​I’m the first to rate and review this book. It stands to mention I mainly got it because I just recently read another book by this imprint and really enjoyed it. Gotta love a novella done right, the succinctness alone…
   I’m not familiar with Dysart. And I really should be given how busy he’s been in the world of comic books and how many of those I read. This is his venture into the picture-free (well, almost since this edition does provide some nice art vignettes) storytelling and it’s quite decent.  
   This is a slice of life sort of thing, if life is a brutally murderous proposition. Which it is for the book’s characters, a bunch of desperate down and out men who come together one brutal Indiana summer to build a bomb shelter. The story is set during the Red Scare McCarthyism era, so the bomb shelter is a reasonable proposition. The rest of the things that occur are very far from reasonable and the brood X suddenly released from its long sleep and determined to reign destruction upon all is not even the worst of it.
     It may sound horrific, but it is in fact a mystery, a murder (or murders to be exact) mystery which features classic locked space scenario, in this case a locked construction site. It isn’t technically locked, but there’s nowhere to go and no way to get there. And the body count continues to rise.
    And then there’s a nice reveal twist in the end. But the thing is…the killer, it might have been any one of these men. They are all sinners, so much so that at some juncture they seriously consider the place they find themselves in to be some sort of purgatory or a destination further south. It isn’t just that they bring all their prejudices with them, it’s their pasts…they’ve done things. Which is to say this is essentially one of those stories where terrible people do terrible things to each other for terrible reasons. As such, maybe not the most engaging or easily likable thing by nature, but interesting enough, well written and such a quick read. Maybe 60/65 minutes and worth the time. Thanks Netgalley.

​    Once upon a time there was a woman who claimed a long-dead famous composer came to her and dictated her music and there was a man determined to investigate these claims. If this sounds stranger than fiction, it’s because it is. This book is, in fact, based on a true story of a real-life woman who believed these things and has made her life about them.
     A very European sort of a novel, not just its Czech Republic setting, but the overall mood, style, and ambiance, it featured a denser narrative than I normally prefer, but despite it, it read very easily and enjoyably.
      There was something very engaging about this story and its characters. The woman in question is plain, plain-spoken, with not much education and a very limited music education, which makes her claims all the more spectacular. And the man, the documentary maker, is desperate to prove her to be a fraud and yet fails, time and again. So, is she or isn’t she? You won’t know until the very end and even then, it leaves space for interpretation.
     I loved the suspended uncertainty of it all. Is it a ghost visitation or an elaborate put-on affair? And if the latter, then to what end? The woman didn’t seem interested in fame or fortune.
     At any rate, a strangely enjoyable mystery about this world…the next. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

​   Carloz Ruiz Zafon has recently passed away, departing for his very own Cemetery of Forgotten Books, leaving behind a mesmerizing fictional world of his own invention.
    The mythical Barcelona of Zafon’s imagination, a gothic city of tall cathedrals and dark alleys, of mysterious bookstores and mysterious authors, has been brought to life with stunning detail over four interconnected books, beginning with The Shadow of The Wind and concluding with the behemoth Labyrinth of Spirits. (There are also a YA series potentially connected somehow, but having never read them, I can’t say for sure).
     I’ve read, listened to and adored those books. Sure, the more I mature as a reader and as a person, the more I notice that they aren’t perfect books, the goth lean is strong within them, they can be overwritten and overwrought, but…but…they are still so very lovely. Books written for book lovers.
     Barcelona is a character in and of itself within those books, a gorgeous, mysterious character, seemingly permanently shrouded in mist. So much so that it merits the title of this collection perfectly.
     These are the stories the author prepared for posthumous publication and majority of them are from the same world, tangentially or directly connected with the main stories and characters. Some are backstories elaborated, some are myths. One of them imagines the existence of the third volume of Don Quixote and circumstances of it. All of them, all of these stories will take you back to Barcelona, take you traveling through time, take you far and away to the magical city of the mist.
      Don’t know how much someone who’s never read the author and isn’t familiar with his writing and the Cemetery of The Forgotten Books series, will get out of this, but for the fans and completists this is a must. It’s a slim and dreamy volume that goes by very much like a short dream. It’s poignant, melancholic, and very lovely. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.
    

