​     Now that’s how it’s done. That’s how you go about terrifying your audience by presenting an eerie tale through literary storytelling and spectacular, spectacularly creative art.  Yes. A resounding yes. Kudos, Round of applause.
    Now that it’s been optioned for screen, our library is finally getting these books. Well, it did one and two anyway and I sincerely hope they’ll get the rest, because this was so good.
    First off, some words on the art. For me, the story is always the main course and art matters, but it can take a secondary role as presentation does to a meal, say. But here the art isn’t merely good (which it is and I would have liked it even if it was regularly laid out in nine even sized panels to a page or whatever), it’s so freaking creative. The way the panels are used in structuring the story kinda blew my mind. There were such wildly original constructs from an ingenus two page cubic construct to a variety of visually fascinating and exciting displays. A singular display of sheer excellence.
    Now to the story…I already knew I liked the author going by his original offbeat take on superheroes that he had so expertly Black Hammered in. And here he sticks with the color, but makes a barn out of it. A mysterious building that appears and disappears throughout time, unleashing various madness on those who behold it in all its ominous splendor.
     The story begins with a priest who has (reluctantly and against his wishes) been transferred to guide the flock of the eponymous town after his predecessor apparent death. The reluctance proves justified almost immediately as the priest gets thrown at least up to his shoulders into the soup of it, murders, mysteries and all. But he isn’t the only one affected by the black barn, there’s also man freshly out on his own after a time in a mental institution, who is obsessed with it and (in a reverse of what therapy is supposed to do) drags his therapist into this obsession.  And many others, including local police detectives and a possibly secret society of Ploughmen.
     In this town, black barn is Rome in the way that all roads seem to lead to it. It’s a journey well worth taking, albeit strictly literary, otherwise it’s too frightening.
     Not since a certain tv series adaptation of a certain Maine based author of literary nightmares has someone gotten so much mileage out of a barn. And this is shaping up into all sorts of awesomeness. Can’t wait to read more. Recommended.

​       Since these female powered thrillers have become all the rage, there have been every possible twist and variation on this title…The Other Wife, The Next Wife, The Last Wife, etc. etc…hence (presumably) this weirdly precise clunker…who says Subsequent when it comes to spousal descriptions, anyway?
      Well, actually the male lead in this book possibly might, the oddly precise fellow that he is. But then again, desperation is a terrible adviser and Jennifer (Jenny) Lomax is desperate. She’s had a rough go of it thus far, living on the streets at its nadir, after being chucked out by her uncaring parents upon their splitting up. She never made it to college…because money. She rents a tiny space from a young family, who only use her to make the mortgage, making that living situation all kinds of weird and unhomey…because money. The two friends she had are too busy with their own lives. Jenny is constantly lonely and worried about her financial security and future.
     But she did finally land a decent job after years of slogging away for minimum wage doing sh*t work, literally. Now Jenny helps operate a busy storage facility, makes ok wages and gets to meet lots of people. And as fate would have it, one of them turns out to be a quiet, reserved 40 year old widower, who initially becomes the objection of jenny’s obsession and later a somewhat reluctant affection. Is he the romantic lead of her dreams? No, not at all. But he embodies a promise of safety and security that Jenny finds positively irresistible enough to overlook all sorts of red flags. Of which there are many. No race car would have proceeded around the track with flags that red being waved that aggressively but Jenny preservers with that desperate, stubborn naivete of youth. Reader, she marries the creep. And, subsequently, (just had to throw that in) gets into a lot of doodoo for her choices.
     So that’s the novel. It isn’t hugely original, in fact for the overwhelming majority of it, it reads like a modern retelling of Rebecca…the differences only come in toward the end and to author’s credit they are significant enough to make this into its own (albeit heavily Rebecca inspired) story.  The narrative speeds along at a nice clip, although at times its repetitive, especially in reinstating Jenny’s financial and emotional woes. And Jenny, for all her youth, is a likeable enough of a character to make watching her steady careening overboard compelling enough of a read. Just about. Nothing special here, but perfectly decent with a few entertaining plot twists and a doozy of an ending, which is a small accomplishment in and of itself.  Fans of the wrong man she married type of stories should be pleased. Thanks Netgalley.

