scifi, fantasy, and horror

The next Reader’s Advisory Roundtable meeting will be at the East Lake Library on Wednesday, December 13th at 9am and the topic up for discussion is young adult literature!  Fiction or nonfiction, we want to know what books have your teens reading! 

This month, we met to discuss science fiction, fantasy, and horror:

Those Across the River by Christopher Buehlman
Haunted by memories of the Great War, failed academic Frank Nichols and his wife have arrived in the sleepy Georgia town of Whitbrow, where Frank hopes to write a history of his family’s old estate—the Savoyard Plantation—and the horrors that occurred there. At first their new life seems to be everything they wanted. But under the facade of summer socials and small-town charm, there is an unspoken dread that the townsfolk have lived with for generations. A presence that demands sacrifice. It comes from the shadowy woods across the river, where the ruins of the Savoyard Plantation still stand. Where a long-smoldering debt of blood has never been forgotten.
Where it has been waiting for Frank Nichols…(amazon.com)
Maura, Trussville

Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon
Tired of the rat race in New York City, artist Nick Constantine decides that he and his wife and daughter need to consider moving to the country. On a drive one afternoon they discover the small New England town of Cornwall Coombe. The town offers everything Nick has been dreaming about: a house dating from the 1700s for a reasonable price, gorgeous scenery, a close-knit community of down to earth neighbors. What Nick doesn’t yet realize is just how “down to earth” these people are. He gradually becomes aware that this is a town with a secret, one that everyone except him seems to know. There are oblique references to “what no man may know nor woman tell” and it is somehow connected with the upcoming festival of Harvest Home. Unable to restrain his curiosity—and in spite of his fears—Nick is determined to discover the secret behind Harvest Home. And . . . he does. This is a classic example of the “town with a dark secret” horror novel, and there was also a TV miniseries called The Dark Secret of Harvest Home, featuring Bette Davis as the Widow Fortune. A miniseries is the perfect format for a story like this with its slowly accumulating clues and gathering sense of dread.

reviewed by Mary Anne, Southern History

Burnt Offerings by Robert Marasco
There should be an entire sub-genre of horror novels called “Escape from (insert large city of your choice, but it’s usually New York).” In Burnt Offerings, Ben and Marian Rolfe are sick of the noise, heat, and lack of privacy in their New York apartment and think that even a couple of months of a country vacation would do them a lot of good. Marian locates a country house that is billed as possibly being “reasonable—for the right people.” The Rolfes take their son and go to investigate. What they find is beyond Marian’s wildest dreams. The Allardyce estate is huge, a bit dilapidated, but filled with Waterford crystal and Sheraton furniture and art treasures and fine china . . . all decorative items that she loves. Her husband has some reservations about the place but they eventually agree that the rent is amazingly low and they sign the two-month lease, including the agreement that they will look after and prepare food for the mysterious Mrs. Allardyce who keeps to her own rooms. Slowly but surely, the atmosphere of the house breaks apart the family’s relationships and lays a claim on them that will definitely NOT end when their two months of vacation are over. There are many tropes here that would set off the alarm bells for experienced horror readers, but Marasco published Burnt Offerings right around the beginning of Stephen King’s career. At that time, horror novels occupied a lot less space on the bookstore shelves and many of the fixtures of the modern horror novel were fresh and new. Burnt Offerings still packs a wallop after all these years and remains a powerful example of the saying that when something seems too good to be true . . . it probably is.

reviewed by Mary Anne, Southern History

Curfew by Phil Rickman
Standing on the border between England and Wales, the small village of Crybbe has a centuries-long tradition of ringing a special curfew every night. And they do mean every night. This is part of the rituals that are meant to keep an ancient evil in check, but there are signs that the evil is about to make a comeback. The village is the convergence point for a series of ley lines that channel supernatural energy, and when an ignorant millionaire declares Crybbe the perfect site for a facility to research the occult and paranormal, the stage is set for the dark magic of Crybbe to manifest. Creepy and atmospheric, Curfew is for the horror fan who enjoys the “slow burn” novel that gradually builds to an explosive finale, and this tale is one more convincing reason to stay OUT of small towns with dark secrets. It’s a long but satisfying read.

reviewed by Mary Anne, Southern History

The Nell West/Michael Flint haunted house mysteries by Sarah Rayne
Sarah’s haunted house series, featuring the Oxford don, Michael Flint and the antiques dealer, Nell West, has received high praise from the critics, and the books have been described as ‘eruditely eerie’. There are six novels in the series, and although they can be read individually, it’s probably a good idea to start with book one, Property of a Lady.

