The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor

 

The National Book Award-winning novel—and contemporary classic—that launched the brilliant career of Gloria Naylor, now with a foreword by Tayari Jones
“A shrewd and lyrical portrayal of many of the realities of black life . . . Naylor bravely risks sentimentality and melodrama to write her compassion and outrage large, and she pulls it off triumphantly.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Brims with inventiveness—and relevance.” —NPR's Fresh Air

In her heralded first novel, Gloria Naylor weaves together the stories of seven women living in Brewster Place, a bleak-inner city sanctuary, creating a powerful, moving portrait of the strengths, struggles, and hopes of black women in America. Vulnerable and resilient, openhanded and openhearted, these women forge their lives in a place that in turn threatens and protects—a common prison and a shared home. Naylor renders both loving and painful human experiences with simple eloquence and uncommon intuition in this touching and unforgettable read.

In the 1980s which I still sometimes think was only 20 years ago, I watched the made for tv movie, Women Of Brewster Place. At the time, I paid no attention to the credits, had never heard of Gloria Naylor and had no idea the movie was made from a book. The movie was stuck in my mind all these years and  a couple of years ago I decided to go ahead and buy it to re-watch. I finally saw the credits and as the movie was still playing I immediately searched out and ordered a copy of the book. This weekend I finally sat down to read it and it has now sent me on a shopping spree to pick up more of Gloria Naylor's work.

This book is the bittersweet tale of seven Black women who all eventually end up in the run down tenement building of Brewster Place, a building on a dead end street where joy and hopelessness share equal time. Crime is rampant in the alley and by the wall that cuts them off from the more upscale neighborhood. Set in the days when being a lesbian could cost you your job, having a baby could keep you from getting housing. It is beautifully written and sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes hopeful, but never boring. It claims to be short stories, but to me it's more like chapters on each individual woman, and Ben the janitor/caretaker is an important character as well. It's hard for me to talk about the book without talking about the movie. The book is more graphic in certain scenes that would have been too intense for tv in those days, and yet the movie stuck so close to the book as to even include most of the dialogue word for word. It's only near the ending of the book that the movie went a slightly different way. I guess I have to recommend both to you, I loved them equally.

5 out of 5 stars

About the author

Gloria Naylor won the National Book Award for first fiction in 1983 for The Women of Brewster Place. Her subsequent novels included Linden Hills, Mama Day and Bailey's Cafe. In addition to her novels, Naylor wrote essays and screenplays, as well as the stage adaptation of Bailey's Cafe. Naylor also founded One Way Productions, an independent film company, and was involved in a literacy program in the Bronx.

A native New Yorker, Gloria Naylor was a graduate of Brooklyn College and Yale University. She was distinguished with numerous honors, including Scholar-in-Residence, the University of Pennsylvania; Senior Fellow, The Society for the Humanities, Cornell University; the President's Medal, Brooklyn College; and Visiting Professor, University of Kent, Canterbury, England. Naylor was the recipient of Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships for her novels and the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship for screenwriting. She passed away on September 28, 2016 at the age of 66.

Survive the Night by Riley Sager

 

Charlie Jordan is being driven across the country by a serial killer. Maybe.

Behind the wheel is Josh Baxter, a stranger Charlie met by the college ride share board, who also has a good reason for leaving university in the middle of term. On the road they share their stories, carefully avoiding the subject dominating the news - the Campus Killer, who's tied up and stabbed three students in the span of a year, has just struck again.

Travelling the lengthy journey between university and their final destination, Charlie begins to notice discrepancies in Josh's story.

As she begins to plan her escape from the man she is becoming certain is the killer, she starts to suspect that Josh knows exactly what she's thinking.

Meaning that she could very well end up as his next victim.

Around the middle of last year this seemed to be "The Book" that everyone was either anticipating or already reading. (FOMO)Fear of missing out is what sent me to request a review copy. My request was very politely rejected, with a lovely note from the publisher telling me that their remaining review copies were being saved for book sellers or reviewers who write for major publications. I should have let that be the end of it, and we'd all be better off if I had. It's rare that someone declines my offer to read a book and that must be what made me even more determined to read it. This happened to me before where I was declined, requested elsewhere, got the book, and regretted reading it. That should have taught me a lesson. Next time I will take as a sign that the book is just not for me. This book sure was not! 

