LITERAL REMAINS

Sarah Langan is not a horror author for every horror fan.  She is in an advanced class all her own.  She is an acquired taste, and what a taste she is:  delicate, deep, and wrenching.  Langan’s latest novel, Audrey’s Door, is by far her best.  And that’s saying a lot considering her previous efforts, The [...]

Jake Hatcher is locked up in a military prison as the fall guy for a dirty job that had to be done.  No one else could do it, so it fell to him.  He was a Special Forces brand interrogation expert.  That one particular interrogation got wild, he ended up in the clink.  Lucky for [...]

I’m going to try to phrase this properly.  Give me a second.  Okay, I admire and appreciate Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon novels more than I actually like them.  That makes sense, doesn’t it?  I admire the author for the research that goes into these things, because it is fascinating.  Something gets lost between thought and [...]

A mule skinner wandered into the mining town of Abandon on Christmas Day, 1893.  There wasn’t a soul to be found.  Every man, woman, and child had disappeared, even the gold secured in the town went missing.  The mystery of what happened remains to the present day.
June and Emmett are paranormal investigators.  They hire Lawrence, [...]

Emerald O’Brien is a single mother of two, has a good relationship going with a younger guy, and owns her own business, the Chintz ‘n China Tea Room, in Chiqetaw, Washington.  Emerald also happens to be considered the town witch.  She sees ghosts, communes with her dead grandmother, and has a penchant for finding trouble, [...]

Stir together Dr. Frankenstein, his most famous monster, a serial killer, a sideshow freak, two homicide detectives, and the mad doctor’s new race of creatures that he hopes will replace us regular humans and what do you get?  Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein Book One:  Prodigal Son.  Whew.  That’s a helluva title right there, Sonny Jim.  Too bad [...]

Fount Royal, a small, newly formed, town in the Carolinas of 1699 has a few problems:  two murders, disastrous crops, fleeing citizens, and random arson.  Luckily, especially for Robert Bidwell, the founder, who hopes to make it a port city, the cause of all the problems is in the jail awaiting trial.  The problem is Rachel [...]

Like a lot of people, I guess, I’ve seen the trailer for the upcoming Martin Scorsese film Shutter Island, an adaptation of the 2003 Dennis Lehane novel, and I thought it looked interesting.  So, as is the case most of the time, I wanted to read the book before I ventured to see the film.
In the Fall [...]

I don’t remember where I read it or heard it, but I can distinctly remember Wes Craven being described as a good director who has made some bad movies.  That can be said for a lot of artists, no matter the medium (David Bowie had Tonight, Stephen King had Insomnia, and David Lee Roth had a [...]

Contestants on a reality survival show are stranded on an isolated tropical island with bloodthirsty, hungry, monsters.  They aren’t playing for money anymore, they’re playing for their lives.
The last couple of Brian Keene novels I read, Dead Sea and Dark Hollow, left me with a bad taste in my mouth.  It seemed as if Mr. [...]

Wow, it’s July 29th already!  It’s almost friggin’ August!  Christmas will be here before we know it.  Do you ever get cravings for eggnog?  That boiled custard stuff is the bee’s knees.
I intended to do a middle of the year wrap up last month, since June is technically the half way point, but if you’ve [...]

I like a good ghost story.  Old dark houses, apparitions, spectral bangs and chains clanging on stormy nights.  William Peter Blatty, author of The Exorcist and Legion, has delivered a ghostly, twisty, tidy little tale in the form of his new short novel Elsewhere.
Joan Freeboard, realtor extraordinaire, has been called upon to do what many [...]

In 1966, sixteen year old Harriet Vanger goes missing from Hedeby Island, just a bridge over from the town of Hedestad.  Harriet is a member of the prominent Swedish industrialist Vanger family.  The day she disappeared, the Vangers were meeting for a family business council; she wanted to tell her Uncle Henrik, whom she lived [...]

In 1880 a riverboat captain is delivering a shipment to the Jewish town of Lowensport.  His Jewish Czech crew of two discover they are carrying barrels of clay from their native Czechoslovakia.  They kill the captain, an earthquake hits, the river is rerouted, and the boat is swallowed by the mud and lost.
Before that happens [...]

A Boeing 777 lands at JFK International Airport and shuts down.  It goes deathly quiet and dark.  The shades are drawn on all the windows and the crew does not respond to air traffic control.  Police arrive and they eventually board the plane to discover the passengers dead.  A special branch of the CDC, the Canary [...]