“The haunted-house theme is one of the most venerable in the genre, and Rayne has given it new life in this series, drawing again and again on the secrets (and the horrors) contained within structures built originally to keep us safe…” Booklist

“Rayne perfects the craft of deftly chosen details, simmering suspense and chilling surprises, all woven into a quiet, elegant narrative.” Kirkus (sarahrayne.co.uk)

Holley, Emmet O’Neal

Property of a Lady
A house with a sinister past – and a grisly power - When Michael Flint is asked by American friends to look over an old Shropshire house they have unexpectedly inherited, he is reluctant to leave the quiet of his Oxford study. But when he sees Charect House, its uncanny echoes from the past fascinate him – even though it has such a sinister reputation that no one has lived there for almost a century. But it’s not until Michael meets the young widow, Nell West, that the menace within the house wakes . . . (amazon.com)

The Sin Eater
The sins of the past break through to the present in this chilling tale of supernatural suspense. - When Benedict Doyle finds himself the owner of his great-grandfather’s North London house, it stirs memories of his time there as a frightened eight-year-old and the strange glimpses that revealed the darkness in his family’s past, through which runs the grisly thread of an old legend about a chess set believed to possess a dark power. And when Michael Flint, meeting Benedict in Oxford, starts to research his story, chilling facts begin to emerge – facts that suggest the old legend contains a disturbing reality. Could the chess set’s malevolence be reaching out to the present? (amazon.com)

The Silence
Antiques dealer Nell West is valuing the contents of her late husband Brad’s childhood home, Stilter House. Set on the remote Derbyshire Peaks, there was once a much older property there, in which the notorious Isobel Acton committed a vicious crime. Warned against visiting the house by an elderly aunt of Brad’s, Nell hears mysterious piano music soon after her arrival. It becomes clear that the music is tangled with Isobel Acton’s macabre fate more than a hundred years earlier. A fate whose consequences still menace the present. (amazon.com)

The Whispering
Fosse House, home of the reclusive Luisa Gilmore, harbours curious secrets - secrets that stretch back almost a century, to the ill-fated Palestrina Choir in its remote Belgian convent.

When Oxford don Michael Flint travels to the house to trace the origins of the long-dead Choir, he is at once aware of the house's eerie menace. Who is the shadowy young man who lurks in the grounds, and why does his exact likeness appear in a sketch from 1917? What is the strange whispering that echoes through the corridors? And why is Luisa so afraid when a storm makes it necessary for Michael to spend the night inside the house?

Back in Oxford, when Nell West uncovers the story of the infamous 1917 'Holzminden sketch' - the lost, legendary drawing from World War I - a dark fragment of the past begins to stir. A fragment that Michael, in the lonely old house, may not be able to resist. (amazon.com)

Deadlight Hall
A long-ago crime continues to menace the present in this spine-chilling tale of supernatural suspense.

When Michael Flint is asked by a colleague to investigate a reputedly haunted house, he is intrigued. Leo Rosendale’s childhood was blighted by a macabre tragedy in the grim Deadlight Hall – a tragedy that occurred towards the end of World War II, involving a set of twins who vanished. The fate of Sophie and Susannah Reiss was never discovered, and Leo has never been able to forget them.

When Michael, together with his fiancee Nell, begins to explore Deadlight Hall’s history, he discovers that in the 1880s another pair of sisters vanished from the house – and that there may also be much older and darker secrets lurking within its walls.

As Michael and Nell gradually peel back the sinister layers of the Hall’s unhappy past, they are unprepared for the eerie and threatening resonances they encounter – nor for the shocking truth of what took place there one long-ago midnight. (amazon.com)

The Bell Tower
A 400-year-old crime continues to menace the present in this spine-chilling tale of supernatural suspense.

