reviews

Too Many Jakes Author: Bryan Reardon We are culturally fascinated by children who do evil things.  Or maybe is isn’t fascination, it’s fear.  We want to examine them to reassure ourselves that something was wrong.  Something that could never go wrong in our houses.  If only we dig deep enough, there must be an explanation, something we can avoid.  Fiction has opportunities that fact does not – authors can make pat conclusions.  They can have explanations.  But it seems as if even they have trouble coming up with anything that would be reassuring.  Thus works of fiction about violent children [...]

Eight Twilight-Zone Like Short Stories with a Literary Twist Author: Karen Russell Blending the odd, the outlandish, and the absurd with a literary quality and a tongue-and-cheek bow to the bizzaro sub-genre, the write up on Vampires in the Lemon Grove was more than enough to make me giddy with excitement. Always seeking some new thing, I’m a sucker for horror concepts transformed and I’m even more compelled by an author’s bravery to go beyond the prejudices of genre and topic to create aura and perception pieces. Sorted into eight long short stories (some of them novella length), this collection served as [...]

Kitty Stardom Turns Deadly Author: Laura Levine In a Rush to Flush, Jaine Austen is once again in need of money, but fortunately her star client, Toiletmasters, is debuting a new self-flushing model which needs some glitzy ad writing. Not only has Jaine hit porcelain and pay dirt, but she might have finally struck gold when her boss’s nephew, a golden haired, burly dude with baby blue eyes takes a fancy to her. It’s time to put away the Cocoa Pops t-shirt and dust off those old dating shoes for sure. But – is there really truth behind that old [...]