The Down Days is about an African epidemic of laughter that quickly turns sour when it is found to be 100% fatal. It is based on a real pandemic of mass delusions that happened in Tanzania in 1962. The Down Days seems like it is a news report from ourContinue Reading
Hollis is a gifted songwriter, who gives his songs away for peanuts to his ex-girlfriend, who is now both rich and famous. You see Hollis has a physical deformity, a hunchback, that has caused him to recede from life. But when The Poison Flood of toxic chemicals hits his smallContinue Reading
So what is FOMO? The Fear of Missing Out, of course. It’s not a new fear. It used to be called “Keeping Up with the Jones”. Now with social media everywhere, the Jones are not just your neighbors but literally anyone on the planet. It was renamed by the authorContinue Reading
Scandinavian Noir is a love letter by the author to her beloved Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian mysteries. It is also a memoir describing how she loved the written version of Scandinavia so much, she moved to Stockholm. I have read at least one book in each of the author’s threeContinue Reading
Be forewarned! Castle Skull is not your typical John Dickson Carr mystery. It has many melodramatic elements tacked onto the traditional golden-age mystery. A castle that looks like a skull. Its owner, a magician, missing from a train car who is later found drowned in a nearby river. A closeContinue Reading
For $279 each, you can have Little Eyes in an awkwardly-shaped stuffed animal running around your house or office. They’re called Kentukis. A combination of a Furby, Alexa, and a one-way cellphone call. They can’t talk but they are sentient. In fact, they are run by a real person, calledContinue Reading
Who knew that Jackson Pollock and Abstract Expressionist was financially supported by the CIA to beat Russian Communism. Mind blown! This and more secrets are in the accurately named Pollock Confidential. The artwork is very golden-age superhero. I expected to see color pixels if I looked really close. It fitsContinue Reading
When a new Mary Kay Andrews’ book comes out, everyone knows that summer is just around the corner. This year the book’s title, Hello, Summer, says it all. Conley wiped the dirt from her small Florida hometown off her shoes and eventually became a Pulitzer-prize nominated investigative journalist. She’s aboutContinue Reading
Karen is the unabashedly most famous member of Pure Club, a miniskirted all-girl pop band. After being stabbed at a fan event, she quits the group. Hikaru is a judo jock. Nina Kamiyama is the only girl in their high school who wears pants. How they relate to each otherContinue Reading
The true tale of The Imprisoned Princess proves that the rich have always been different even in the late 1600s. Indeed the poorer royals, born on both sides of the blanket, were as prone to affairs as the royals at the Court of Versailles. Some like Clara were even havingContinue Reading