I do not think that there can ever be enough books about anything and I say that knowing that some of them are going to be about Pilates.The more knowledge the better seems like a solid rule of thumb, even though I have watched enough science fiction films to accept that humanity’s unchecked pursuit of learning will end with robots taking over the world.-Sarah Vowell

Saturday, October 31, 2026

The Book Witch by Meg Shaffer

 

This delightful book follows Rainy March, a third-generation Book Witch who enters books to fix plots or corral characters who have jumped into the real world and need to be sent back. The burners, creatures that try to destroy books they deem unworthy, try to erase these books from existence.  Rainy lives with her grandfather, as she has never known her father, and her mother died when she was a baby.  Book Witches have strict rules called the Black and Whites.  They state you may not eat, drink, or sleep inside a story lest you become a part of it.  And falling in love with a fictional character?  Completely forbidden.  When Rainy enters into one of her teenage crushes, Duke of Chicago detective stories, she and the Duke fall in love and spend a year in and out of books before getting caught.  If she does it again, the Coven will kick her out.  She is punished with the worst grunt work there is for Book Witches: using Goo Gone to remove stickers from books and repairing gothic romances from the 70s and 80s.

After her grandfather has been gone for a week on a secret mission, Rainy begins to worry, especially when the book that her mother left her as her only inheritance, the first Nancy Drew book, is stolen and the house is trashed.  Rainy thinks to herself that she could use the help of a good detective like Duke, who suddenly appears to help her by solving this mystery and finding a solution to their romantic life.  Grandpa finds a way to send a message to Rainy telling her to "follow the March Hare".  The only March Hare Rainy knows about is the one from Alice in Wonderland.  So she and the Duke must go into The Great Gatsby to use the library to get into Alice, since Rainy's umbrella was confiscated earlier that evening, and she uses it to get in and out of books.    There is a time limit because if the Duke is out of his books too long, they will start to disappear all over the world.   

Will they find Grandpa and solve the mystery behind the Nancy Drew book in time?  Shaffer is the author of The Lost Story and Wishing Game.  This is her latest book, and it is a highly enjoyable novel that book lovers will love to escape into.  Whether it's following Rainy trying to convince Elizabeth Bennet to go back to Pride and Prejudice or entering her beloved's 1930s Chicago, Shaffer takes you on an unforgettable ride through books we all know and love and lets us imagine what it would be like to meet your favorite character.


Quotes

All stories are love stories if you love stories.

Meg Shaffer (The Book Witch, p.1)

Time toyed with us like a funhouse mirror.

Meg Shaffer (The Book Witch, p.8)

Time passes like the pages of a favorite story, drawing ever nearer the end whether we like it or not.

Meg Shaffer (The Book Witch, p.8)

A person who breaks one rule is a rule breaker.  A person who breaks all the rules is a rebel.

Meg Shaffer (The Book Witch, p.36)

Truly, I think she burned his poetry for the same reason everyone burns books does- because it's less trouble than burning the people who write them.

Meg Shaffer (The Book Witch, p.43)

-Tea cures sneezing?

-Tea cures everything.

Meg Shaffer (The Book Witch, p.59)

Truly, nothing prepares one better to battle evil than working retail.

Meg Shaffer (The Book Witch, p.68)

-How can you drink tea at a time like this?

-Darling, I drank tea during the Zeppelin raids of 1915.  A proper English gentleman can drink tea under any circumstances.

Meg Shaffer (The Book Witch, p.100)

Books that don't have a home yet are always trying to seduce you.  That's why almost no one can go into a bookstore without buying something.

Meg Shaffer (The Book Witch, p.120)

Darling, you know I can cut a rug like ten pairs of scissors with a sharp sword to boot.

Meg Shaffer (The Book Witch, p.142)

It's against the law to take a bath without a book.

Meg Shaffer (The Book Witch, p.168)

An author.  You think an author is behind all this?  Have you met an author, Duke?  They aren't criminal masterminds.  Authors are anemic agoraphobes who sit in dark rooms and hallucinate.  They're more like moths than people.

Meg Shaffer (The Book Witch, p.169)

She looked like the platonic ideal of a grandmother. Cut her, and she would bleed doiles and Werther's Originals.

Meg Shaffer (The Book Witch, p.172)

-When buying books, I always tell myself, Medda, it could be worse.  It could be amphetamines and male escorts.

-The male escorts could help you organize the books.  The amphetamines too, come to think of it.

Meg Shaffer (The Book Witch, p.173)

-Remember, the answer is staring us in the face?  Well, what stares you in the face every single day of your life?

-Impending doom?

-Your own face in the mirror.

