reviews

A Kind Magic, A Killing Magic Author: Eowyn Ivey  In the desolation of 1920s homesteading Alaska, Jack and Mabel arrive. Shattered from a long ago, but never forgotten miscarriage, each living silently in a childless, joyless world, they have come for an escape but instead find their depression waiting for them. The ruthless cold, the eddying snow, the frozen rivers and cracked lake beds are all part of the harsh, never-ending wilderness cycle, and it seems like they are really here to die, instead of to live. Caring neighbors seek to restore them, to show them the beauty they cannot [...]

1950s Creature Feature with 1980s Gore Author: Gregory A. Douglas Something is festering in the peaceful New England town of Yarkie. Foul winds are blowing; mutated roaches, horrific in their alien menace, now stalk the woods, having been spawned and transformed by a mixture of time and chemicals in the town’s fetid dump. One by one, these creatures find the hapless residents, both the criminals and the innocent, devouring them until at last the carnage can no longer go unnoticed. By then, it might be too late. The woods are alive with the restlessness of millions of moving, thinking, organized [...]

Voices of the Voiceless Author: Pat Barker The famous tale of Achilles, the god-like warrior who destroys Troy and returns the recalcitrant Helen, is a story imbedded in our history and culture. Many may not have personally read Homer’s poetic epics, The Iliad and The Oddessy, but that hardly matters. We know about them. The giant wooden horse secretly seeded with soldiers. The ten-year war that ripped apart both kingdoms and families, finally leading one of its principle players, Odysseus himself, to a fateful journey across the seas, encountering a cannibal cyclops, sea monsters, witches, and gods. For its high action and imaginative [...]