Novels about horror movies appeal to two of my interests. This book, ostensibly about the making of a film inspired by a series of mysterious deaths surrounding a forbidden and possibly corrupting book (cursed/forbidden materials– another of my favorite tropes!), proved to be so much more than that.
Danforth glides between past and present, maintaining a subtle, eerie, threatening atmosphere that I prefer to in-your-face supernatural shenanigans. She also develops nuanced characters whose flaws I can appreciate as well their virtues. I wished this 600+ page book were longer still because I was enjoying it so much.
'It's a terrible story and one way to tell it is this: two girls in love and a fog of wasps cursed the place forever after...'
BROOKHANTS SCHOOL FOR GIRLS: Infamous site of a series of tragic deaths over a hundred years ago. Soon to be the subject of a controversial horror movie about the rumoured 'Brookhants curse':…
While I love reading horror and mystery fiction, I also love nonfiction about the social sciences. I majored in psychology, and this book revived jargon and other details from my classes. It’s a biography and case study of the Galvin family, half of whose twelve children displayed schizophrenia during their lifetimes.
Kolker shares the family's struggles to help the symptomatic siblings cope with their illness while the remaining children feared becoming the next to succumb. Their story unfolds during the mid-20th century when stereotypes and prejudices defined schizophrenia, treatments were often ineffective, and mental illnesses were something shameful to be hidden.
Apart from refreshing my memories of college, the book taught me more about recent discoveries about schizophrenia’s biological underpinnings. This moving story is just as thrilling as any mystery.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • ONE OF GQ's TOP 50 BOOKS OF LITERARY JOURNALISM IN THE 21st CENTURY • The heartrending story of a midcentury American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science's great hope in the quest to understand the disease.
"Reads like a medical detective journey and sheds light on a topic so many of us face: mental illness." —Oprah Winfrey
Don and Mimi Galvin seemed to be living the American dream. After World War II, Don's work with the Air Force brought them to Colorado,…
This book’s description sounds like the setup of a joke: two cowboys, a widow, a witch hunter, an outlaw, a ghost, and a very peculiar child travel the 19th-century American frontier seeking to find and destroy an infamous witch. What results is no punchline but an exciting and often amusing mixture of the supernatural, historical fiction, thriller, and magical realism.
The short chapters, brisk prose, and unsettling twists kept me turning the pages. I appreciated the fundamental decency and loyalty of the simply drawn characters and rooted for them all to make it through their journey unscathed, even as that likelihood diminished with each new stop.
This book is a delightful example of a rollicking adventure story.
Sadie Grace is wanted for witchcraft, dead (or alive). And every hired gun in Kansas is out to collect the bounty on her head, including bona fide witch hunter Old Tom and his mysterious, mute ward, Rabbit.
On the road to Burden County, they're joined by two vagabond cowboys with a strong sense of adventure - but no sense of purpose - and a recently widowed schoolteacher with nothing left to lose. As their posse grows, so too does the danger.
Racing along the drought-stricken plains in a stolen red stagecoach, they encounter monsters more wicked than witches lurking along…
This thrilling retelling of the events of King Kong from the point of view of the island natives gives a voice and a name to characters long relegated to the background. Fuala, a young, strong-willed woman and the originally chosen Bride of Kong, describes the elaborate society that existed before the Island King's rampage and the horrors that befell the islanders afterward. Beset by famine, natural disasters, and bloodthirsty monsters, how will anyone survive?
