Marilyn Monroe is one of the most iconic stars in American history. Numerous non-fiction books detail her life but it is the fiction that provides more fodder for the rumors about her death; namely because it can draw on the smallest of details and create a story around them. If it sounds like I’m getting ready to slam this genre, relax. I’m a fan of it, albeit not of the ... Read More...
In the Blood
We telegraph our inner lives with what we choose to eat, how we eat it, what we wear, how we carry ourselves, the words we use and don’t use. We tell about ourselves in a million small and large ways. And most people don’t even notice, because they’re so busy telling about themselves, listening to the symphony of their own inner lives. But the psychopath doesn’t have an inner ... Read More...
The Abominable
Our valley is in darkness, but Everest blazes far beyond and above us in a cold, powerful, self-contained isolation. That strikes me as terrifying. In 1924 the British alpine climbing community was dealt a serious blow when George Mallory and his partner Sandy Levine disappear high on Mount Everest. At the same time a lesser known but titled Brit disappears and his mother ... Read More...
Mother Mother
Koren Zailckas doesn’t waste any time. In her first novel Mother, Mother: A Novel she takes no more than one hundred pages to pull the mask off Josephine Hurst, a woman who believes she is the pinnacle of modern motherhood—raising two lovely daughters (one destined for Broadway) and a son so gifted she has to home school him. Whether this is true or not seems beside the point ... Read More...
The Sleep Room
There is nothing more frightening than that which cannot be identified, no engine of fear more powerful than the unknown. It is 1955 and the psychiatric field is making its first foray into sleep as a treatment for extreme mental disorders like schizophrenia and bipolar. Dr. James Richardson has been studying the field and written a paper about it when he is summoned ... Read More...
Dare Me: A Novel
Written with all the hip-popping, hyper-hormonal intensity of teenage girls, Dare Me takes everything you’ve ever thought about cheerleaders and magnifies it tenfold. A group of girls, part of the most exclusive club in high school, basking in the spray tan glow of their fame, find they’ve just been ‘playing’ at cheerleading when a new, taut, ruthless coach takes over and ... Read More...