​    This novel had me at circus. It’s just one of those things, like cults, magic, bookstores, that fictionally I find irresistible.
     This story goes like this…in Victorian England a girl named Nell with strange birthmarks patterning her skin gets sold to a circus by her father. The circus is owned and operated by two brothers, the brash ambitious ringleader Jasper Jupiter and Toby, the giant quiet photographer, who works behind the scenes. Both brothers are war veterans with all the concomitant trauma, but different guilt allotments where it pertains to the fate of Jasper’s one-time close friend Dash. Dash’s lady love, the bearded lady, is now with the circus, as are great many wonderous acts.  
     And yet, it is Nell that Jasper decides to make his star attraction. With his ideas and her innate grace, Nell will defy gravity and take to the sky. She will become the Queen of the Moon and Stars. And Jasper’s fortunes will elevate with her.
    That’s the idea, anyway. The execution will prove to be more challenging, especially with an ego like Jaspers. There are constant undertones of the crash, a possibility that underscores any flight, shades of Daedalus and Icarus and all that, foreshadowing a tragedy to come.
    But meanwhile, the circus will mesmerize you with its wonder, give a young girl a place to belong, a lonely man someone to love and a bunch of outsiders something to hold on to.
    So for a fan of circus stories, this is great, this is perfect. So much so I’m going to round up my rating of the it.  But is it a perfect book? Well, not quite. I found the tone to lean heavily toward a dreamy, overwritten, severely internalized and overwhelmingly introspective. You spend most of the book inside its characters’ minds. Which is fine, it’s where you want to go as a reader, it might be the only time to have that sort of closeness with another person (albeit fictitious), but in this book the approach is, at times, oppressive.
     It also seems to condense a lot of plot in a very short time. It seems like at least a year ought to have passed, but then they state it’s only been two months.
     The romance is heavily overwritten too and then all but thrown over in favor of a kinda sorta adopted kid with a surprising speed.
      And yet, all in all, it’s a thing of beauty. A very specific melancholic sort of beauty, but still, especially at the end. The denouncement is dramatic, wild, fiery and at the very end…so very sad. Such is life…life outside of the circus anyway. Inside the circus…the show goes on.
      Overall, a lovely read. The pacing and dynamics of the narrative were somewhat dragged down by factors explained, but the story always shone through, beckoning like a brightly colored circus tent promising wonders of wonders. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

​ Out of nowhere this was surprisingly good. I’ve never read the author, heard of his and his Yard series, but not being a fan of serials, it didn’t much register. This novella certainly changes that, this merits a register.
     October perfect and atmospheric, this story takes the readers to Jutland, specifically a small island community off the cost of Denmark. A prodigal daughter returns to her ancestral abode, one that now belongs to her following the death of her mother. The daughter has just had a personal tragedy to reckon with, she’s a recent widow with a teenage daughter of her own in tow.
      The community is small, quiet, heavily agricultural, there’s nothing much to do or talk about, but there is a peculiar local custom, a well intended ritual with horrifying potential consequences. One that the young Juniper stumbles upon, one that her mother might have known about all along, the way every local seems to. One that’ll lead to devastating consequences.
      The fields have to be harvested, but at what cost? Read and find out, if you dare.
      So much to like here, where do I even begin? Great writing, realistic likeable characters, a positively haunting location that serves as a character in and of itself, terrific use of local legends, excellently rendered claustrophobia of a small insular community. All very nicely done.
      At the risk of giving away too much and at the risk of being those unimaginative people who compare new works to famous existing ones…this is Dutch Pet Cematary.
      Great read. Should have read it at night, but eerie enough in daytime too. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

​Ruth Ware is back at it again. It meaning being a pale imitation of Agatha Christie. But you know she must be doing something right to gain the sort of universal acclaim and adoration she is getting. And that something is tapping directly into the popular market and riding the thriller estrogen wave all the way to the shore.
Yes, she plies formulas, often formulas previously seen and done by Agatha Christie, yes, she writes the same characters over and over, but she seems to know what she’s doing, there’s a slick deliberateness behind it all. It’s all pop fiction, absolutely, beach or otherwise, it’s all about as profound as a soap dish and occasionally just as bubbly, but it works. On a very basic level it works well and entertains. A terror at high seas...not quite.
This is now my third read by her and it seems to be the least predictable, which is to say the crucial plot twist that mystery thriller genre lives and dies by, here is slightly less obvious that it was in her two other books. The formula she’s beating to death here once again is a locked something mystery, this time a locked cruise ship. A luxury cruise ship, mind you, a very fancy kind, loaded with the glittery shiny well to do cardboard cutouts of characters and among them a misfit, an ambitious middling reporter, a commitment phobic woman in her 30s with an antidepressant dependency and a penchant for drinking, also with freshly acquired PTSD from being burgled in her flat.
Which is to say not the most reliable of witnesses, so when she thinks she sees/hears a murder (some Rear Window thrown in there too, because why not, apparently) in a cabin next to her, she has some convincing to do. And then some sleuthing. And then she really steps into it and it becomes all about pure survival.
And meanwhile Ware throws in snippets of information meant to mislead readers. But is the protagonist going to make it? Well, you’ll just have to read and find out. You might not care, she certainly isn’t especially likeable or engaging, but she’s got the same appeal as Ware’s books, superficial and pop.
The kind of books that the great literati (and yes, that is sarcasm) Reese Witherspoon folksily suggest y’all check out.
Overall, as far as quick mindless thrillers go, this fits the bill perfectly. Just don’t expect more. This is an author who found her perch and appears to be very comfortable there. But, with reasonably adjusted expectations, you will be entertained.