​  Meet Detective Lipkin, the oldest Private Detective in Miami. A retired police officer and a war veteran, the man doesn’t use computers or mobile phones, just good old fashioned detective work, a typewriter and some baked goods powered determination.
    Lipkin gets hired by a local theatre producer to find his partner who has mysteriously absconded with all their money. It’s a seemingly straight forward deal, but it gets all tangled up as these things are wont to do and suddenly popular to the extent that suddenly the 87 year old detective finds himself with lots of clients and lots of cases all orbiting the same main one.
    Ok, to be fair, I really enjoy stories with elder protagonists, so that was the initial appeal, but Mr. Lipkin would have won me over either way, that old charmer. Just as this book had. It’s pure noir in narration, albeit the sun soaked glitzy Miami style. The writing is really enjoyable, it’s humorous,  engaging and features great character writing and development for both Lipkin and the myriad of side players around him, from Eastern European oligarchs to his own curtain twitching tedious neighbors to a young girl whom he helps just because he’s that kind of a guy, a proper mensch.
     Which is all to say, I really, really liked this book. It was the most pleasant of surprises for a random kindle freebie, something on normally shouldn’t expect too much out of.  Though normally I’m not a fan of series as a format, had Detective Lipkin’s adventures been serialized, I’d probably read more. Alas, no. Seems that was his one and only fictional outing. Oh well, at least it was a good one. Recommended.

I did not expect much out of this book. Kinda figured it would be yet another feminist manifesto thinly disguised as a cartoon guide to womanhood or something along those lines. Just grabbed it on a whim for a quick mindless read and it ended up being a pleasant surprise.
Yes, it is absolutely a feminist cartoon feature, message and all, but if one must have such a message, it’s best presented on a platform as funny as this. And this book is seriously funny. At times laugh out loud so.
The author uses her own life, both real and imaginary scenarios, to talk about things like body acceptance, sex confidence and popularizing the word vulva. The cartoons are silly and pink (Elle Woods would be proud), but beneath the silly exterior you’ll find refreshing frankness, cleverness and an actual barrel or so of laughs. So this is really a deceptively cute book.
Whether you want to raise a fist and nod along with someone who speaks your truth or have women demystified and girlsplained to you or just after some quick laughs, this is well worth checking out. Pink and silly a it may seem. Fun approach to feminism...you go, girl. Something along those lines, anyway.

​     I kinda changed my mind on this one. I may have rated the first book too high, because having read both of them (and the story is nowhere near over just yet), the overall impression seems to be more along the lines of likeable, but average.
    Yes, the art is very good, but plot wise it’s pretty thin and there doesn’t seem to be enough originality here to rate this story above any of the similar monster hunting scenarios. Plus there are just too many kid characters. It would almost be YA if they weren’t so committed to very (surprisingly) graphically doing the titular thing.
    These books are fun enough and read very quickly, so I’d almost certainly read more if the library acquires them, if only to enjoy the art, but wouldn’t really care if that was the last of them either. A nice noncommittal approach. User mileage may vary.

​    I'm delighted to be the first person to rate and review this. Maybe my words will inspire readers looking for something different, something quirky, some kind of a oddball show just like this one.
    I found this book on Netgalley late at times and read the description very sleepily, so the actual book turned out to be something of a surprise, since I seem to have expected nonfictional account of lives of extreme performance and instead got the fictional versions thereof. But aside from that, it was a pretty enjoyable read. 
   Mind you, fictional or nonfictional, this was very much up my alley as most things even remotely circus adjacent tend to be. I mean, give a story about magic and magicians any day and odds are I’ll find it magical In fact, most of my favorite stories in this collection were about magicians, especially about the kid.
     I never remember the actual titles, apologies, but there were about ten stories in this collection and all of them ranged from good to very good. The quality was somewhat uneven, but then again the stories span decades of the author’s writing career so that (much like occasional dated references) was to be expected. Actually, as a dedicated movie buff, I found the dated references story to be fun in that who’s who of the bygone era trivia sort of way. It isn’t the only movie related story either and I liked the other one a lot. It was right up there with the magic.
   Overall, interesting and entertaining bunch of tales, featuring interesting and entertaining protagonists. There are many different approaches to short fiction, but the author took the one I prefer…an entire three act proper narrative done in reduced page count. Pleasantly offbeat and with an excellent ear for very natural, organic sounding dialogue, these stories were well worth a read and served as an excellent introduction to a new to me author. These artists put on quite a performance. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