Meg Shaffer (The Book Witch, p.199)

The shortest distance between two points is a straight answer.  But the difference between the self and self-discovery is a very long story.

Meg Shaffer (The Book Witch, p.206)

Her hair was in a soft bob, and the large tabby cat in her arms looked magnificently grumpy yet blissfully content in that way that only well-loved and terribly spoiled cats do.

Meg Shaffer (The Book Witch, p.234)



Link to Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FH1B7TRH?k=the%20book%20witch&ref_=nb_sb_ss_w_scx-ent-bk-ww_k0_1_14_de&crid=1GH47Q8VL7U92&sprefix=the%20book%20witch

Link to ThriftBooks:https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-book-witch-a-novel/56182021/?resultid=879b765d-ae65-45e9-bf8d-c8660c9f987c#edition=73802755&idiq=85743196



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Thursday, October 29, 2026

Funeral Songs For Dying Girls by Cherie Dimaline


Winifred's mother, Mary, is a member of the Metis tribe in Canada, and her father is a white man.  Her mother died giving birth to her, and her father basically crawled inside himself and died with her, though he still drew breath.  He keeps half of her ashes in a suitcase under his bed, and the rest were placed in an urn and buried in the cemetery where he works and lives with Winifred.  Until the year before, Winifred had her mother's sister, Roberta, to tell her stories of the Métis people and the past.  Because she lives in a cemetery and is an awkward girl, she has no friends for a while, until she meets Jack.  They remain close until puberty hits and Jack becomes tall and handsome, while Winifred is a mess.  

The cemetery is not doing well, and unless they find a way to turn things around, Winifred's father will lose his job as a crematorium employee, and the two will lose their place to live that is so close to where Mary is buried.  Over the years, tourists have seen a ghost in the cemetery, but it is really only Winifred, who has no idea she's the ghost they're talking about.  When the head of a ghost tour offers to put them on the route, the owner agrees because it will make money for the cemetery. Things are looking up, until Winifred meets a real ghost, Phil, who is her age and died in 1990.  She and Phil become close as Phil tells Winifred her life story, and the two bond over two of the only artists that Winifred has in her mother's album collection: Neil Young and Dolly Parton.  The two get closer emotionally, and when Winifred finds out that appearing before a crowd hurts Phil and is like dying all over again, Winifred seeks to find a way to stop the tour, even if it costs her and her father a home.    

Dimaline's book The Marrow Thieves won the Kirkus Prize for Young Readers' Literature and the Governor General's Literary Award.  Its sequel, Hunting by Stars, was an NPR Book of the Year selection and a Good Morning America buzz pick. This standalone novel delves deeply into a young woman's heart and mind and examines what love and friendship truly are.  I really loved and related to this thought-provoking book.  It hooked me with the first page and kept me captivated until the last word.   


Quotes

Truly, I lived a fairy-tale childhood.  Like, a Grimm's fairy tale.
Cherie Dimaline (Funeral Songs For Dying Girls, p.3)

We were both aware that time was running out for us to be able to follow our own weird whims.  Soon enough we'd have to conform.  It was sad and exciting at the same time.  We felt the panic of real life pulling at the edges of our imagination-built fortress, like a rainstorm or a monster.  Yeah, more like a monster.
Cherie Dimaline (Funeral Songs for Dying Girls, p.34-5)

God, did I love him?  If I listened to my body right now, filling up and finding new ways to knot into him, it would scream love, yes, we love this boy.  But a body isn't a reliable source.  It's impressionable, easily influenced, too mechanical to trust with emotion.
Cherie Dimaline (Funeral Songs for Dying Girls, p.43)

They saty that loving yourself is an act of rebellion.
Cherie Dimaline (Funeral Songs for Dying Girls, p.45)

She took enough time with her makeup that it made you suspicious.
Cherie Dimaline (Funeral Songs for Dying Girls, p.56)

Sometimes I took old issues from there for school projects and just out of general interest in things like Cosmo's sex advice or Hunters Inc. wilderness survival tips--subjects I found related to one another in many bizarre ways.
Cherie Dimaline (Funeral Songs for Dying Girls, p.73)

If one of Chess's tourists came by now, they might report a childish spirit, a tantrum ghoul.  Or maybe a hysterical woman, something dangerous.  At sixteen, it could go either way.
Cherie Dimaline (Funeral Songs for Dying Girls, p.107)

It almost killed her, but then she remembered that there were many days in a life and not all of them would be so painful, so she kept moving forward.
Cherie Dimaline (Funeral Songs for Dying Girls, p.112)

