Joyce Carol Oates is often heralded as the Queen of American Gothic, at least of modern day writers. Recently she has focused her efforts on short stories and editing collections of others’ short stories. This offering is a hefty novel that she began working on nearly 30 years ago while living near Princeton, NJ. Set…
REVIEW: THE CUTTING SEASON by Attica Locke
Caren Gray has returned to her knotted, complicated roots ont he plantation of Belle Vie. Generations of her family have lived on this land, some under the heavy oppression of slavery. Now Caren is the caretaker and manager of the estate that is no loner inhabited. It is rented for parties and weddings and…
31 DAYS OF HALLOWEEN – Day 6
I am a great lover of the Victorian Gothic. Crumbling castles, secret inheritances, madness, and ghosts are things I never get tired of reading about. I even wrote my Masters thesis on the use of these genre elements in film. The Southern Gothic is something that I have always felt like I couldn’t quite grasp,…
31 DAYS OF HALLOWEEN – Day 2
I’m sure this won’t be the only post in 31 Days of Halloween to feature that great American writer of the Gothic, Edgar Allan Poe. But did you know he also wrote a The Balloon Hoax of 1844? It was a very complicated and technical story about two men who successfully flew across the Atlantic…
REVIEW: CHARLOTTE MARKHAM AND THE HOUSE OF DARKLING by Michael Boccacino
Charlotte Markham has been a victim of Fate. She lost her husband to a fire and was forced to take a job as governess in the Darrow house. When Nanny Prum is brutally murdered in the middle of the night, Charlote is required to take on those duties as well. She shares one thing with…