​   Ah, the literati strikes. You can almost hear the acclaim as you read this book. The praise for its moody ambiance, its peculiar structure, its wild disregard for convention, be it plot or punctuation. This is the sort of book that wins award and leaves the regular readers at best bewildered.
   To be fair, there’s a basic plot here, it’s to do with a young woman and her father. The latter is a musician, the former is…um…sleeps around and gets knocked up. The daughter first gets obsessed with her father’s musician friend and later with some random golfer. She has these passionate(ish) affairs. The father plays music.
    There’s another musical presence in their lives named Extabeth. She’s oh la la.
    There just isn’t much here, though to be fair, the book does have the mercy of brevity. It’s a weird and thin plot populated with not especially likeable characters doing not much at all.
     It touts itself as a Scot’s take of the great Russian novel and fails lamentably at that. Just doesn’t have the same soul. Vodka soaked or not.
     Overall, this isn’t so much a work of literature as an experiment and for me it didn’t work. Thanks Netgalley.

​Bookselling is a dying art. In fact, bookselling as Gary Goodman came to know it over the decades of being in business, is already dead. Internet murdered it. It became another casualty of the technological progress.
     I’m not complaining, for me personally the invention of digital reading has been one of the best things about this rampant advance of technology. I read exclusively digitally and love it. But for purely somatic, nostalgia driven reasons I understand the tragedy of the demise of bookstores. It’s like an end of an era. Bookstores and booksellers had a certain classic appeal,  the inimitable atmosphere. And booksellers of Goodman’s kind were a very specific breed, they hunted down books, think a pedestrian version of Dean Corso. Think someone like Apollo Kagwa, the protagonist of LaValle’s The Changeling. Even reading that fairly recent book I remember thinking…do those still exist? People who can make a living out of selling and reselling books?
      Well, they do apparently, but far and few inbetween, a sliver of what the business used to be. Goodman did it as long as it was possible and got out just in time. Interestingly enough, he got into the business completely randomly. This wasn’t a man who dreamed the romantic dream of owning a bookstore. This was a man with an already established if unsatisfactory career, who bought one on a whim, knowing nothing about the business and learning on the go.
      Learn he did and prospered and managed to raise a ridiculous number of children doing it, so major kudos there. And now, in his retirement, he gets to regale us with his tales of the business’ last decades, his time. You get to meet quirky characters and learn behind the scenes secrets and goings on. It’s a lot of fun, especially for the bookishly inclined.
      The thing is, though, through it all there’s a strong undercurrent of this is business, books are business. What drives a lot of these people, including Goodman, is profit, and books are seen as just another commodity. And for the bookishly inclined this may not be the most…romantic approach. In other words, this all seems to be done less out of the love of books and more out of just…here’s a quirky oddball way to make a living. But you get the idea that instead of books it might have been collectible figures or something and it would still be the same, just a commodifiable object. That’s kind of disappointing, to be honest. Books seem to be more than that, at least to those who love them.
       At any rate and whatever his motivations, Goodman produced a great story here, it’s engaging, humorous, entertaining. It’s considerably more pessimistic than the recent documentary movie The Booksellers on the similar subject, but it’s also a more realistic one.
        In the increasingly dumbed down and digitally attached society, the books might stand a chance, but bookselling doesn’t really. And if bookselling (the art and the business) were to have a literary tombstone, this book might just be the right fit.
        Lovely quick engaging read. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.
 

​   I really liked the author’s Pretty Things, despite the book’s considerable bulk, despite my strong belief that books should contains themselves in under 400 pages (under 300 ideally) for optimal reading enjoyment. Pretty Things was a very good book, and it carried its weight with admirable grace, reading very quickly and dynamically. It wasn’t a conventional mystery thriller that is so insanely/oppressingly popular right now, it was more of a crime drama, a highly literary, character driven crime drama and a strikingly engaging one at that.
    So I knew I was going to read more by the author and this book certainly didn’t disappoint. It’s more of the same in quality and style, though thematically it takes a somewhat different approach. This is a story of twins and all the ways their naturally strong connection is stretched and twisted over the years. And it’s quite mesmerizing in its own way.
    Sam and Elli were born 11 minutes apart and, while being virtually indistinguishable in appearance, grew up to be very different people. Their innate closeness resisted this and so throughout the years they tried to compensate for it by making compromises. It didn’t work in the end, because compromises can only take one so far. And so, two bright and shining teen starlets grew into a barely getting by junkie and an addict, Sam, and a perfect suburban wife, Elli. And they followed along in their tracks until…well, until now.
     Now Elli’s gone, missing. She left her freshly adopted baby girl behind and freshly sober Sam has to come and help take care of her. But the longer Elli stays away, the more suspicious Sam gets and decides to investigate this on her own. She soon finds out that her sister was involved in a self-improvement group i.e. cult and things unravel from there.
     As much as I love cult stories, it wasn’t even the main appeal here. The main appeal was the writing itself, strikingly engaging even when the characters were difficult to like or love, overpowering even the potent estrogen/mommy streak throughout the novel, it had such a terrific energy, such dynamism, it was tough to put down. The sister act of Sam and Elli, their title predicted interchangeability and their variously unpredictable differences, made for a profoundly entertaining and wildly compelling read. And this time the author did manage to tell the story in well under 400 words, so yey. Very good read all around. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.