Puberty was a fucking horror show.  I got tall and ugly and all my underwear was stained. I hated it.  Hated the boobs that started to grow and then stopped growing--just big enough to get noticed, just small enough to get teased.  Shit or get off the pot! I'd yell at them in the bathroom mirror flecked with toothpaste, because apparently everyone needs to watch themselves brush their goddamned teeth.
Cherie Dimaline (Funeral Songs for Dying Girls, p.113)

The last thing a hopeless romantic needs is hope.
Cherie Dimaline (Funeral Songs for Dying Girls, p.204)









 

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Monday, October 26, 2026

We Sold Our Souls by Grady Hendrix

 


Comedic horror writer Grady Hendrix, author of Horrorstor, wrote a novel about heavy metal band Durt Wurk that never made it big because the lead singer, Terry, went solo and became a big success.  This book is told through the eyes of Kris, the female lead guitarist and author of the missing album "Troglodyte", who is about to become homeless, is fed up with her job at Best Western, and is a shadow of the tough girl she used to be.  When Terry brings his band, Koffin, back from retirement for a few big shows, Kris wants to go there and confront him, but first she goes to rhythm guitarist Scottie for backup, and he shocks her by living in a locked basement and spouting out nonsense about how Black Iron Mountain, a place from the album "Troglodyte", is where evil lives and forces want to take over the world.  Scottie just got out of rehab and seems to be schizophrenic now, but her opinion changes when Scottie takes a phone call that has a Koffin song playing.  Now he tells her he has to kill either her or the UPS men who are coming.  Scottie refuses to kill anyone but himself, which he does with a gun to the head.  When Kris gets out of the basement, she finds his wife dead on the kitchen floor, and she hears shots coming from other places in the house, killing his children.  Kris hides and sees the UPS men with guns.  

She escapes and goes to see Tuck, the bass player, in Allentown.  Tuck is living the perfect suburban life and doesn't believe Kris.  He agrees to take her to see Bill, the drummer, who lives in the old band house in Kentucky.  Bill is in a wheelchair from the night of the contract signing when a drunken Kris insists that someone is after them and they need to leave.  Everyone but Kris signed the contract, which became null and void when Kris flipped the van in the forest.  Memories of that night are missing for the band members. Kris is nervous about seeing Bill for the first time since the accident, but Bill has forgiven her and opened a chain of rehab centers, the first at the old band house.  Soon, Kris is involuntarily committed and uses the Troglodyte album songs to get free.  Meanwhile, Terry has told the media that she is coming to kill him and that if his fans see her, they must stop her and call the police.  

Kris gets help from some of the most unlikely sources as she travels to the concert outside of Las Vegas.  Up until the halfway point of this book, you're not sure what the heck is going on and what to believe is reality.  After that, it makes more sense, and there is a lot of gooey gore.  This book is a heavy metal song about fighting the powers that be and surviving the Black Iron Mountain.  "We Sold Our Souls" is an Odessian journey "into the heart of a conspiracy-crazed, pill-popping, paranoid country that seems to have lost its very soul."  Hendrix paints the music world as an evil entity that some will sell their souls for the fame and money, while others want to keep the music alive and well by using it to overcome the diversities in their lives.




Quotes

She played the chord again.  It was the only bright thing in the dingy basement with its 40-watt bulb and dirty windows.  If Kris could play enough of these, in the right order, without stopping, she could block out everthing: the dirty snow that never melted, closets full of secondhand clothes, overheated classrooms at Independance High, mind-mumbing lecture about the Continental Congress, and ladylike behavior and the dangers of running with the wrong crowd and what X equals and how to find for Y and what the thlird person plural for cantor is and what Holden Caufield's baseball glove symbolizes and what the whale symbloizes and what the green light symbolizes and what everything in the world symbolizes, because nothing is as it seems, and everything is a trick.
Grady Hendrix (We Sold Our Souls, p.8)

-The only one left is Tony Iommi.
-But if he says it's Sabbath, it's still Sabbath.
-He can say whatever he wants, but if a band has four people in it, and three leave, it's not the same band.
-It is if the person who stayed behind is Tony Iommi. Same as if it were Ozzy.
-What if it's Geezer?
-Bass players don't count.
Grady Hendrix (We Sold Our Souls, p.32)

They filled up their time between childhood and old age trying to be as unremarkable as possible.
Grady Hendrix (We Sold Our Souls, p.42)

Kris has been around long enought to know it was dangerous when men accused you of being better than them.
Grady Hendrix (We Sold Our Souls, p.124)

Relax any metal song enough, and you went right back to the blues.  Led Zeppelin covered Memphis Minnie's "When the Levee Breaks".  Black Sabbath blew a harp on their first album.  Hell, the first band Ozzy and Tony Iommi were in together was called the Polka Tulk Blues Band.  Hard rock, heavy metal, stoner rock, doom metal--it all dragged itself up out of the swamp called the blues.
Grady Hendrix (We Sold Our Souls, p.182)

