Review: ‘A Touch of Darkness’ Scarlett St. Clair

Persephone is the Goddess of Spring by title only. The truth is, since she was a little girl, flowers have shrivelled at her touch. After moving to New Athens, she hopes to lead an unassuming life disguised as a mortal journalist. Hades, God of the Dead, has built a gambling empire in the mortal world …

Review: ‘The Haunting of Hill House’ Shirley Jackson

Alone in the world, Eleanor is delighted to take up Dr Montague's invitation to spend a summer in the mysterious Hill House. Joining them are Theodora, an artistic 'sensitive', and Luke, heir to the house. But what begins as a light-hearted experiment is swiftly proven to be a trip into their darkest nightmares, and an …

January in books

Well, we're one month into 2021 and the year's pretty much just 2020 Part 2 so far. I'm not going to dwell on the negatives in this post, though. I mean, some good things happened in January. Trump finally left office, the first dose of the Covid vaccine was given to more than 10 million …

Review/Rant: ‘Shadow Rider’ Christine Feehan

Whether it's fast cars or fast women, Stefano Ferraro gets what he wants. When he's not fodder for the paparazzi, he commands Ferraro family businesses - both legitimate and illegitimate. While their criminal activity is simply a rumour yet to be proven, no one knows the real truth. The Ferraros are a family of shadow …

My 2021 Reading Goals

New year, new books. A lot of readers set themselves some sort of goal when January arrives, be it reading a certain amount of books by 31st December, or pushing themselves out of their literary comfort zones and delving into unfamiliar genres. I have a couple of general readerly goals for 2021; I want to …

Review: ‘Aphrodite Made Me Do It’ Trista Mateer

Bestselling and award-winning author Trista Mateer takes an imaginative approach to self-care in this new poetry and prose collection, Aphrodite Made Me Do It . In this empowering retelling, she uses the mythology of the goddess to weave a common thread through the past and present. By the end of this book, Aphrodite will make …

Top 10 Fiction Books of 2020

Wow, thank God that absolute shitshow of a year is over. Obviously, no magical reset button was pressed on 1st January, but here's hoping that 2021 is somewhat better than 2020. Everyone had their own way of coping with 2020 and one of my coping strategies was reading. Books gave me a place to escape …

Review: ‘Monster, She Wrote’ Lisa Kröger and Melanie R. Anderson

Meet the women writers who defied convention to craft some of literature’s strangest tales, from Frankenstein to The Haunting of Hill House and beyond.Frankenstein was just the beginning: horror stories and other weird fiction wouldn’t exist without the women who created it. From Gothic ghost stories to psychological horror to science fiction, women have been primary architects of speculative literature of …

Review: ‘Phantom Shadows’ Dianne Duvall

Dr. Melanie Lipton is no stranger to the supernatural. She knows immortals better than they know themselves, right down to their stubborn little genes. So although a handsome rogue immortal seems suspicious to her colleagues, Sebastien Newcombe intrigues Melanie. His history is checkered, his scars are impressive, and his ideas are daring. But it's not …

Review: ‘Shuggie Bain’ Douglas Stuart

It is 1981. Glasgow is dying and good families must grift to survive. Agnes Bain has always expected more from life. She dreams of greater things: a house with its own front door and a life bought and paid for outright (like her perfect, but false, teeth). But Agnes is abandoned by her philandering husband, …