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For all of those who keep insisting that Stephen King is a literary equivalent of Big Mac and fries, writing in the comfortable confines of the frequently-despised 'genre' - please take a look at The Body: The Fall from Innocence, which is much more familiar to public in the quite faithful adaptation by Rob Reiner - 'Stand by Me'. It's not King's trademark horror; it is actually free of the constraints of any so-called 'genre'. It is a coming-of-age character-study novella set in 1960 Maine where monsters are not hiding behind bushes but instead live in the hearts of people - the setting and themes at which King excels.************This is a story of four boys on the brink of adolescence; \ the last moments of childhood told with occasional almost Bradbury-esque nostalgia but with the rose-tinted glasses mercilessly torn off.\ The blue-collar childhood in a small Maine town in 1960 is not a place of magic and wonder - these boys are no strangers to abandonment and abuse and prejudice. Hot-tempered and volatile Teddy Duchamp has been physically mutilated by his mentally ill father whom he still worships. Childish and not-too-bright Vern Tessio lives in fear of his brother. Gordie Lachance, whose adult writer self is telling us this story, is little but a stranger to his parents who never got over the death of his older brother. Smart and tough Chris Chambers, a kid from a family that supplies Castle Rock with alcoholics and juvenile delinquents, is being seriously abused by his father and is seen as a worthless and even dangerous person because of his family."Chris didn't talk much about his dad, but we all knew he hated him like poison. Chris was marked up every two weeks or so, bruises on his cheeks and neck or one eye swelled up and as colorful as a sunset, and once he came to school with a big clumsy bandage on the back of his head. Other times he never got to school at all. His mom would call him in sick because he was too lamed up to come in. Chris was smart, really smart, but he played truant a lot, and Mr. Halliburton, the town truant officer, was always showing up at Chris's house, driving his old black Chevrolet with the NO RIDERS sticker in the corner of the windshield. If Chris was being truant and Bertie (as we called him - always behind his back, of course) caught him, he would haul him back to school and see that Chris got detention for a week. But if Bertie found out that Chris was home because his father had beaten the shit out of him, Bertie just went away and didn't say boo to a cuckoo bird. It never occurred to me to question this set of priorities until about twenty years later."But childhood, even though not at all sheltered, still gives them something of a shield against the world - that sense of invulnerability that only the young children have, the love for adventure, and the protection of sincere and lighthearted friendship."Everything was there and around us. We knew exactly who we were and exactly where we were going. It was grand." **********But we meet them right at the time when they are about to leave the protection of childhood behind them, when in the miserably hot summer of 1960 they set out on a trip to find a body of a boy who disappeared in the woods - a trip that makes at least two of them go through quite significant emotional turmoil and reevaluate their priorities and see the strengthening of one friendship while the others fall apart as the realization sets in that there is more to friendship than just fun and leisure. This is a trip that uncovers both the steel and the vulnerability in the characters of Chris and Gordie, and shoves them from the haven of childhood into the world where things take work and sacrifice and pain, the world that is often cruel and cynical and unavoidable."But he said: "Your friends drag you down, Gordie. Don't you know that? [...] Your friends do. They're like drowning guys that are holding onto your legs. You can't save them. You can only drown with them."****This is a scary realization when you are young - that your friends are not good for you. I remember getting that feeling at around twelve, the age the boys in this book are, and I remember how unsettling that realization was. At that time it feels like friendships are forever, and that things that connect you to other people are there to stay - and realizing how easy and even necessary it can be to break those bonds is quite unsettling. "You always know the truth, because when you cut yourself or someone else with it, there's always a bloody show."******And some of this is present here - but on the other hand we are also treated to the strengthening of the true friendship between Gordie and Chris. Gordie, a kid who is emotionally neglected by his family, acutely feels the sincerity and kindness that Chris brings into the world, despite his 'tough' origins - Chris, the center of this ragtag group, is grown up beyond his years, and has some hard-earned wisdom for his twelve years of age, sprinkled with a bit of pain and bitterness but grounded in common sense."But it was only survival. We were clinging to each other in deep water. I've explained about Chris, I think; my reasons for clinging to him were less definable. His desire to get away from Castle Rock and out of the mill's shadow seemed to me to be my best part, and I could not just leave him to sink or swim on his own. If he had drowned, that part of me would have drowned with him, I think."**********I love the narrative voice of this story - the narration by a young but accomplished writer Gordon Lachance, bringing the perspective that the few decades that have passed since that summer of 1960 have given him - but yet conveying the feelings and the attitudes of a twelve-year-old boy who feels both resentment and love and experiences profound beauty and the low of human ugliness. There are lyrical parts and trademark-King unflinching gory parts, and social commentary without the slightest sugar-coating. The story is peppered in places with the stories written by older Gordon and full of reflections of the adult man reflecting on the important and defining experience of the end of his childhood. "The most important things are hardest to say, because words diminish them." It is a fascinating, engrossing read, the one that is well worth several hours of your time, even if you have never been a fan of King. 5 stars and highly recommend!