​     Well…pretty sure I don’t need to tell you what this book is about. The title is about as descriptive as they come. There’s a hungry monster in the woods and a mysterious green eyed young woman has just arrived to the sleepy small town to slay it. Let the fun begin.
   Very straight forward story that ably reincarnates childhood fears and does it all through some really striking art. There are some larger mysteries that are only hinted at in book one, but presumably book two will tell all. At any rate, this is very much like Goldfishes. Delicious, and you can’t just have one. And so onto the next one. Recommended.

​    I’m a huge fan of Vertigo publications. Which means I’ll read just about whatever they put out (and our library deems ok to acquire), irrespective of the themes. Which is to say normally I might not read a military thriller or military themes fiction in general. But this…I read this. And  glad I did. After all, a good story is a good story. And the fact that the author drew from his personal experiences as a CIA operative in Middle East certainly helped, giving the novel a certain boots in the sand realism.
    The plot follows an investigation into the murder of a local police trainee recruit, which has the protagonist, all American Chris (tailored named and looking exactly like the next serious role for Thor) teaming up with a femme fatale styled Iraqi American woman from a governing council and a well seasoned older local police officer. Together, the unlikely trio uncovers some unsavory secrets, which of course I can’t discuss as to avoid the surprise elements.
    So it’s essentially a murder mystery and a very plot riven story, but for me what worked best was the character writing and art. The art alone here is worth reading the book, it’s absolutely stunning with superb portraiture. The latter is actually a fairly infrequent occurrence in graphic novels, usually it’s all about the grand scheme of the panels, the colors, etc. but here the artist has done an absolutely awesome job of conveying the emotions of the characters. Absolutely spectacular book visually. The story will speak to different readers differently, maybe, depending on their opinions on military fiction. But overall the book is well written, morally complex, interesting, emotionally striking and stunningly drawn. Recommended.

​    I was craving a science fiction novel to balance my reading diet. This one seemed intriguing, but there was…baseball. Crap. Even for someone like me who doesn’t care for competitive sports, baseball is still at the bottom of every list. Just a weird, weird, inexplicably popular game. So much so that it has been dragged all the way into the future, albeit somewhat tweaked.
    Actually the game itself hasn’t changed much, the players have. Much like the rest of the world in this disturbingly imaginative future, (almost) everyone has gone mad for body modifications and alterations. The tech has finally gotten to the place where the original body plan is a mere suggestion and people are suping themselves up and tweaking themselves out as much as they can, imagination and money being the only limits. And, of course, for athletes who have been enhancing themselves up for ages anyway, this is positively de rigueur. So that Kobo, our protagonist and self improvement junkie, isn’t really surprised when his adopted brother, a professional baseball player, calls him up out of the blue seemingly all messed up. But he is surprised when this brother turns up dead. And upset. Which, along with the promise of much needed funds, is a sufficient motivation for Kobo to investigate this murder when he is hired to do so by the league’s owner.
     So this is a murder investigation thriller.  Done by an ambitious amateur. In a world where the truth much like people is almost infinitely malleable. And for all the technological and scientific advantages that have been made, some fundamental facts about people, greed, ambition, arrogance, etc. remain same as they ever were.
   What Kobo stumbles into is essentially the next step in the evolution or devolution of the species, a journey as dangerous and terrifying for him as it is exciting for the readers.
   This futuristic (potentially cyberpunk?) adventure was a pretty fun read and a most impressive debut for the author. Dynamic pacing and all around good writing, especially when it comes to characters, who came out as complex psychologically as they are biotechnologically. Granted, for me it was all about genetics gone wild and not at all about baseball, but overall surprisingly  readable for a sportscentric story. So, if like me, you don’t care about grown men in silly outfits chasing a ball in accordance to seemingly arbitrary rules for insane amounts of money, you can still enjoy this book. I’d imagine most science fiction fans would. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.