It starts off well enough. There's a killer on the loose. The Campus killer to be exact, who has murdered Charlie's friend Maddy, and left her wracked with guilt because they had been together earlier that evening. Charlie left her alone at the bar, where she was never seen alive again. Charlie, unable to cope, has decided she must leave the university IMMEDIATELY. In fact she can not even wait a couple of days for her boyfriend to drive her. She decides instead to take a ride with a total stranger, who as it turns out may or may not be the murderer. This begins a long and boring car ride broken up by a series of hallucinations that Charlie calls "seeing movies" in her head.

As someone who has a strong dislike for books or movies that suck you in and then say oops that was all just a dream, I find that I am equally disinterested in hallucinations as I am in dream sequences. The long car trip with only two characters, neither of which interested me reminded me of why I didn't like the Jeepers Creepers movie much, although they at least were not hallucinating.

You may enjoy this book more than I did, plenty of people have loved it.

2 out of 5 stars.

Congeal by John F. Leonard

 

It starts with reports on the news of an inland lake turning semi-solid.
Surely, a media joke, some lame April Fool’s prank?
The before and after pictures are vaguely ludicrous and oddly disturbing, the contrast stark and strange.
First, darkly rippling water that hints at hidden depths. Slightly spooky and perfectly normal. Next, a putrid blotch of clotted sludge which bears little resemblance to anything aquatic.

It isn’t a joke.
And pretty soon, that greasy, sickening substance isn’t confined to an inland lake.
It’s spreading. Flowing over fields and filling streets.
Each morning brings a new revelation. Countryside denuded of life and towns empty and echoing.
The night is when it changes, becomes something that consumes. Something infinitely worse than a congealed impossibility.
CONGEAL is a short tale of apocalyptic horror. How the world ends may not be how you expect. Nuclear Armageddon or a zombie apocalypse could get beaten to the punch.
Our apocalypse may come from below.
An ancient, cosmic entity bubbling up to the surface in search of food.
It’s also the story of one individual and her fight to stay afloat in a sea of despair.

Don't you hate it when your life is going along great and then the world ends? I sure do. So does Amelia. One minute she's living her happily ever after, barely concerned about some weird thickening of lake water, and the next she's running for her life from some form of gelatinous ooze that's consuming everything in it's path. Food is scarce, the power is out, and she's running out of places to hide. 

This was a fast paced post apocalyptic sort of sci fi horror. If that's your genre than I highly recommend this novella.

It put me in mind of The Blob but without the teenage goofiness. 

4 out of 5 stars

I received a complimentary copy.

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About the author

Tethered to Darkness by Justin Holley

 

To escape her fanatically religious upbringing, Mia moves away to attend State University instead of the bible-college her family wanted. After orientation, Mia’s new friends invite her to the Para-Psychology Club, where she meets a charismatic professor, who introduces her to Astral Projection. Mia finds that her social anxiety makes her a natural at the maneuver. So, when her possessive boyfriend tracks her down, hellbent on returning her home, she escapes their possessive grip by slipping into the nether. However, while out of her body, something ancient and dark—and from her past—takes over. Forced to deal with not only the entity now using her body but also the religious extremists who have arrived to remove it, her only hope lies in the hands of her new friend Bruce and the enigmatic Professor Colista as they try to save her from a fate beyond hell.

Mia has grown up with religious fanatics for parents although she does remember when they were more party animal than religious zealot. Her church is of the opinion that everything is a sin, even something as simple as yoga or meditation. Mia's parents expect her to attend bible college but she decides to stand up for herself and attend the state university. 

With the way she has been raised, coupled with her random bouts of tears caused by her anxiety disorder it seems like living on campus would be a huge culture shock for her. Somehow she manages to fit right in. Even her sex crazed, wannabe rock star, room mate doesn't seem to phase her.

After she attends one talk on astral projection and has a quick peek at a book on the subject she succeeds in leaving her body on her very first try. Her second attempt does not end as well for her and she gets trapped outside her body when an entity moves in.

I enjoyed parts of this story but did not care for several of the characters or the way they interacted with each other. I wanted to like Mia's new friend Bruce, but the running commentary in his head put me off. I couldn't stand the roommate and it seemed weird that Mia would be hanging out with her. Pastor Matt was nauseating, though I assume he was intended to be, as was the boyfriend. The father was weak. Professor Colista grew on me but I think his cat was the only character I really cared about. The plot was clever in theory but the execution didn't quite make it.