Prosecuting attorney in the Manson trial, Vincent Bugliosi held a unique insider's position in one of the most baffling and horrifying cases of the twentieth century: the cold-blooded Tate-LaBianca murders carried out by Charles Manson and four of his followers. What motivated Manson in his seemingly mindless selection of victims, and what was his hold over the young women who obeyed his orders? Here is the gripping story of this famous and haunting crime. 50 pages of b/w photographs.

Trapped in the Mexican jungle, a group of friends stumble upon a creeping horror unlike anything they could ever imagine. Two young couples are on a lazy Mexican vacation–sun-drenched days, drunken nights, making friends with fellow tourists. When the brother of one of those friends disappears, they decide to venture into the jungle to look for him. What started out as a fun day-trip slowly spirals into a nightmare when they find an ancient ruins site . . . and the terrifying presence that lurks there.

No visitors. No nights spent away from the apartment. No disturbing the other residents, all of whom are rich or famous or both. These are the only rules for Jules Larsen's new job as an apartment sitter at the Bartholomew, one of Manhattan's most high-profile and mysterious buildings. Recently heartbroken and just plain broke, Jules is taken in by the splendor of her surroundings and accepts the terms, ready to leave her past life behind.As she gets to know the residents and staff of the Bartholomew, Jules finds herself drawn to fellow apartment sitter Ingrid, who comfortingly, disturbingly reminds her of the sister she lost eight years ago. When Ingrid confides that the Bartholomew is not what it seems and the dark history hidden beneath its gleaming facade is starting to frighten her, Jules brushes it off as a harmless ghost story—until the next day, when Ingrid disappears.Searching for the truth about Ingrid's disappearance, Jules digs deeper into the Bartholomew's dark past and into the secrets kept within its walls. Her discovery that Ingrid is not the first apartment sitter to go missing at the Bartholomew pits Jules against the clock as she races to unmask a killer, expose the building's hidden past, and escape the Bartholomew before her temporary status becomes permanent.

Delightfully BRUTAL Psychological Horror.Jumping into this novella, I wasn't sure what to expect. To be honest, I never even read the synopsis. I see the name, Stephen Graham Jones, and immediately pick books up. It's a compulsion.Night of the Mannequins follows Sawyer, and his group of childhood friends, when a prank goes horribly wrong.Disguising a discarded mall mannequin as a patron at the local movie theater seemed like the perfect way to get back at the stuffy assistant manager. The same one who happened to recently punish the friend group for sneaking into a movie unpaid.What starts off as a fairly innocent prank, however, turns more deadly than this group of teens could have ever imagined. Sawyer seems to be the only one with a plan to limit the destruction.First, let me just swoon for a bit over how much I love SGJ's writing. I promise not to rave for too long.The style is edgy AF, yet feels like Classic Horror all the same. I love the humor and witty dialogue that he is able to bring to such dark and haunting tales.Also, his books always go there, all the way to the deepest, darkest crevices of the human mind. It's weird. It's powerful. It's freakingly disturbing.With this being said, I was really into this novella, loving everything about it until about the 70% mark. Then I started feeling lost. While I understand the ending, some of the choices of events leading up to the ending didn't seem to fit. It made the ending seem a little abrupt and disjointed for me.Overall though, this novella is fantastic. You cannot deny the level of creativity it takes to write a story like this.One that leads you in one direction, flips that on its head and then smacks you in the face with a healthy dose of depressing reality.Sawyer is a very special protagonist. He's one of those characters that (view spoiler)[can do horrible, terrible things, but still you feel like you are on their side (hide spoiler)]

