Still recovering from a brutal breakup, Stan Dobrev crashes a “divorce party” in the Southern California desert. An unknown extra in a stranger’s drama, he’s on his way back to the bar when a fellow interloper catches his wandering eye. She’s a formidable tortoise named Greeley, trudging through the drunken revelry and chaos like a true survivor. Before the night is over, she’ll lead Stan on a strange journey beyond oblivion.

The prose in ‘Stag’ glittered in the desert sun. The ideas were subtle but powerful. The main character, already lost in grief and guilt, is invited by his Vegas one-night-stand to a Divorce Party in a black tent in the desert, which amplifies his feeling of dislocation and unreality.

Nathaniel is a well-intentioned, if naive, British cleric feeling blessed to educate a West African village about the benevolent power of God. But as slavers encroach, Nathaniel’s endeavor is daunted by the realities unfolding on the beautiful homeland of his congregation. It seems the Devil has power too. What follows for Nathaniel is a profound spiritual upheaval as he questions his purpose and even his humanity.

I liked the underlying idea of the story – that a man of God, intent on bringing the blessing of Christianity to the people of the village he is living in, gradually comes to identify more closely with the villagers than with the slavers who share his ethnicity but not his ethics. The language was sometimes a little laboured, but the epistolary format worked well. The final transformation was challenging but full of meaning. 

Tiger, tiger, burning bright, in the forests of the night. In the town of Never-Again, Pennsylvania, this hand-game song contains a history—centuries of inexplicable tiger sightings. A researcher arrives to write yet another academic paper about the well-studied town, called “Big Cats in the Children’s Hand-Games of Never-Again, Pennsylvania.” Nobody expects to find new clues—but, years after a scene of unimaginable violence, the truth about this childish chant is about to come out.

I almost gave up on this one but I’m glad I didn’t. The story is told in the form of scientific paper. Unfortunately, it mirrored the form so well that, initially, the power of the story drained away into a passionless compliation of data. The first person report at the end made the story much more compelling. It’s a shame it took so long to get there. The transgressive transformation at the heart of the story was memorable and complex.

Two opportunistic young women fleeing the Depression jump a chairlift to a moutaintop party, expecting to scam the rich, but find themselves fighting for their lives.

This story got under my skin. I was fascinated by the relationship between the two women. The prose was stimulating. The supernatural elements were tense and exciting. It was a memorable read.

My review is HERE

Something dark has always hung over the Esmie siblings.

Each one is haunted, but all in different ways.
Violet dreams each night of a strange and cold woman looming over her bed, Dodie wakes in a constant state of drowning and Vale sees beaming lights and probing figures.
But there’s one thing that haunts them the most . . .

The disappearance of their little brother, Ben, who went missing during an innocent game of hide and seek back when they were children.
It’s been eighteen years since the siblings fled their childhood home, Fell House, the one that holds all the ghosts of the past.

But then Violet receives a call from the house’s caretaker. He’s too scared to keep working there. He says he saw the spirit of a young boy whispering two words . . .
Come home.

She, Dodie and Vale all know Ben is back – and he’s ready to lead them to answers they both want and fear.

But there’s a more sinister presence waiting for them at Fell House. Something that’s connected to their visions as children.

Something that wants a violent revenge.

When Anna Hartley’s husband, Henry, calls her with a terrible, guilty confession, she can’t believe what she hears. It has to be a bad joke—the mild, predictable artist she married would never hurt a fly, let alone commit murder. But her confusion turns to horror when police find his body washed up on the banks of the Rio Grande. 

Desperate for answers to the millions of questions his untimely death has raised, Anna checks in to The Sycamores, the run-down motel turned apartment Henry rented as an art studio.

As she absorbs every bit of gossip the eclectic mix of residents are willing to share about her husband and each other, she begins to piece together a picture of a very different man than the one she married, and the life he led behind her back.

The more she learns, and the less sense things seem to make, she finds herself wondering: Did she ever really know Henry at all? 