When Nell West starts extending her Oxford antiques shop, she is not expecting to uncover strange fragments of its past: fragments that include a frightened message scribbled on old plasterwork, dated 1850 and referring to someone called Thaisa.

She also uncovers a mysterious link with a village on the Dorset coast – a village with an ancient bell tower and dark memories of a piece of music known locally as Thaisa’s Song. The sea is gradually encroaching on the derelict tower, but the old Glaum Bell still hangs in the lonely bell chamber and although it was silenced after an act of appalling brutality during the reign of Henry VIII, local people whisper that its chime is still occasionally heard.

As Nell and Michael Flint discover, the tower is mysteriously entangled with the story of Thaisa and a 400-year-old tragedy that has echoed down the centuries. (amazon.com)

Insight by Santino Hassell

Growing up the outcast in an infamous family of psychics, Nate Black never learned how to control his empath abilities. Then after five years without contact, his estranged twin turns up dead in New York City. The claim of suicide doesn’t ring true, especially when a mysterious vision tells Nate it was murder. Now his long-hated gift is his only tool to investigate.

Hitching from his tiny Texas town, Nate is picked up by Trent, a gorgeous engineer who thrives on sarcasm and skepticism. The heat that sparks between them is instant and intense, and Nate ends up trusting Trent with his secrets—something he’s never done before. But once they arrive in the city, the secrets multiply when Nate discovers an underground supernatural community, more missing psychics, and frightening information about his own talent.

Nate is left questioning his connection with Trent. Are their feelings real, or are they being propelled by abilities Nate didn’t realize he had? His fear of his power grows, but Nate must overcome it to find his brother’s killer and trust himself with Trent’s heart. (amazon.com)

Samuel, Springville Road

Witches for Hire by Sam Argent

All recovering drug addict and witch Jeremy Ragsdale wants is to shamble on to the next job without any disasters. Instead, the temp agency saddles him with a fellow witch who hates him, an Amazon one violent outburst away from deportation, and a knight from another world as his boss. Even worse, their jack-of-all-trades magic business stumbles upon a conspiracy to kill Desmond the Great, Atlanta's sexy star magician. Jeremy must prevent it without letting his colleagues know that he not only has ties to the energy vampires behind the plot, but that his past misdeeds might have instigated the attacks.

Despite Jeremy sporting a suit and tie like a good witch, his lies snowball to bite him in the ass. The lack of trust brewing between him and his teammates could cost Desmond his life and Jeremy his progress on the straight and narrow path if his secrets are revealed. Because no matter how much Jeremy has reformed, there's still enough bad witch in him to kill anyone who messes with him or the people he cares about. (amazon.com)

Samuel, Springville Road

All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders

An ancient society of witches and a hipster technological startup go to war in order to prevent the world from tearing itself. To further complicate things, each of the groups’ most promising followers (Patricia, a brilliant witch and Laurence, an engineering “wunderkind”) may just be in love with each other.

As the battle between magic and science wages in San Francisco against the backdrop of international chaos, Laurence and Patricia are forced to choose sides. But their choices will determine the fate of the planet and all mankind.

In a fashion unique to Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky offers a humorous and, at times, heart-breaking exploration of growing up extraordinary in world filled with cruelty, scientific ingenuity, and magic. (amazon.com)

Samuel, Springville Road

The Uncommonly Tidy Poltergeists by Angel Martinez (not available in the JCLC system)

A poltergeist haunts Taro, dogging his international travels. It washes glasses, puts dishes away, and even dusts. At least he hopes it's a cleaning-obsessed poltergeist and not his own anxieties burbling over into neat freak fits he doesn't remember. When his property manager suggests he call paranormal expert, Jack Montrose, Taro's skeptical but desperate enough to try even a ghost hunter.