Jason Dessen is walking home through the chilly Chicago streets one night, looking forward to a quiet evening in front of the fireplace with his wife, Daniela, and their son, Charlie—when his reality shatters.It starts with a man in a mask kidnapping him at gunpoint, for reasons Jason can’t begin to fathom—what would anyone want with an ordinary physics professor?—and grows even more terrifying from there, as Jason’s abductor injects him with some unknown drug and watches while he loses consciousness.When Jason awakes, he’s in a lab, strapped to a gurney—and a man he’s never seen before is cheerily telling him “welcome back!”Jason soon learns that in this world he’s woken up to, his house is not his house. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born.And someone is hunting him.

Among a group I read about on Goodreads for great scary-house Halloween books, The Good House certainly lived up to that billing and then some. It is a fine horror novel, with wonderful, well-developed characters, especially the feminine half of this family. Grandma Marie and her granddaughter Angela are powerful spiritual guides for voodoo magic, but Grandma used her power for ill intent in the past and a demon has come to exact revenge on the family and only Angela can save it and her small town from this curse.The Good House is the repository of the good and the evil that has taken hold. Some of the images of the horror are quite chilling, especially one involving a tower of leaves that I won't describe, but left me unsettled. Also the demon or "baka" and his abilities are grotesque, he is able to "ride" a person, effectively taking them over, until that person has vanished and nothing is left but the baka.One thing that was very intriguing is that the characters are multi-faceted; Tariq, Angela's ex-husband and father to her only child Corey, is a troubled figure. He is trying to overcome childhood abuse, but has a temper that is barely leashed and has come close to hitting Angela and has called her a bitch in front of Corey before. He also has a drug habit, even though he holds down a high-ranking, professional job. Also, Corey is not a perfect son. He mirrors his father's treatment of his mother, in being a whiny, aggressive teenager. At one point, I thought why is Angela trying so hard to save this family, when father and son seemed barely worth it.There is a lovely twist at the end that I didn't see coming and ties everything up quite well.

"Everybody is a book of blood; wherever we're opened, we're red." For those who only know Clive Barker through his long multigenre novels, this one-volume edition of the Books of Blood is a welcome chance to acquire the 16 remarkable horror short stories with which he kicked off his career. For those who already know these tales, the poignant introduction is a window on the creator's mind. Reflecting back after 14 years, Barker writes: I look at these pieces and I don't think the man who wrote them is alive in me anymore.... We are all our own graveyards I believe; we squat amongst the tombs of the people we were. If we're healthy, every day is a celebration, a Day of the Dead, in which we give thanks for the lives that we lived; and if we are neurotic we brood and mourn and wish that the past was still present. Reading these stories over, I feel a little of both. Some of the simple energies that made these words flow through my pen--that made the phrases felicitous and the ideas sing--have gone. I lost their maker a long time ago. These enthusiastic tales are not ashamed of visceral horror, of blood splashing freely across the page: "The Midnight Meat Train," a grisly subway tale that surprises you with one twist after another; "The Yattering and Jack," about a hilarious demon who possesses a Christmas turkey; "In the Hills, the Cities," an unusual example of an original horror premise; "Dread," a harrowing non-supernatural tale about being forced to realize your worst nightmare; "Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament," about a woman who kills men with her mind. Some of the tales are more successful than others, but all are distinguished by strikingly beautiful images of evil and destruction. No horror library is complete without them. --Fiona WebsterContents:· Introduction by Ramsey Campbell· The Book of Blood· The Midnight Meat Train· The Yattering and Jack· Pig Blood Blues· Sex, Death and Starshine · In the Hills, the Cities

