She’s developed an enjoyable way of beginning novels in the middle of a story, letting her audience watch the characters carry out conversations and actions which they don’t yet understand, but which will be unravelled as the book continues. This must be an even harder trick than it looks, and The Scarpetta Factor is driven by the reader’s need to find out what the heroes know, as well as what the villains have done.

This article is filed under Crime Fiction, Fiction Reviews, Mystery.

There are moments of genuine mystery and magic, scenes where we are bedazzled and terrified simultaneously. The walk through the mist, crunching on the bones of those who strayed from the path has a Tolkienian resonance. The bloody battles that Peter leads in the real world echo those in the enchanted world. And the myth of the Horned One, who is Peter’s father, overshadows everything. For Peter is an immortal wild child who may look mostly human but who is decidedly something … other.

This article is filed under Fiction Reviews, Horror, Science Fiction and Fantasy.

As a cultural, literary, and historical icon, Virginia Woolf was celebrated by contemporaries and has continued to fascinate audiences long after her death. And why not? Her strong individualistic streak, perhaps anachronistic during her lifetime, fits in well with our post-feminist culture, and her ability to render life in intimate, almost cinematic detail has inspired writers for ages.

This article is filed under Fiction Reviews.

The Bigness of the World, Ostlund’s first collection of short stories, was good enough for the judges of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. She won the prize in 2008. Deservedly so, for Ostlund has an ear, an appendage often ignored by writers in favor of the flashier eye. Alive to the subtext of the everyday, she uses flat conversations as a front for complicated back-stories…

This article is filed under Fiction Reviews, Short Stories.

Mawer’s The Glass Room is a genuine intellectual achievement—a breath-taking story of love and its loss, of art and lost art, of wars lost and then won and lost again, of rich gentleman Jews and Jews lost to Nazi madness. His broad canvas covers the decades of Mittel-European horrors that began in Czechoslovakia in the 1930s. The themes are familiar, but treated in a fresh and stimulating, not to say disturbing, way.

This article is filed under Architecture, Fiction Reviews, Historical Fiction.

This novel follows the exploits of intellectual and spiritual wunderkind Max Doff who, even as an infant, clearly was set apart from the rest of humanity. He’s destined for greatness along the lines of the Buddha and other prophets. During a near-death experience from a severe case of the flu at age 15, Max has a vision in his euphoric delirium that he can’t quite make sense of yet, but it reveals to him the names of twelve people…

This article is filed under Fiction Reviews, Religion, Science Fiction and Fantasy.

But, as we see in the terrifying drawings of his radiologist father giving him neck adjustments—“kkrraackk,” and shots and enemas and even treating David’s sore throats and sinus condition with radiation, his escape is just another trap. The quiet horror of the cropped image of David’s face, just his eyes, nose, and part of his mouth, seen as he might have seen himself while lying on a table, looking up at his reflection in the metal surface of a piece of medical equipment, will stay with you long after you finish the book.

This article is filed under Fiction Reviews, Graphic Novels.

Krista and Aaron eventually do meet, in a shocking incident that leaves little space for spoken words. What Aaron does to Krista and how Krista responds – these are not things that can be easily classified. They are the actions and responses of broken souls. And broken souls don’t have the energy to behave appropriately.

This article is filed under Fiction Reviews.

The Big Machine is what urban fantasy looks like when it’s grown up and the writer isn’t relying on paranormal clichés to flesh out an epic tale of good versus evil. Not that you can pigeon-hole this novel—it’s a dizzying slipstream mashup of genres and memes and tropes and legends wrapped around a cross-cultural love story. This is a story that has depth, richness; a heart and a soul. Above all, it has a soul.

This article is filed under Fiction Reviews, Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Sing in me, Muse quotes Homer (the original one). “Jacqueline, my muse, I speak to you directly for a moment,” quoth our modern man. It is no accident that Homer addresses his story to a French reporter whom he briefly met. For, in a way, his account is his own universal newspaper, an elegy to the disintegration of 20th century America, the winding down of the clock.

This article is filed under Fiction Reviews, Historical Fiction.