Jack's arrival crushes Taro's hopes of a dashing Van Helsing-style hero. Instead of an invincible hunter, he gets Ichabod Crane. As the paranormal puzzles multiply and Jack begins to suggest the entity might not be a ghostly one, Taro adds a budding friendship with Jack to his pile of anxieties. It's a race to see whether Taro's poltergeist or his relationship with the obviously-not-ace Jack will reach maximum strangeness first. (amazon.com)
Samuel, Springville Road

The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pulley

In 1859, ex-East India Company smuggler Merrick Tremayne is trapped at home in Cornwall after sustaining an injury that almost cost him his leg. On the sprawling, crumbling grounds of the old house, something is wrong; a statue moves, his grandfather's pines explode, and his brother accuses him of madness.

When the India Office recruits Merrick for an expedition to fetch quinine--essential for the treatment of malaria--from deep within Peru, he knows it's a terrible idea. Nearly every able-bodied expeditionary who's made the attempt has died, and he can barely walk. But Merrick is desperate to escape everything at home, so he sets off, against his better judgment, for a tiny mission colony on the edge of the Amazon where a salt line on the ground separates town from forest. Anyone who crosses is killed by something that watches from the trees, but somewhere beyond the salt are the quinine woods, and the way around is blocked.

Surrounded by local stories of lost time, cursed woods, and living rock, Merrick must separate truth from fairytale and find out what befell the last expeditions; why the villagers are forbidden to go into the forest; and what is happening to Raphael, the young priest who seems to have known Merrick's grandfather, who visited Peru many decades before. The Bedlam Stacks is the story of a profound friendship that grows in a place that seems just this side of magical. (amazon.com)

Liz, Pinson

Reincarnation Blues by Michael Poore

Ten thousand tries, to be exact. Ten thousand lives to “get it right.” Answer all the Big Questions. Achieve Wisdom. And Become One with Everything.
 
Milo has had 9,995 chances so far and has just five more lives to earn a place in the cosmic soul. If he doesn’t make the cut, oblivion awaits. But all Milo really wants is to fall forever into the arms of Death. Or Suzie, as he calls her.

More than just Milo’s lover throughout his countless layovers in the Afterlife, Suzie is literally his reason for living—as he dives into one new existence after another, praying for the day he’ll never have to leave her side again.
     
But Reincarnation Blues is more than a great love story: Every journey from cradle to grave offers Milo more pieces of the great cosmic puzzle—if only he can piece them together in time to finally understand what it means to be part of something bigger than infinity. As darkly enchanting as the works of Neil Gaiman and as wisely hilarious as Kurt Vonnegut’s, Michael Poore’s Reincarnation Blues is the story of everything that makes life profound, beautiful, absurd, and heartbreaking.

Because it’s more than Milo and Suzie’s story. It’s your story, too. (amazon.com)
Liz, Pinson

The Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luis Borges

The great Argentine writer assembled this “anthology of fantastic zoology” in another one of his attempts at creating a whole world. Most of the material he wrote himself, some is excerpted from millennia of existing works. A few of the books he uses as source material may be made up. Borges liked doing that kind of thing. All of the collection enchants and compels. The creatures include well known ones such as basilisks, chimaeras and jinns, but most of it will be new to the reader: the kami, the haokah, the fastitocalon, the youwarkee. The bahamut, a creature from the Arabian Nights, is so “resplendent” that “human eyes cannot bear to look upon it.” “In Night 496…we read that Isa (Jesus) was allowed to see the Bahamut, and when this gift was bestowed upon him he fell down in a swoon, and did not awake…for three days.” No, I didn’t know that Jesus was in the Arabian Nights either, but he is, at least in the Richard Burton translation. There are a lot of surprises in this book, and they are all of a high order.
reviewed by Richard, BPL Fiction

Flashback by Dan Simmons

The United States is near total collapse. But 87% of the population doesn't care: they're addicted to flashback, a drug that allows its users to re-experience the best moments of their lives. After ex-detective Nick Bottom's wife died in a car accident, he went under the flash to be with her; he's lost his job, his teenage son, and his livelihood as a result.

Nick may be a lost soul but he's still a good cop, so he is hired to investigate the murder of a top governmental advisor's son. This flashback-addict becomes the one man who may be able to change the course of an entire nation turning away from the future to live in the past.