I have enjoyed previous works by this author, and you may enjoy this one more than I did.

My thanks to Silver Shamrock Publishing for the review copy.

About the author

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The Unhallowed Horseman by Jude S. Walko

 

In a town enamored with its Unhallowed Horseman legend, a distraught teenage boy must come to terms with his personal demons, and perhaps the Horseman himself.
Set on All Hallows’ Eve, psychological thriller The Unhallowed Horseman takes place against the backdrop of a seemingly peaceful, picturesque American small town with an iconic past. The story follows Vincent, a distraught and troubled high schooler, and his descent into the demons that plague his mind.
Some things about the town and its inhabitants aren’t quite as they seem. Generations of families have been living there with a deep and dark secret, one on the verge of reincarnating itself once again.
With the help of his newfound love for classmate Lorraine, Vincent navigates the treacherous obstacles in his life. Whether it be the overbearing no-holds-barred sheriff, his tempestuous mother, or the holier-than-thou townsfolk, Vincent seems to be under constant bombardment from prying eyes. What's more, Lorraine's overprotective father, Deputy Constance, suspects Vincent of having committed some heinous crimes. 
Only after uncovering the town's history does Vincent begin to unravel its complex mystery and that of the people living there, including his own ancestors. Can he solve the mystery in time to save the people he truly loves, or will he, like others before him, fall prey to an age-old curse passed down through the centuries. The town prepares for the return of a killer legend, while one young man prepares to take on his innermost demons.
The Unhallowed Horseman is a contemporary reimagining based on characters in the American classic "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving, the Father of American Literature.

Content Warning: adult and derogatory language, gore, substance abuse (drugs and alcohol), uncomfortable sexual situations (one is non-consensual assault), death, child abuse, mention of pedophilic tendencies, mention of suicide 

The Unhallowed Horseman gets off to a slow start as there are a multitude of characters to introduce. There is Vincent, a troubled teen with various mental problems, his mother Marisa who has a constant string of boyfriends barely older than her son, and maybe I should even mention her breasts since they make so many appearances in the first half of the book as to be two of the main characters. There is the perverted sheriff and pedo video store owner, there are bullies and a high school that boasts not a school counselor or psychologist but an actual psychiatrist who dispenses habit forming psychotropic drugs for free. Vincent takes pills by the handful and we are not sure at first if he is having drug induced hallucinations when he first sees the horseman or if his mental problems are the cause or if the horseman is real.
The town itself seems rather bleak, a place of neglect, abuse, and poverty. Sleepy Hollow has become a place of sex and drugs and cornstalks. Neither a nice place to live or to visit.

The pace picks up towards the middle of the story and so does the body count. I was not really able to connect with any of the characters so I may have enjoyed their deaths more than I was meant to.

This is the author's first novel and I look forward to seeing how his writing skills continue to develop in future.

3 out of 5 stars

My Thanks to Jude S. Walko for the review copy.

About the author

Jude S. Walko is a film producer (Producers Guild of America), director, screenwriter, and actor (Screen Actors Guild). Among notable works is his 2018 award-winning film The Incantation, which stars former Superman Dean Cain. Walko won the 2018 Eclipse award for Best Direction, among several other awards, for the film.
Jude has been a lifelong fan of classic literature and has a special love of all things Washington Irving. He even owns a grave plot at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in New York. Jude is passionate about Halloween, Tim Burton, stop motion animation and all things dark and mysterious.
He spends his time between Los Angeles and Thailand, where his family now resides, and has multiple film and writing projects in development.

The Violence by Delilah S. Dawson

 A mysterious plague that causes random bouts of violence is sweeping the nation. Now three generations of women must navigate their chilling new reality in this moving exploration of identity, cycles of abuse, and hope.

Chelsea Martin appears to be the perfect housewife: married to her high school sweetheart, the mother of two daughters, keeper of an immaculate home.

But Chelsea's husband has turned their house into a prison; he has been abusing her for years, cutting off her independence, autonomy, and support. She has nowhere to turn, not even to her narcissistic mother, Patricia, who is more concerned with maintaining the appearance of an ideal family than she is with her daughter's actual well-being. And Chelsea is worried that her daughters will be trapped just as she is--then a mysterious illness sweeps the nation.