In this unforgettable work of fiction, Donald Ray Pollock peers into the soul of a tough Midwestern American town to reveal the sad, stunted but resilient lives of its residents.\ \ Spanning a period from the mid-sixties to the late nineties, the linked stories that comprise Knockemstiff feature a cast of recurring characters who are woebegone, baffled and depraved but irresistibly, undeniably real. Rendered in the American vernacular with vivid imagery and a wry, dark sense of humor, these thwarted and sometimes violent lives jump off the page at the reader with inexorable force. A father pumps his son full of steroids so he can vicariously relive his days as a perpetual runner-up body builder. A psychotic rural recluse comes upon two siblings committing incest and feels compelled to take action. Donald Ray Pollock presents his characters and the sordid goings-on with a stern intelligence, a bracing absence of value judgments, and a refreshingly dark sense of bottom-dog humor.With an artistic instinct honed on the works of Flannery O' Connor and Harry Crews, Pollock offers a powerful work of fiction in the classic American vein. Knockemstiff is a genuine entry into the literature of place.

so i DID like this, and i don’t really have anything cool or fun to say about it for a review. but i just realized that i forgot to mention the boob euphemism of choice for this book was JAHOOBIES. i just wanted you all to know that....ok bye4/12

A young woman discovers a strange portal in her uncle’s house, leading to madness and terror in this gripping new novel from the author of the “innovative, unexpected, and absolutely chilling” (Mira Grant, Nebula Award–winning author) The Twisted Ones.Pray they are hungry. Kara finds the words in the mysterious bunker that she’s discovered behind a hole in the wall of her uncle’s house. Freshly divorced and living back at home, Kara now becomes obsessed with these cryptic words and starts exploring this peculiar area—only to discover that it holds portals to countless alternate realities. But these places are haunted by creatures that seem to hear thoughts…and the more one fears them, the stronger they become. With her distinctive “delightfully fresh and subversive” (SF Bluestocking) prose and the strange, sinister wonder found in Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, The Hollow Places is another compelling and white-knuckled horror novel that you won’t be able to put down.

The first scream came from the snowbound railwayman who felt the fangs ripping at his throat. The next month there was a scream of ecstatic agony from the woman attacked in her snug bedroom. Now scenes of unbelieving horror come each time the full moon shines on the isolated Maine town of Tarker Mills. No one knows who will be attacked next. But one thing is sure. When the moon grows fat, a paralyzing fear sweeps through Tarker Mills. For snarls that sound like human words can be heard whining through the wind. And all around are the footprints of a monster whose hunger cannot be sated... Cycle of the Werewolf.

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Turn of the Key and In a Dark Dark Wood returns with another suspenseful thriller set on a snow-covered mountain.Getting snowed in at a beautiful, rustic mountain chalet doesn’t sound like the worst problem in the world, especially when there’s a breathtaking vista, a cozy fire, and company to keep you warm. But what happens when that company is eight of your coworkers…and you can’t trust any of them?When an off-site company retreat meant to promote mindfulness and collaboration goes utterly wrong when an avalanche hits, the corporate food chain becomes irrelevant and survival trumps togetherness. Come Monday morning, how many members short will the team be?

