reviews

Golems, Angles, and Demons: A Story for Reading Aloud Author: E.J. Wenstron Being an avid reader, addicted to fantasy realms early in life, I rarely return to re-read a novel. There are so many new and ongoing stories that beckon, so many more realms to explore, that re-exploring even a much loved story is usually not in the cards. When Mud, a modern day Orpheus story with a gut-punch fantasy spiral and a heartrending protagonist came out in Audio Book form, though, I knew that I needed to revisit one of my favorite worlds. Considering that the story is spiraling [...]

Bitter Sweets Author: JoAnna Carl  When the town crank croaks the only clues left behind are a postal encounter, a frog-green canoe, a chocolate from the fancy store in town, and one conversation the local chocolatier (Lee McKinny) had with the supposed victim. What ignites a town quicker than a wild fire and is more deadly than a tainted piece of chocolate – gossip. Lee’s almost-serious boyfriend, Joe, is the leading suspect on everyone’s radar. Wasn’t he confronted by the victim, the day before, and accused publicly of some dirty dealing; and doesn’t the victim’s telltale lime green canoe lay [...]

Cruelty cubed... Author:  Matt Simon When Tennyson wrote of “Nature, red in tooth and claw”, he was poetically protesting the seemingly meaningless cruelty of the natural world.  Despite his lamenting, he still managed to maintain his faith in God’s world of order.  I think it’s fair to speculate that if he’d known anything about parasitoid wasps and their ilk, he’d have lost it entirely.  Fortunately, science writer Matt Simon is willing to boldly go where few writers have gone, doubling down on cruelty and revealing a real-life menagerie of nightmares in Plight of the Living Dead. A jewel wasp [...]