A provocative novel set in a future that seems scarily possible, Flashback proves why Dan Simmons is one of our most exciting and versatile writers. (amazon.com)
Jon, Avondale

American War by Omar El Akkad

An audacious and powerful debut novel: a second American Civil War, a devastating plague, and one family caught deep in the middle—a story that asks what might happen if America were to turn its most devastating policies and deadly weapons upon itself.

Sarat Chestnut, born in Louisiana, is only six when the Second American Civil War breaks out in 2074. But even she knows that oil is outlawed, that Louisiana is half underwater, and that unmanned drones fill the sky. When her father is killed and her family is forced into Camp Patience for displaced persons, she begins to grow up shaped by her particular time and place. But not everyone at Camp Patience is who they claim to be. Eventually Sarat is befriended by a mysterious functionary, under whose influence she is turned into a deadly instrument of war. The decisions that she makes will have tremendous consequences not just for Sarat but for her family and her country, rippling through generations of strangers and kin alike.

The Terror by Dan Simmons

The men on board HMS Terror have every expectation of triumph. As part of the 1845 Franklin Expedition, the first steam-powered vessels ever to search for the legendary Northwest Passage, they are as scientifically supported an enterprise as has ever set forth. As they enter a second summer in the Arctic Circle without a thaw, though, they are stranded in a nightmarish landscape of encroaching ice and darkness. Endlessly cold, with diminishing rations, 126 men fight to survive with poisonous food, a dwindling supply of coal, and ships buckling in the grip of crushing ice. But their real enemy is far more terrifying. There is something out there in the frigid darkness: an unseen predator stalking their ship, a monstrous terror constantly clawing to get in.When the expedition's leader, Sir John Franklin, meets a terrible death, Captain Francis Crozier takes command and leads his surviving crewmen on a last, desperate attempt to flee south across the ice. With them travels an Inuit woman who cannot speak and who may be the key to survival, or the harbinger of their deaths. But as another winter approaches, as scurvy and starvation grow more terrible, and as the terror on the ice stalks them southward, Crozier and his men begin to fear that there is no escape. The Terror swells with the heart-stopping suspense and heroic adventure that have won Dan Simmons praise as "a writer who not only makes big promises but keeps them" (Seattle Post-Intelligencer). With a haunting and constantly surprising story based on actual historical events, The Terror is a novel that will chill you to your core. (amazon.com)
Jon, Avondale

The Fade Out, Vol 1 by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips

Brubaker and Phillips' newest hit series, The Fade Out, is an epic noir set in the world of noir itself, the backlots and bars of Hollywood at the end of its Golden Era. A movie stuck in endless reshoots, a writer damaged from the war and lost in the bottle, a dead movie star and the lookalike hired to replace her. Nothing is what it seems in the place where only lies are true. The Fade Out is Brubaker and Phillips' most ambitious project yet! (amazon.com)

Jon, Avondale

The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder: The Frontier Landscapesthat Inspired the Little House Books by Marta McDowell

The universal appeal of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books springs from a life lived in partnership with the land, on farms she and her family settled across the Northeast and Midwest. In this revealing exploration of Wilder’s deep connection with the natural world, Marta McDowell follows the wagon trail of the beloved Little House series. You’ll learn details about Wilder’s life and inspirations, pinpoint the Ingalls and Wilder homestead claims on authentic archival maps, and learn to grow the plants and vegetables featured in the series. Excerpts from Wilder’s books, letters, and diaries bring to light her profound appreciation for the landscapes at the heart of her world. Featuring the beloved illustrations by Helen Sewell and Garth Williams, plus hundreds of historic and contemporary photographs, The World of Laura Ingalls Wilder is a treasure for anyone enchanted by Laura’s wild and beautiful life.  (amazon.com)

Jon, Avondale

Zombies: A Brief History of Decay by Olivier Peru, Sophian Cholet, and Simon Champelovier

A vivid and richly illustrated graphic novel, Zombies offers an action-packed tour through an apocalyptic vision of America.

Mankind is no longer at the top of the food chain. Zombies have taken their place, and nothing can stop them. Is this the end of humanity? Perhaps, but for some it is only the beginning.

