ACCENT: THE PIER FALLS by Mark Haddon

Best known for his novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Haddon returns with a collection of short stories. Using spare language, Haddon writes small sketches with echoes of old fairy tales and fables. The title story is perhaps the strongest in the collection. A completely omniscient narrator floats between a buckling beam…

Books for August

  Summer, do your worst! / Light your tinsel moon, and call on / Your performing stars to fall on / Headlong through your paper sky; — August by Dorothy Parker THE SOUL OF AN OCTOPUS by Sy Montgomery   From the publisher: In this astonishing book from the author of the bestselling memoir The Good Good Pig, Sy…

READS for your winter break

A few days off mean more time to read. Right? Even between all the travel, parties and meals, we bibliophiles can usually find a few secret hours to read. Here are my suggestions on what to read (and what to skip) on your winter break. the big black lizard big book of locked-room mysteries Edited…

REVIEW: SUPERNATURAL ENHANCEMENTS by Edgar Cantero

This is an updated, modern take on the supernatural gothic tale. Set in present day, a young British man (only identified as A.) inherits an estate in rural Virginia. The house is over a century old and it seems each of its prior occupants has met with a premature end. This beneficiary is a rather…

REVIEW: THE GHOST OF THE MARY CELESTE by Valerie Martin

I am fascinated by tales of the ocean, mysteries of the sea (I even have an interest in cryptozoology).  The ocean is just so vast and for centuries uncharted.  It was the greatest adventure anyone could embark upon.  But even with maps and coordinates and best laid plans, ships disappear.  What’s significant about the Mary…