The Monk is a character piece with a slow moving story that uses its pacing to pull the reader in. Go into it as blind as possible as it's the kind of story that starts in one place then ends up where you didn't expect. It's billed as a gothic romance, and there's certainly romance contained within, but there's also a lot of horror - in many different forms. Characters you root for at the start may not be the same characters you root for by the end or even the halfway point. It will challenge your thoughts and make you question what you're reading.
I read the paperback and listened to the audiobook depending on where I was.
'He now saw himself stained with the most loathed and monstrous sins, the object of universal execration ... doomed to perish in tortures the most severe'
Shocking, erotic and violent, The Monk is the story of Ambrosio, torn between his spiritual vows and the temptations of physical pleasure. His internal battle leads to sexual obsession, rape and murder, yet this book also contains knowing parody of its own excesses as well as social comedy. Written by Matthew Lewis when he was only nineteen, it was a ground-breaking novel in the Gothic Horror genre and spawned hundreds of imitators, drawn in…
After just watching Twin Peaks for the first time I wanted to explore the lore and The Secret History of Twin Peaks is a damn fine book for doing so. It delves into the the unexplained in the show including Government projects, how characters in the town met and, for some, what they did after the end of season 2. It enriches and deepens a world that's already so rich and deep.
Listened to the audiobook version which brought in some of the series cast as well as Annie Wersching as Agent TP.
The Secret History of Twin Peaks enlarges the world of the original series, placing the unexplained phenomena that unfolded there into a vastly layered, wide-ranging history, beginning with the journals of Lewis and Clark and ending with the shocking events that closed the finale. The perfect way to get in the mood for the upcoming Showtime series.
I watched the movie adaptation Don't Bother to Knock starring Marilyn Monroe last year and bought the book not long after. After a few false starts, I finally delved into the original novel. Where the movie is an exploration of mental health, the novel looks at the villainess as cold and unfeeling sociopath who longs for something better and doesn't care who gets in her way - including a child she was supposed to watch over. It takes conventions and throws them out of the window (almost literally).
A child is left in the care of a disturbed babysitter in “surely one of the finest pure terror-suspense stories ever written” (The New York Times).
Bunny’s parents shouldn’t have brought her to New York City, but her father has an important speech to make, and her mother couldn’t bear to be away from their darling nine-year-old daughter. And when her mommy and daddy leave for the speech, Bunny will stay in the hotel with a babysitter, sound asleep and perfectly safe. What could possibly go wrong?
The sitter is Nell, a plain young woman from Indiana. She…
A shadow loomed over the Gorbals in September 1954 as rumours suggested a sinister creature stalked the night. While hundreds of children armed themselves with weapons to defeat the menace, another’s life was changed forever.
Hegemony tracks Catherine MacGaradh through the decades as she joins a clan, falls in love, and grapples with her new identity as a half-vampire.
But home is where the heart is, and Catherine longs to return to her beloved Scotland. Will her new leader allow it, or will she become another captive pawn in his quest to remould the world in his image?
