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What The Dead Know: Learning About Life as a New York City Death Investigator

Working in the Valley of the Shadow Author: Barbara Butcher Barbara Butcher (yes, real last name) is very intimate with all the forms a violent death can take, from a boobytrapped suicide to city-stopping mass murders. It is both a passion and, one could say, a deadly addiction that is taking a toll on her life. Barbara forced her way into the old boy’s club the hard way: with grit and intelligence. She was only ever the second woman hired for the role of Death Investigator in Manhatton. She was the first to last more than three months. During that time [...]

Frances Carden2026-09-06T19:57:57-07:00September 6th, 2026|Tags: Barbara Butcher, book review, death investigator, memoir, read, reading|

Black Flame

How bad do you want it? Author: Gretchen Felker-Martin Ellen Kramer works for a disgraced film restoration company, and her new project is The Baroness, a film only recently discovered to have survived its supposed destruction by the Nazis. The film makes Ellen deeply uncomfortable – from its history (the Jewish man who produced it and the cast all ended up in concentration camps – dead), its occult rituals (including human sacrifice), and its intensely graphical homosexual content. But Ellen is not like that anymore – she never was, it was a phase, she’s cured – and the film is just [...]

Frances Carden2026-09-06T17:14:31-07:00September 6th, 2026|Tags: book review, cursed film, horror, novella, read, reading|

Hunted

“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” Author: Darcy Coates Darcy Coates can write. She can also scare you to the brink of paranoia and beyond. Hunted is one of her best, eeriest, and most probable reads to date. It’s certainly not the book you should take with you on a remote camping trip! It all begins when Eileen Hershberger goes missing, hiking through Ashlough Forest. Eileen’s friends and family beg the police to investigate, but after a routine search, they say there is nothing more they can do. After all, Ashlough [...]

Frances Carden2026-08-29T15:47:04-07:00August 29th, 2026|Tags: book review, Darcy Coates, horror, read, reading|