read Archives

Dead in the Driver’s Seat

Amanda and Thorn Team-Up Author: Connie Feddersen Amanda is finally ready to ditch her Toyota and get a proper country pickup truck to navigate the pitted roads to and from clients. A trip to Frank Lemon’s used car lot leads her to fall in love with the proprietor’s big red pickup, and she strikes a deal. But before Amanda can collect her new truck, Frank Lemon is found dead in the driver’s seat – and Thorn was the one whose high-speed chase led to Frank’s demise. Now suspended, Thorn has changed his mind about Amanda’s amateur sleuthing skills, and with the [...]

Frances Carden2023-12-28T14:07:03-07:00December 28th, 2023|Tags: book review, cozy mystery, mystery, read, reading|

Terror, The

A Dull Mishmash of Stories Author: Dan Simmons Two ships, stranded in the Arctic, locked in mountains of ice, hunted by an unknown foe. Sir John Franklin’s exploration, searching for the Northwest Passage, is a famous doomed voyager. The desultory black and white photos live on, as does the mystery of the men’s final days, dying one by one, attempting to walk across barren fields of ice. It’s a true story thrumming with pathos and paranoia, and the perfect subject for a fictionalized account. In Dan Simmon’s re-imagining, the doomed men of the two ships, HMS Terror and HMS Erebus, are [...]

Frances Carden2023-12-27T15:17:24-07:00December 27th, 2023|Tags: book review, horror, read, reading|

Carnival of Fear

Justice for the Damned Author: J. Robert King In Carnival l’Morai you can see your dreams and nightmares. You can see horrors and oddities, performances and putrescences, life and death. No one knows this better than Marie, the beautiful blind juggler. But, despite the roughness of this life, the performers (called freaks) have a close-knit network, a friendliness that helps them through the judgement and the days and nights filled with jeering crowds. But everything changes when Marie goes into her caravan one night only to find the walls and floor coated in blood, the sword swallower dead and impaled on [...]

Frances Carden2023-12-26T13:57:57-07:00December 26th, 2023|Tags: book review, fantasy, horror, Ravenloft, read, reading|