Known as The Violence, this illness causes the infected to experience sudden, explosive bouts of animalistic rage and attack anyone in their path. But for Chelsea, the chaos and confusion the virus causes is an opportunity--and inspires a plan to liberate herself from her abuser.

In a post Covid world a new virus is sweeping through the nation, mainly confined to warmer climates, and known as The Violence. There is a vaccine, but only for the very wealthy. Those who contract the virus have bouts of murderous rage causing them to kill whoever happens to be handy at the time, and have no memory of doing so once the rage passes.  Those who have or are suspected to have The Violence are herded into quarantine centers that are basically prisons, sometimes never to be seen or heard from again.

In this backdrop we meet Chelsea, neglected as a child and now abused as a spouse, along with her two daughters. Chelsea plans to use the virus as a means to save her children and escape from her abusive husband, but things don't go according to plan.

This is a book that I found in the horror section, but it was more a dysfunctional family drama. There was much that I enjoyed about the story, but more than a few spots were a bit draggy and drawn out. All of the male characters had extreme personalities. They were either abusive mysogynistic borderline perverts, or over the top sensitive sympathetic and empathetic to a woman's every need. It kind of gave me whiplash going from one extreme to the other and I wished that someone could have been just plain normal. There were a few plot points that seemed to contradict each other, but I can't really go into it much without giving away spoilers.

I'm going to give this a 3 out of 5 stars, as something I liked but did not love.

My thanks to Del Rey Books for the advance copy.

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About the author

Delilah S. Dawson is the New York Times-bestselling author of Star Wars: Phasma, Black Spire: Galaxy's Edge, and The Perfect Weapon. With Kevin Hearne, she writes the Tales of Pell. As Lila Bowen, she writes the Shadow series, beginning with Wake of Vultures. Her other books include the Blud series, the Hit series, and Servants of the Storm.

She's written comics in the worlds of Marvel Action: Spider-Man, Lore's Wellington, Star Wars Adventures, Star Wars Forces of Destiny, The X-Files Case Files, Adventure Time, Rick and Morty, and her creator-owned comics include Star Pig, Ladycastle, and Sparrowhawk.

Find out more at www.whimsydark.com

Spontaneous Human Combustion by Richard Thomas

 

With a foreword by Brian Evenson.

In this new collection, Richard Thomas has crafted fourteen stories that push the boundaries of dark fiction in an intoxicating, piercing blend of fantasy, science fiction, and horror. Equally provocative and profound, each story is masterfully woven with transgressive themes that burrow beneath the skin.

• A poker game yields a strange prize that haunts one man, his game of chance now turned into a life-or-death coin flip.
• A set of twins find they have mysterious new powers when an asteroid crashes in a field near their house, and the decisions they make create an uneasy balance.
• A fantasy world is filled with one man’s desire to feel whole again, finally finding love, only to have the shocking truth of his life exposed in an appalling twist.
• A father and son work slave labor in a brave new world run by aliens and mount a rebellion that may end up freeing them all.
• A clown takes off his make-up in a gloomy basement to reveal something more horrifying under the white, tacky skin.

Powerful and haunting, Thomas’ transportive collection dares you to examine what lies in the darkest, most twisted corners of human existence and not be transformed by what you find.

So apparently even though I consider myself to be well read, I have been living under a rock because this is my first read by this author.

There are a wondrous range of stories here from dark fiction to fantasy and horror, some with elements of sci-fi. Not all were a perfect hit with me but all are beautifully written which may seem like an odd thing to say about horror and yet I did find beauty even in the ugly situations.

These are not stories to be devoured when you want to drift off to sleep but tales best to ponder when your mind is at it's sharpest because there are events that really made me think. 

It should be noted that I read an advance copy which states that the finished product will contain illustrations that are not present here. Even though I did not get to see the artwork I feel I should mention how much I love when a collection has a picture to go with each story.

4 out of 5 stars

My thanks to Turner Publishing for the review copy.

Available for Pre-order

About the author

The Beyond by Ken Brosky

 

Moon Song’s brother has gone missing in the town of Blackrock, Pennsylvania. Worried that her brother has slipped back into addiction and desperate for answers, Moon hires private investigator Ben Sawyer to help her uncover the truth. Together they discover what the people of Blackrock refuse to acknowledge: something terrible has happened inside the coal mine that defies all logical explanation, and it threatens the lives of every single person in town. Bodies are piling up at the funeral home, and many others have seemingly vanished.