I don't think one can truly rate Ghost Story as a novel without acknowledging the fact that it's a literary homage to the classics of the genre. Indeed, two characters bear the surnames of Hawthorne and James.This is my introduction to the work of Peter Straub. Having read The Talisman and Black House which he co-authored with Stephen King I was anxious to know how he writes on his own, and Ghost Story came recommended by virtually everyone who has read it. As mentioned in the first paragraph, Ghost Story is a homage to the old masters who paved the road of fright for future generations. Peter Straub himself says that "[Ghost Story] started as a result of my having just read all the American supernatural fiction I could find". It is noticeable; the first part is largely a reworking of The Turn of The Screw. The theme of a story within a story is everpresent, as the work deals with a group of old men who tell themselves ghost stories on regular meetings. Shades of Lovecraft, Poe and Hawthorne brood in the corners of the rooms they sit in.The men find themselves terrorized by terrible, realistic nightmares. Terrible things start happening in the small, sleepy town of Millburn.They remember the crime they had committed years before...and wonder if the time of retribution has finally arrived.What's not to like? Several things. first of all, the pace: the book is monstrous slog. A chore to get through. Straub switches between several narrative viewpoints (much like Stoker in Dracula) and the plot plods frequently and slows down so much that reading soon becomes a challenge. There's no doubt that Straub is a great writer - some of his passages I've read several times, because I simply enjoyed them so much - but he becomes lost in what he tries to do, the references he includes so subtly vanish in the detail he describes so voraciously.The protagonists discuss ghost stories they tell to each other, but for some reason refuse to talk about the one they all share even when darkness has fallen upon their city. Instead of trying to scheme how to fight or at least delay the danger, they remain passive. No one fights back. No one things of moving away and running from the deadly force. The passivity, the stupidness of their actions drastically slows down the plot and kills any tension that might have emerged. It would be understandable if the novel featured only one protagonist who witnessed these events and who would be afraid to entrust his story to others (in fear of being considered insane) - but Ghost Story features a group of men who believe each other, and do nothing.The theme of a town besieged by malevolent forces or beings has been done previously, most notably by Peter Straub's fellow writer and friend Stephen King in Salem's Lot. Straub acknowledges the influcence: "I wanted to work on a large canvas. 'Salem's Lot showed me how to do this without getting lost among a lot of minor characters. Besides the large canvas, I also wanted a certain largeness of effect."However, while Salem's Lot was swift, fast-paced and competent in dealing with the theme, Ghost Story doesn't quite deliver. The town of Millburn is described as a small town, but it completely lacks any awareness and interaction. The characters seem to be detached from reality - everyone walks everywhere, and there's little mention of pop culture - music, television and such. The novel is supposed to take time in the 1970s, but for all we are shown it might just as well be the 1870s.Last, the Evil with a capital E. While the concept of the Evil is really interesting, the Evil is really inconsistent and incompetent. There's no sense of looming presence of Evil, ready to fall upon the heads of innocent people and end their lives at any moment, like in Salem's Lot or Phantoms. Evil seems to be employed when it is needed by the narrative, and then pushed back, only to be called again later. I don't want to spoil anything, but the nature of the Evil and it's actions don't follow any pattern of logic and reason. Evil is at times omniscient and capable of incredible power, only to have its abilities reduced to humanlike status, and then go back to the supernatural and all-powerful again. Evil capable of everything is boring - why, it'd take a snap of fingers to eliminate a human being, much like a child breaking a twig in two - but one might wonder why the author chose to grant his menace that priviledge, only to take it back...and then allow it to be all poweful again, several times.Overall, I'm sad to say that Ghost Story doesn't live up to the hype that surrrounds it. While it is a complex, multilayered work, a homage to the creators of the genre, It's not very compelling and in fact is pretty easy to put down and leave unfinished. The concept, the idea of the novel - the premise, the prose, the situations - everything works, but not as a whole. I think I like the idea of the book better than the book itself - Peter Straub tends to be meandering and repetitive. There are sections of Ghost Story that are narrated brilliantly, but there are sections that are stale and uninteresting. For each flash of suspense and atmosphere, there's a whole lot of mundane and ordinary. The idea of the novel deserves five stars, but I can't give the novel itself more than three - I liked it, but I liked analysing the text more than reading it. Nevertheless, Peter Straub is an ambitious writer who's much more "literary" than most horror authors - his prose and style easily rivals the so-called "serious" writers - and I most certainly will read his other novels.

