"Reality is a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there." -John Barth
by Jamie Delano (from Hellblazer vol. 2 - The Devil You Know) "Hell is a slow, cold dream… a numb descent to absolute zero… a dead-eyed observation of atrocity. It’s where you go to chill out when the horror catches up with you. You can easily die there, and never even care." Hellblazer is the... Continue Reading →
by Various Authors “I chuckle to myself to keep from sobbing. It's been over a year since I've seen my children.” (from "Visitation Rights") A chapbook from Cemetery Dance containing 4 Christmas-themed short stories, Holiday Horrors is super-fast and is a great read at this time of year. In no particular order: "Stocking Stuffers" by... Continue Reading →
by Richard Chizmar “I… I thought I was the only one. But… but you’re like me, aren’t you?” she asked. “Like you and then some.” Richard Chizmar’s outstanding collection of short stories, Midnight Promises, is another title suggested from John R. Little’s favorite 10 collections list. An unmistakable pattern is his choices has emerged. The... Continue Reading →
by Harlan Ellison “A world that has grown so complex and uncaring with systems and brutalization of individuals because of the inertia produced by those systems’ perpetuation of self, that merely to live is to be assaulted daily by circumstances.” Shatterday is another collection favorited by one of the best short story writers in the... Continue Reading →
by Voltaire “I have been in several provinces. . . in all, the principal occupation is love, the next is slander, and the third is talking nonsense.” Candide seems to have mastered one central theme, and the book will pound you over the head with it: If a man is standing over an open cesspool,... Continue Reading →
by Hugh Howey “They ought to have been left on their own, both people and the planet. Mankind had the right to go extinct. That’s what life did: it went extinct. It made room for the next in line.” Does the end justify the means? The debate on this theme has raged for a long... Continue Reading →
by Jim Thompson “It’s a screwed up, bitched up world, and I’m afraid it’s going to stay that way. And I’ll tell you why. Because no one, almost no one, sees anything wrong with it.” This book takes a fairly strong stomach as the story unfolds from the first-person perspective of our main character, a... Continue Reading →
by Fritz Leiber “There are two sides to every woman. . . One is rational, like a man. The other knows.” Norman, a successful professor at a mid-level private college is happily married to his wife Tansy when he one day catches her practicing witchcraft. He immediately pounces on her superstitions and insists she rid... Continue Reading →
by Chuck Palahniuk We are not special. We are not crap or trash, either. We just are. We just are, and what happens just happens. And God says, “No, that’s not right.” Yeah. Well. Whatever. You can’t teach God anything. Fight Club is the story of a man too sensitive to the shortcomings of modern... Continue Reading →
Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: Baskerville 2 by Anders Noren.