But Henry’s secrets aren’t the only ones; as Anna’s search for clues expands, Cass, the mysterious, jaded motel manager, seems more and more determined to keep Anna in the dark. And when threatening letters start appearing at her door, Anna has to decide what’s more important—the truth, or her own safety.

Lee Gulliver never thought she’d find herself living on the streets—no one ever does—but when her restaurant fails, and she falls deeper into debt, she leaves her old life behind with nothing but her clothes and her Toyota Corolla.

In Seattle, she parks in a secluded spot by the beach to lay low and plan her next move—until early one morning, she sees a sobbing woman throw herself into the ocean. Lee hauls the woman back to the surface, but instead of appreciation, she is met with fury.

The drowning woman, Hazel, tells her that she wanted to die, that she’s trapped in a toxic, abusive marriage, that she’s a prisoner in her own home. Lee has thwarted her one chance to escape her life.

Out of options, Hazel retreats to her gilded cage, and Lee thinks she’s seen the last of her, until her unexpected return the next morning. Bonded by disparate but difficult circumstances, the women soon strike up a close and unlikely friendship. And then one day, Hazel makes a shocking request: she wants Lee to help her disappear. It’ll be easy, Hazel assures her, but Lee soon learns that nothing is as it seems, and that Hazel may not be the friend Lee thought she was.

When Shelby Dawson survives a harrowing attack that should have left her dead, she tries to move past it—for herself, and for her family. Fifteen months later, with the help of her best friend, Mackenzie, she finally feels safe again in the snowy Minnesota town she calls home. But when an anonymous note appears on her windshield bearing the same threats her attacker made, Shelby realizes that her nightmare has only just begun.

As new evidence surfaces, and a group of well-meaning senior citizens accidentally makes the case go viral online, the situation quickly goes from bad to worse. And with suspicious accidents targeting those closest to her happening all over town, Shelby can’t shake the feeling that she’s being watched. Fighting to stay one step ahead of disaster, she finds herself asking the question on everyone’s lips: Who attacked her that night?

But Shelby isn’t the only one with questions. Mackenzie’s husband, Leo, vanished without a trace on that terrible night, and over a year later, no one knows why. Until a deep dive into his finances reveals a history of debts, mismanaged funds, and hidden accounts—one of which is still active. Their suspicion that Leo is still alive only complicates things further, though, and when another person connected to Shelby goes missing, she’s caught in a race against time before her attacker becomes a killer.

Trixie D’Vita didn’t scythe. That was Mom’s gig. Then the Angel Investigative Bureau (AIB) turned up at Aunt Harry’s bar. Seemed the hottest afterlife gameshow in the Mystical Realms was misappropriating newly-departed souls. And Death was a person of interest.

When the AIB can’t find Death, they come looking for Trixie, Death’s estranged daughter.

Soon Trixie’s best friend is in dire peril. An AIB trainee is traipsing towards trouble. And Trixie, armed with nothing but a pocket-scythe, is plunging headfirst into the gaping maw of a trans-dimensional vortex.

So not the evening she’d planned.

Rachel Kennan knows the townspeople of Dahlmouth will never accept her as police chief. She’s an outsider, she isn’t part of the history of this tightknit, superstitious community in Virginia. She’s faced the same hostility every day for three years, but she couldn’t care less, because her son is dead. And it was her husband Finn and his drinking that caused the accident.

Rachel can barely look at Finn, despite all the pain she sees in him. Their family is falling apart. Their two daughters are the only things keeping Rachel and Finn together, but the girls have demons of their own . . .

Then, one day, Rachel is called out to a horrifying scene in the woods. A man has been nailed to a tree. Whatever happened to him is like nothing she’s encountered before.

And now little Abby Grayson is missing. Rachel searches frantically, but before long more of Dahlmouth’s children disappear. And soon, the locals’ wariness turns to fear and contempt, and Rachel and Finn must rely on each other if they have any hope of getting what’s left of their family through this . . .. . .