A Most Contagious Game, by Catherine Aird

Catherine Aird writes traditional British cozy mysteries featuring Detective Inspector Sloan and D.C. Crosby. This title is Aird’s one standalone mystery. When a heart attack forces Thomas Harding to retire from his high-pressure job and hectic life in the city, he and his wife buy a restored manor house in the remote English countryside. Thomas [...]

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Ice Cold, by Tess Gerritsen

I’ve recently discovered Gerritsen’s Boston-based Isles and Rizzoli series, which introduced these two main characters in The Surgeon. Dr. Maura Isles, Medical Examiner, and Boston Homicide Detective Jane Rizzoli are complex and compelling characters. The cool, contained Isles, with her nickname “The Queen of the Dead,” is utterly absorbed in her work to the detriment [...]

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A Load of Old Bones, by Suzette Hill

This is the first in a series of cozy English village mysteries featuring the vicar of Molehill in the 1950′s Surrey countryside. This series has a couple of twists which make it stand out from the familiar Murder at the Vicarage fare. Aside from the character of Reverend Francis Oughterard, the two other main characters [...]

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Fever Dream, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

I’ve read all of this duo’s collaborations featuring Special Agent A.X.L. Pendergast and have enjoyed them all. Their last was Cemetery Dance, which featured voodoo, cults, and zombies. The audio version was a blast, with Scott Brick narrating and providing hilarious zombie sound effects. Preston and Child obviously revel in depicting scenes of horror and [...]

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Arcadia Falls, by Carol Goodman

Carol Goodman specializes in gothic psychological suspense surrounding long-hidden secrets and tormented relationships. The events of her stories usually take place in closed communities, often colleges and boarding schools, where contained emotions eventually boil over and culminate in some catastrophic event. Sense of place is strong in Goodman’s novels; her settings come to life and [...]

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Ooka the Wise: Tales of Old Japan, by I.G. Edmonds

Without meaning to, I seem to have found a great deal of my recent reading taking place in a single setting, much like several of my recent posts.  This time around I wound up in Japan, reading about very different times and across a spectrum of behaviors.  To finish this week before Christmas on a [...]

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Hell Screen, by Ryunosuke Akutagawa

I’m departing from the usual format of this blog, in that I’m going to talk about a single short story which isn’t even in the Williamsburg Regional Library’s collection.  Apologies in advance – anyone who wants to read “Hell Screen” is going to have to go to Shoreline Community College’s scanned file and read it [...]

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Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand

Laura Hillenbrand’s new book Unbroken is a catalog of human achievement and suffering.  It is hard, almost impossible, to imagine one person undergoing so many trials and emerging from them with even the remotest possibility of recovery.  Yet Hillenbrand’s central character, Louis Zamperini, rises phoenix-like from the worst that one man can do to another [...]

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The Welsh Girl, by Peter Ho Davies

Short story writer Peter Ho Davies’ debut novel got me thinking about the meaning of surrender, and the many different forms that it might take.  In one fashion or another, each of the characters in The Welsh Girl surrenders during the course of the novel, but the nature of those capitulations varies greatly from one [...]

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The Other Shulman, by Alan Zweibel

Id. Ego. Superego.  Freud divided the human psyche into three parts, and the concept resonates through 20th century culture.  When one man’s id comes to life (or does it?), and his superego can’t deal with it, what will happen? Alan Zweibel, a writer with great comic chops, takes that idea and sets it against the [...]

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A Sickness in the Family, by Denise Mina

Who’s killing off the members of the Usher family? Or a better question: who wouldn’t kill off the members of the Usher family, given half a chance? They’re a noxious bunch. Martha is not too horrible, but only because age has mellowed her unpleasant qualities. Her daughter Biddy ignores the family, preferring instead to indulge [...]

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Dracula, by Bram Stoker

Bram Stoker was not the first person to write about vampires.  Irishman Sheridan Le Fanu, for instance, had already plopped a vampire—not just a vampire but a lesbian vampire—into popular fiction when nobody was looking. His fellow countryman Stoker was late to the game when he published Dracula in 1897. But something about Count Dracula [...]

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Full Dark, No Stars, by Stephen King

Since age ten or so I’ve been an unapologetic fan of Stephen King (though I’m in good company; thanks, Margaret Atwood). My loyalty to him makes me an ineffective critic, but even his detractors mostly agree that he succeeds best when writing medium-length stories. Full Dark, No Stars, his latest book, collects four novellas that [...]

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Daphne du Maurier’s Classics of the Macabre

Even if you’ve never read Daphne du Maurier, you are surely familiar with one of her stories, “The Birds.” Alfred Hitchcock’s film departs somewhat from the original, but the basic story is the same. In rural England, just as an unseasonably cold spell brings in December, the birds start acting strangely—not just some birds, but [...]

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The Woman in Black, by Susan Hill

The English accord the holidays with a sensible emotional treatment: fear and dread. There is a place for joy, cheer, goodwill, etc., but the English storytelling tradition acknowledges that horror is an appropriate state of mind for this time of year. To that end we’ll feature a week of creepy stories to celebrate the Ho-Ho-Horror [...]

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Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares, by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

It’s Christmastime in New York City, and both Dash and Lily are spending the holiday without their families. Being a bit of a Scrooge, Dash is on his own by choice, as he tricked each of his divorced parents into believing he is spending Christmas with the other parent. Lily, however, loves everything about Christmas. [...]

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Thirteen Days to Midnight, by Patrick Carman

Jacob Fielding cannot be killed. As the story begins, Jacob has just survived what should have been a fatal car accident. His foster father is killed, and just before impact his final words to Jacob are, “You are indestructible.” With those words, Jacob seems to be given a gift, and he cannot be harmed in [...]

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Forget You, by Jennifer Echols

Just about everything that could go wrong in Zoey’s life has gone wrong. Last summer her father had an affair with a 24-year-old coworker and left her mother. Then, the week before school starts, her devastated mother attempts suicide and is put into a psychiatric hospital. Zoey gets into a car accident that affects her [...]

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