You ever have one of those days when you find bits of a corpse, but it doesn’t belong to any of the zombies? Foxtrot has and it’s not even the weirdest part of her day. Actually, it’s just another day working at her boss ZZ’s mansion, where there are always guests (who are often weird), zoo animals to take care of (yes, ZZ has a zoo on her estate) and a spiritual Crossroads to maintain. The zombies aren’t real (they’re part of a film set), […]
“Light and dark, light and dark, like a door opening and closing”
Lucy Wood’s 2015 debut novel Weathering is stunning and homely; it simultaneously feels like a chilly walk in the rain and a cup of tea by a fireside. It’s a non-scary story about ghosts, and a scary story about loneliness and memory; it’s a story about rivers and birds and photographs and family. Ada is a single mother with a bright but complicated small daughter called Pepper and an even more difficult relationship with her own mother Pearl, recently deceased but not gone. (This isn’t […]
Darn Hooch
This is the fourth book in the Sweet Pepper Fire Brigade series by JJ Cook. The story centers around fire chief Stella Griffin, some ghosts and a hooch war. By the way, that’s hooch as in moonshine, not any of the other terms you might be thinking of (money, female private parts, a loose woman, a scuzzy man or half of a K-9/cop duo). There’s also some stereotypical small town stuff (romance or the lack thereof, family issues, politics, misogyny and food) to round out […]
If Tom Riddle Lived
The novel Yamada Monogatari: To Break the Demon Gate opens and closes as “Moon Viewing at Shijo Bridge” from the collection Yamada Monogatari: Demon Hunter. Even though I loved that short story collection, this made the novel a slow start because, having already read the short story, the word-for-word repeat was not interesting. Especially not for 50 pages. I am glad I kept going though. Between Yamada and Kanemore figuring out Princess Teiko’s death and Yamada’s final few paragraphs of contemplation, this story presents a […]
1920s Haunted Assylum? Yes, Please!
This is the second novel by Simone St James I’ve listened to, and both were gripping. A little bit of a slow start, but they pick up and just race to the finish. I picked a good one to start my Cannonball Read adventure! We start with Kitty Weekes, a poor London girl on the run, pretending to be a nurse at a psychiatric facility for Shell Shock patients returned to Britain after the first World War. But of course, not everything is as it seems […]
Ghostbusters Medieval Japan edition
I normally don’t enjoy short story collections until Yamada Monogatari: Demon Hunter. It’s just the right mix of adventure, comedy, fantasy, mythology, history, and drama. Yamada is an impoverished nobleman making his living busting evil spirits, ghosts, and monsters in medieval Japan. Two other characters show up through multiple stories who are both typecasts but still interesting: the warrior Prince Kanemore and the not-always-priestly exorcist priest Kenji. What makes them interesting is their interactions with Yamada because these conversations and adventures bring out details of […]