The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerized Girl’s last book of the The Athena Club trilogy is a puzzle to me. I don’t understand why certain choices were made. There are major spoilers ahead, so this is for only those fans who have read the third book. First, the theme of […]
(The Athena Club Book 3) The Athena Club is comprised of Mary Jekyll and Diana Hyde (daughters of the infamous Henry Jekyll), Catherine Moreau (a puma made human by Dr. Moreau), Beatrice Rappaccini (a poisonous lady from a Nathaniel Hawthorne short story), Justine Frankenstein (the created bride of the monster), […]
Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library is on many must-read lists and deservedly so. The Midnight Library’s Nora Seed isn’t having a great day when she travels to the Midnight Library, a library filled with books of her alternate lives. Nora is allowed to inhabit a different life, spawned from seeing […]
I am an author of five independently published novels and one traditionally published novel with a second on the way. I learn lessons the hard way but the best way—through experience. One unexpected outcome of my traditional publishing journey was how closely writing feels like romance and publishing like marriage. […]
Describing Unlikely Animals is like describing a color—it’s not easy. A prodigal daughter, Emma Starling, returns home to a small town in New Hampshire. Her father is ill, and her presence may extend her padre’s life. Emma has a secret she knows she must confess to her family. However, her […]
Murder at the Agency is a debut novel by Kylie Forsythe, a cozy mystery about a new employee at an advertising agency who finds one of her coworkers dead. Cassie Blayne is unemployed and looking for work. While pitching her ideas to a friend, an owner of an advertising agency […]
H. L. Burke’s third book in her Superhero Rehabilitation series is Reborn. In this sequence of books, superheroes (called sables) fight supervillains as expected, but the novel treats its heroic characters as adults in adult situations. The sables work for a larger organization called DOSA, which sponsors a program to […]
I became aware of Marisha Pessl’s Night Film from an article suggesting interesting settings in thriller books. The concept of a reclusive film director, his avant-garde offerings, and a potential murder in his family was exciting and interesting. The lengthy page count kept me away for a while, but I […]
E. M. Lund’s The Urbex Trip explores the idea of a group of twenty-somethings encountering something haunted while enjoying an URBan EXploration. Urban exploration is the concept of visiting and documenting (usually with images) a human-constructed, abandoned building. In the book’s case, eight people travel to a decades-abandoned luxury resort […]
The third, and possibly end of a first trilogy, of the Alex Steward series, is entitled Free the Wolf. Alex is a homeless citizen of Hopewell, living off the charity of her friend Emma and hanging around Hell’s Bells with her other friends, Trish and Nate. She’s also a werewolf. […]