Books

Being a small site has its disadvantages. Among many, one of them is that you can sometimes get taken advantage of by bigger sites with more power. Did this recently happen to us? Yeah, it kinda did, maybe not intentionally but nevertheless it did. But I chose not to get …

Christmas is actually just as appropriate a time for the supernatural and the macabre as Halloween is, and there’s a deep tradition going way back of telling supernatural tales during the holidays. Thus, in the haunted holiday spirit we offer our list of ten books to read when the weather outside is frightful but the fire is so delightful.

While not without its flaws, 'The Churchill Factor' is an engaging and singular addition to a fascinating subject.

With the paucity of new releases this month, we thought we'd toss out a list of some of our favorite book series that may have flown under your radar over the years. Because what bibliophile doesn't love a nice, meaty saga you can really sink your chops into, especially with the days growing short and the weather getting colder?

BOOM! Studios has released a categorized holiday gift guide for comic book fans. And while it naturally sticks to their own published works, it's actually a pretty solid list.

To the degree that almost all of King's works, to some extent or other, are about redemption and transcending evil, adversity and death, they are all spiritual. But the following books are the ones where we think the spirituality and mysticism come through in the most effective and entertaining ways.

'Revival' is as engaging a late-night tale as all of Stephen King's stories are but also continues to build upon his trend towards higher levels of complexity within the understory. It is a powerful, phantasmagorical meditation on the loss of faith and understanding.

In 'Prince Lestat,' Anne Rice has gifted us with another wonderful installation of the Vampire Chronicles, rendered in her characteristically beautiful prose.

Eliza Granville’s 'Gretel and the Dark' combines magical realism and historical fiction to offer a unique perspective on the Holocaust. Granville weaves fairy tale motifs in with two narratives from different time periods, and the actions in one storyline invariable echo in the other. On the whole, the novel is a brilliant debut by a talented writer. 'Gretel and the Dark' is a frightening but ultimately uplifting modern fairy tale.

'A Brief History of Seven Killings' is serious literature that reads like a fast-paced mystery novel. James expertly threads together a couple dozen narrative threads to form an engaging and thought-provoking epic. This is a great book.

This book is truly fascinating and a must read for all who enjoy studying the intersection where science, history, and sociology cross. Johnson is a highly accomplished tangential thinker and is very adept at delineating the indirect, non-linear cause and effect.

This is a tightly wound tale of a cataclysmically imploding infidelity with a distinctly gothic noire flavor. Waters is very good at her craft, but the main caution about this book is that it is not one for the optimist.

With an engaging style and the sense of an adept storyteller, Kruger takes us through the ins and outs of pathological self-love and all the varieties of the disease.

This novel is yet another delightful addition to Titan Books' excellent Sherlock series.

I cannot say that this was an easy book to wade through, nor was it particularly well-written. But it is a thoroughly educational, unadulterated view of the process of a successful writer.