy reader.

Set in modern day Dublin, the story follows Martha, a woman fleeing an abusive relationship,

Bury Him Darkly: Malice from the chalice

Bury Him Darkly by John Blackburn

Although it’s been almost 18 years since I last read English author John Blackburn’s first novel, A Scent of New-Mown Hay (1958), I still vividly recall several segments of the book, mainly due to the forcefulness of the writing therein. And really, with its plot conflating a female ex-Nazi scientist, deserted Russian villages, and a fungoid mutation that is slowly spreading across Europe, the book is inherently hard to forget.

Pippin’s Journal: A real pip!

Pippin’s Journal by Rohan O’Grady

“A spellbinding Gothic page-tuner,” the folks at Valancourt Books tell us on the back cover of their new edition of Rohan O’Grady’s novel entitled Pippin’s Journal, and happily, this blurb tells it just the way it is. The book was one that I had never even heard of up until a few months ago, and yet it has suddenly and surprisingly become one of my favorite reads of this year. Simply stated, I just loved this one!

Cahokia Jazz: Syncretism, symbolism and realpolitik

Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford

Cahokia Jazz is a detective novel, set in 1922 in the city and state of Cahokia, USA. Police detective Joe Barrow and his partner Phineas Drummond are called up onto the roof of the Cahokia Land Building in the middle of the night, where they find the mutilated corpse of a takata—a European-American–posed like an Aztec sacrifice, its heart removed. In most cities, this would simply be bizarre, but in Cahokia, this makes the murder a flashpoint for unrest in a city and state governed largely by the takouma,

Your Shadow Half Remains: To look is the one forbidden thing

Your Shadow Half Remains by Sunny Moraine

2024’s Your Shadow Half Remains provides a seductive and disturbing journey of psychological horror, as we visit the mind of an isolated young woman in a post-apocalyptic world, where one look into another human’s eyes can kill both of you.

Your Shadow Half Remains is plainly inspired by Josh Malerman’s Bird Box, only in Moriane’s work, the thing you must not look at is a human face.

The Scarlet Boy: Don’t spare me the details!

The Scarlet Boy by Arthur Calder-Marshall

In the mood for an offbeat haunted-house novel to keep you company during this fall season … or during any season; a beautifully written tale of supernatural horror that you have most likely never heard of before? Well, then, I have a doozy of a suggestion for you … namely The Scarlet Boy, by the British author Arthur Calder-Marshall! The book has been unfortunately neglected for over six decades now, and a quick look at its sporadic publishing history will help explain why it might be an unknown quantity for you and the general reading public today,

Doctors Wear Scarlet: Hated the movie, loved the book

Doctors Wear Scarlet by Simon Raven

The British film Bloodsuckers, from 1970, was easily one of the worst cinematic experiences I’ve sat through in recent memory; a confused and confusing mess of a movie, made even more disappointing for me by dint of the fact that the two lead actors whose participation induced me to watch the film in the first place – namely, Peter Cushing and Patrick Macnee – don’t even appear on screen together once! And yet, I thought, the central premise of the film,

Ghost Drum: A dark and haunting Slavic fairy tale

Ghost Drum by Susan Price

Susan Price is a gifted author, though like Anne Pilling, I suspect her work is just a tad too dark and uncanny to draw in a devoted child fanbase. Truly, she pulls no punches with what she writes for her young audience – here for example, the protagonist is killed when she’s deliberately impaled with a large stake. Though she finds a way to reanimate her body, it’s not before hungry wolves chew off one of her arms. You know,

Facial Justice: Jael Bait

Facial Justice by L.P. Hartley

It was Anthony Burgess, writing in his 1984 overview volume 99 Novels: The Best in English Since 1939, who first made me aware of L.P. Hartley’s truly remarkable creation Facial Justice. In his essay in that volume, Burgess tells us that Hartley’s novel is “a brilliant projection of tendencies already apparent in the post-war British welfare state.” It is one of the very few sci-fi novels that the Clockwork Orange author chose to spotlight in his book,

The Feast of Bacchus: It’s Greek to me

The Feast of Bacchus by Ernest G. Henham

Tenebrae (1898), by the London-born writer Ernest G. Henham, had turned out to be one of my favorite reading experiences of 2023, and I had been wanting to read another book from this same author ever since. A Gothically inflected tale dealing with fratricide, madness, and a 20-foot-long spider monstrosity, Tenebrae was a deliciously morbid treat; one that had been rescued from over a century’s worth of oblivion by the fine folks at Valancourt Books.

Next SFF Author: A.M. Stanley

Previous SFF Author: Michael A. Stackpole

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