Six billion living corpses are all that remains of civilization. Among the few survivors is Sam Coleman, a man who owes his salvation to Smith & Wesson and a little luck. Fleeing Seattle at the onset of the zombie outbreak, he was forced to leave his daughter behind. Yet now that silence has fallen over the city, he believes that she may still be alive. And his conscience serves up a constant reminder that to be human in this grim world is to have hope—and to keep fighting. (amazon.com)

Jon, Avondale

Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer

Twelve-year-old Artemis Fowl is a millionaire, a genius-and, above all, a criminal mastermind. But even Artemis doesn't know what he's taken on when he kidnaps a fairy, Captain Holly Short of the LEPrecon Unit. These aren't the fairies of bedtime stories; these fairies are armed and dangerous.

Artemis thinks he has them right where he wants them but then they stop playing by the rules. (amazon.com)

Leigh, North Birmingham

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

Four adventurous siblings—Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie—step through a wardrobe door and into the land of Narnia, a land frozen in eternal winter and enslaved by the power of the White Witch. But when almost all hope is lost, the return of the Great Lion, Aslan, signals a great change . . . and a great sacrifice. (amazon.com)

Leigh, North Birmingham

\Journey’s End by Rachel Hawkins

The town of Journey's End may not literally be at the end of the world, but it sure feels like it to Nolie Stanhope. While Nolie's father came to Journey's End to study the Boundary--a mysterious fog bank offshore--Bel's family can’t afford to consider it a threat. The McKissick’s livelihood depends on the tourists drawn by legends of a curse. Still, whether you believe in magic or science, going into the Boundary means you'll never come back.

…Unless you do. Albert Etheridge, a boy who disappeared into the Boundary in 1914, suddenly returns--without having aged a day and with no memory of the past hundred years. Then the Boundary starts creeping closer to the town, threatening to consume everyone within. Albert and the girls look for ways to stop the encroaching boundary, coming across an ancient Scottish spell that requires magic, a quest, and a sacrifice. (amazon.com)

Laura, Trussville

The Darkest Corners by Kara Thomas

There are secrets around every corner in Fayette, Pennsylvania. Tessa left when she was nine and has been trying ever since not to think about what happened there that last summer. She and her childhood best friend Callie never talked about what they saw. Not before the trial. And certainly not after. But ever since she left, Tessa has had questions. Things have never quite added up. And now she has to go back to Fayette—to Wyatt Stokes, sitting on death row; to Lori Cawley, Callie’s dead cousin; and to the one other person who may be hiding the truth. Only the closer Tessa gets to what really happened, the closer she gets to a killer—and this time, it won’t be so easy to run away. (amazon.com)
Liz, Pinson

Into the Guns by William C. Dietz

On May Day, 2018, sixty meteors entered Earth’s atmosphere and exploded around the globe with a force greater than a nuclear blast. Earthquakes and tsunamis followed. Then China attacked Europe, Asia, and the United States in the belief the disaster was an act of war. Washington D.C. was a casualty of the meteor onslaught that decimated the nation’s leadership and left the surviving elements of the armed forces to try and restore order as American society fell apart. As refugees across America band together and engage in open warfare with the military over scarce resources, a select group of individuals representing the surviving corporate structure makes a power play to rebuild the country in a free market image as The New Confederacy... (amazon.com)

Jon, Avondale

Birmingham, 35 Miles by James Braziel

In this haunting and poignant debut novel, James Braziel tells an unforgettable story of love, family, and survival across a world that has already begun to die.…

When the ozone layer opened and the sun relentlessly scorched the land, there was nothing left but to hope. Mathew Harrison had always heard of a better life as close as Birmingham, only thirty-five miles away—zones of blue sky, wet grass, and clean breathable air. But to him it’s a myth, a place guarded by soldiers, off limits to all but the lucky few. Meanwhile Mat works alongside his father, mining only the red clay that the once fertile Alabama soil can offer.

Now, with the killing deserts on the move again and the woman he loves on a Greyhound heading north, Mat has a travel visa and every reason to leave. But his roots in this lifeless soil inexplicably hold him firmly to the past. Torn between hope and resignation, with time running out, Mat must make a fateful choice between a new life and the one that isn’t ready to let him go. (amazon.com)

Richard, BPL Fiction