An unexpected quest. Two worlds at stake. Are you ready?Days after Oasis founder James Halliday's contest, Wade Watts makes a discovery that changes everything. Hidden within Halliday's vault, waiting for his heir to find, lies a technological advancement that will once again change the world and make the Oasis a thousand times more wondrous, and addictive, than even Wade dreamed possible. With it comes a new riddle and a new quest. A last Easter egg from Halliday, hinting at a mysterious prize. And an unexpected, impossibly powerful, and dangerous new rival awaits, one who will kill millions to get what he wants. Wade's life and the future of the Oasis are again at stake, but this time the fate of humanity also hangs in the balance.Lovingly nostalgic and wildly original as only Ernest Cline could conceive it, Ready Player Two takes us on another imaginative, fun, action packed adventure through his beloved virtual universe, and jolts us thrillingly into the future once again.

The definitive, dramatic untold story of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster, based on original reporting and new archival research.April 25, 1986, in Chernobyl, was a turning point in world history. The disaster not only changed the world’s perception of nuclear power and the science that spawned it, but also our understanding of the planet’s delicate ecology. With the images of the abandoned homes and playgrounds beyond the barbed wire of the 30-kilometer Exclusion Zone, the rusting graveyards of contaminated trucks and helicopters, the farmland lashed with black rain, the event fixed for all time the notion of radiation as an invisible killer.Chernobyl was also a key event in the destruction of the Soviet Union, and, with it, the United States’ victory in the Cold War. For Moscow, it was a political and financial catastrophe as much as an environmental and scientific one. With a total cost of 18 billion rubles—at the time equivalent to $18 billion—Chernobyl bankrupted an already teetering economy and revealed to its population a state built upon a pillar of lies. The full story of the events that started that night in the control room of Reactor No.4 of the V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Plant has never been told—until now. Through two decades of reporting, new archival information, and firsthand interviews with witnesses, journalist Adam Higginbotham tells the full dramatic story, including Alexander Akimov and Anatoli Dyatlov, who represented the best and worst of Soviet life; denizens of a vanished world of secret policemen, internal passports, food lines, and heroic self-sacrifice for the Motherland. Midnight in Chernobyl, award-worthy nonfiction that reads like sci-fi, shows not only the final epic struggle of a dying empire but also the story of individual heroism and desperate, ingenious technical improvisation joining forces against a new kind of enemy.

HEY, QUARANTINERS! i wrote another readalong/booklist thing for f(r)iction! this book is on it: The Call Is Coming From Inside Youthis is short and anything but sweet, somehow managing to pack a whole lot of creepiness into just under 200 pages. it’s a story of a woman’s disintegration as she is invaded by a demonic presence that insinuates itself into her body and mind, slowly and irrevocably supplanting her free will, causing her to engage in increasingly self-destructive behaviors, blowing up her life as it sinks its claws ever-deeper into her mind; jeopardizing her marriage, her job, her reputation, and her list of “never have i evers,” leading her helplessly down a violent path…as much as she can recall of it. it’s a truly chilling little story of a character’s descent into madness, her blackouts leaving the reader to fill in some of the pieces themselves, but showing enough of the gruesome aftermath to know that whatever she did, it ain’t gonna win her any good citizen awards. a few months back, i read Freshwater, which is (in part) about possession manifesting as mental disorder/insanity, and i thought emezi did a fantastic job of writing that headspace—making it accessible and sympathetic to the reader. this is just as effective, but gran spins her similar situation in a different direction. instead of emezi's transcendent/poetic/mythological realm, Come Closer shows, through a tantalizingly slow psychological slippage, how easy it is to give in, to let it all go, how freeing, sometimes, to let the demon tear down the whole damn house of cards.and that, my friends, is terrifying.***********************************SPOOKTOBER READING CONTINUES!!come to my blog!