Moon’s only hope of finding answers rests in the hands of a local professor who knows the mine’s horrible secrets. But the professor has problems of his own, and unless he can confront the creature that’s hunting him, Moon’s chances of making it out of town alive are darker than a seam of coal.

Dive into Ken Brosky’s horror-fueled nightmare and find out what’s in The Beyond!

Moon Song and her brother Hye were very close. Even after his drug use and other problems caused a rift between Hye and their parents, the siblings stayed in frequent contact until one day he stopped answering his phone and never returned calls. It is for this reason she hires Ben Sawyer, a private investigator who generally spends his time in lackluster stake outs of cheating spouses in between his vacation time. She accompanies Ben to the mining town of Blackrock, her brother's last known residence and place of employment. There they find some very strange goings on but no sign of Hye.

I didn't care much for Ben at first, but he grew on me and I loved Moon Song and her fierce love for her brother. I loved the way she faced her fears.

Nothing creeps me out more than people acting out of character or beyond the norm, and there seems to be nothing normal in Blackrock. Personalities have changed drastically. A professor who reports to the dean that a student has made inappropriate sexual advances toward him is basically told to go for it. And that's just the start of these bizarre happenings. Don't get me started on the clinic, or the funeral home. What does all of this have to do with the reopened coal mine? You'll have to read to find out.

Recommended highly to all horror readers and especially to those who enjoy Bentley Little novels. I am a huge fan of small town horror where the last remaining normal people turn into unlikely heroes, and that is just part of the reason this fast paced story was a hit with me.

5 out of 5 stars

My thanks to Timber Ghost Press for the review copy.

Available for Pre Order

Road of Bones by Christopher Golden

 

A stunning supernatural thriller set in Siberia, where a film crew is covering an elusive ghost story about the Kolyma Highway, a road built on top of the bones of prisoners of Stalin's gulag.

Kolyma Highway, otherwise known as the Road of Bones, is a 1200 mile stretch of Siberian road where winter temperatures can drop as low as sixty degrees below zero. Under Stalin, at least eighty Soviet gulags were built along the route to supply the USSR with a readily available workforce, and over time hundreds of thousands of prisoners died in the midst of their labors. Their bodies were buried where they fell, plowed under the permafrost, underneath the road.

Felix Teigland, or "Teig," is a documentary producer, and when he learns about the Road of Bones, he realizes he's stumbled upon untapped potential. Accompanied by his camera operator, Teig hires a local Yakut guide to take them to Oymyakon, the coldest settlement on Earth. Teig is fascinated by the culture along the Road of Bones, and encounters strange characters on the way to the Oymyakon, but when the team arrives, they find the village mysteriously abandoned apart from a mysterious 9-year-old girl. Then, chaos ensues.

A malignant, animistic shaman and the forest spirits he commands pursues them as they flee the abandoned town and barrel across miles of deserted permafrost. As the chase continues along this road paved with the suffering of angry ghosts, what form will the echoes of their anguish take? Teig and the others will have to find the answers if they want to survive the Road of Bones. 

Felix Teigland, known as "Teig," has had most of his projects go south. He owes money, he wants to be solvent, he wants at the very least to pay back his last remaining friend Prentiss, who is just about the only one left in the world who will still give him the time of day. He also has his reasons for wanting to believe in ghosts, needing to feel there is something else that comes after this life, that it's not just the end. That there is more than nothingness for those who have passed on.

It is with this purpose he attempts to make a documentary on The Road Of Bones, and the people who live in the coldest place on earth. But wait... where is everyone? The settlement is deserted. Doors are left open, everyone is gone.

I loved these characters. Their friendship feels genuine. They each have their own baggage and yet accept themselves and each other as they are. There is a depth and sincerity to this relationship that leaps off the page. The remote and desolate setting is brutal! The descriptions of the bitter cold wind and snow had me wanting to burrow under my blankets and crank my heat up full blast but it wouldn't have helped because there is so much more than the weather causing this dreadful creeping chill. 

Can you survive the Road of Bones?

5 out of 5 stars

I received an advance copy from St. Martin's Press

Available for pre-order

About the author