read Archives

Hell’s Half Acre: The Untold Story of the Benders, America’s First Serial Killer Family

The Benders: Fact or Fiction? Author: Susan Jonusas It’s 1873, Labette County, Kansas and the West is still very much wild. It’s no surprise then that a family of serial killers could remain, preying off lonely travelers, for years. It’s also no surprise that this family, knowing that they were finally discovered, were able to easily disappear, leaving police, investigators, and heartbroken relatives of the murdered to chase answers and justice for two decades with few results and no real answers. Even still, the story of the infamous Benders is more legend than fact, speculation piled on top of a [...]

Frances Carden2026-09-13T17:17:30-07:00September 13th, 2026|Tags: book review, history, read, reading, serial killer, true crime|

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|