THE TAINTED CUP and A DROP OF CORRUPTION ratings: five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐. Robert Jackson Bennett’s world-building is rock solid in THE TAINTED CUP (Penguin Random House, 2024) and A DROP OF CORRUPTION (Penguin Random House, April 1, 2025). The Empire in his fantasy/mystery Shadow of the Leviathan series, with its three rings, grabs the imagination […]
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No, I’m not talking about Dave Grohl; he went down awhile ago. I’m talking about Neil Gaiman. I didn’t know him, but I loved his stories. So much. Dearly. An article about Neil Gaiman by Lila Shapiro hit the literary world like a bomb yesterday. It’s been published in Vulture and in New York Magazine.
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JULIE CHAN IS DEAD rating: four stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐. The grass is always greener on the richer side–or so retail worker Julie Chan supposes in the psychological thriller JULIE CHAN IS DEAD by Liann Zhang (Simon & Schuster, April 29, 2025). Identical twins Julie and Chloe were orphaned and adopted by different families and separated at
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My favorite books published in 2024:
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JAMES rating: five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐. My favorite book of 2024 so far is JAMES by Percival Everett (Doubleday/Penguin Random House, March 19, 2024), a retelling of Mark Twain‘s classic THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN from the point of view of Jim, Huckleberry Finn’s companion on that legendary raft trip down the Mississippi River. I can’t
THE DROWNING HOUSE rating: four stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐. When not reading THE DROWNING HOUSE (Poisoned Pen Press/Sourcebooks, July 23, 2024), I felt myself being lured back onto the island setting, almost as if it were a waking dream. Cherie Priest has a way of creating an atmosphere that carves out permanent space in your consciousness. I
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FOUL DAYS rating: four stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐. Set in Chernograd, Bulgaria, FOUL DAYS by Genoveva Dimova (Tor/Macmillan, June 25, 2024) is a fantasy novel with a sassy, rough-and-tumble urban feel (think the Six of Crows duology by Leigh Bardugo). Chernograd is split by a Wall in which an evil magical creature is trapped, making passage next
I defy you to figure out why British author Barbara Pym (1913-1980) is so darned good. Pym seems to be writing about nothing much at all, and yet she is riveting. She casts some kind of spell. Examine her syllable by syllable. Take her writing apart; it’s far more than the sum of its parts.
YOUTHJUICE rating: 3 stars ⭐⭐⭐. HEBE was supposed to give me the heebie-jeebies, but the novel stole its own thunder almost immediately. A slow horror buildup would have been ideal in the gothic horror novel youthjuice by E.K. Sathue (Penguin Random House, June 4, 2024). Sophia is the new Creative Director for HEBE, a cosmetics
A WELL-TRAINED WIFE rating: four stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐. A WELL-TRAINED WIFE: MY ESCAPE FROM CHRISTIAN PATRIARCHY by Tia Levings (St. Martin’s Press/Macmillan, August 6, 2024) is a blunt and staggering account of a woman’s marriage, motherhood, escape, and recovery within the extreme (arguably now mainstream) religious right. You can call it dominionism, you can call it
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