Every song was the same song.  These were songs for people who were scared to open their mailboxes, whose phone calls never brought good news.  These were songs for people standing at the crossroads waiting for the bus.  People who bounced between debt collectors and dollar stores, collection agencies and housing offices, family court and emergency rooms, waiting for a check that never came, waiting for a court date, waiting for a call back, waiting for a break, crushed beneath the wheel.
Grady Hendrix (We Sold Our Souls, p.183)

The blues were about the pain and struggle of living inside Black Iron Mountain.  Metal showed you a door.
Grady Hendrix (We Sold Our Souls, p.186)

"Kris", he said, "it is possible to be crazy and paranoid and totally insane and still be right.  Maybe the problem with everyone is that the world has become so insane they're not out of their minds enough to comprehend it."
Grady Hendrix (We Sold Our Souls, p.193)

It's like the song. You know, "The Devil Went Down to Georgia?  I can't believe that after a lifetime of playing metal, it turns out the world is a shitty country song.
Grady Hendrix (We Sold Our Souls, p.194)

Kris had always thought of Las Vegas as a whore's corpse, covered in glitter and left in the desert to rot, but even that didn't do justice to the Strip.  Frat boys carrying plastic yard-long margaritas got in a fist fight with a guy dressed as Batman in an intersection.  Drunk parents pushed sleeping kids in strollers across the street, screaming at each other about money, while half-naked women wearing police caps and fishnet stockings posed next to puffy-faced fathers with their hats on backwards.
Grady Hendrix (We Sold Our Souls, p. 243)

A song isn't a commercial for an album.  It isn't a tool to build name awareness or reinforce your brand.  A song is a bullet that can shatter your chains.
Grady Hendrix (We Sold Our Souls, p.302)

A girl with a guitar never has to apologize for anything.
Grady Hendrix (We Sold Our Souls, p.303)








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Friday, October 23, 2026

Daredevil: Vol 3 Through Hell by Chris ZAdarsky (Writer), Marco Checchetto and Francesco Mobli (Artists), VC's Clayton Cowles (Letterer), and Julian Totino Tedesco (Cover Artist)

 

In Volume 2, Daredevil has retired, but is still saving people with his skills and in a different outfit.  Elektra shows up to tell him that he can do this without killing people, but he must train with her.  He's out of practice and is losing battles to the criminal element in Hell's Kitchen.  Matt agrees to work with Elektra and retrain so he is better able to do the job safely.  As mayor, Fisk has lost control of the criminal underground, and the Owl is taking his place. Meanwhile, Fisk goes to a party with the richest elite and is teased mercilessly by one of them.  Fisk snaps and kills the guy in the bathroom and calls Wesley to clean it up.  

Meanwhile, Spider-Man and Matt have a conversation with Detective North, a cop who wants to put away all superheroes, and convince him to help out in Hell's Kitchen, where the cops have been ordered by the Commissioner to stay away.  There are dirty cops on the force, and Daredevil needs North's help to clean up the Kitchen.  Matt is still feeling the guilt over killing one of his parolee's brother and is doing everything to help him and his family. 

Zdarsky has written a very compelling series thus far.  The artwork in this book is very interesting.  Some of the fight scenes are very well done.  In a couple of instances, you see the fight scene through Matt's eyes, which is creative.  This storyline is great, and I am thoroughly enjoying reading it.    

  



Link to Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Daredevil-Chip-Zdarsky-Vol-Through/dp/1302920189/ref=sr_1_1?crid=22FBLSQU2B5L8&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.eHs6mV8AWbLFgHPkhwRDR5Yxx-NCdpYL8yi_WOoNZ36_6mK0L_ov2s0nw4uXhLgPWv5DaCiklaCZ7JgR0HjpoR3iY4KO4TWj1Z1kxGaJFEkVRev27LkihX988usg-ppW3VNuoywMQDkvco8b4Hn44uyX5L1MRjq-L9n7qo0CM7nK4nQv75JeQoZjznHYgPJs7uNJ7_-fO1ZwfTq6FnZ34FhJX2nd-T0Ivo4cGUwJeZE.Vsb37g2tCqosctZVRYETFf1NeXuevq5hwxluqBuq3rY&dib_tag=se&keywords=daredevil+vol+3&qid=1792783671&sprefix=daredevil+vol+%2Caps%2C190&sr=8-1


Link to ThriftBooks:https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/daredevil-by-chip-zdarsky-vol-3-through-hell_marvel-comics/23120111/?resultid=cef15613-c5fa-4b8d-96c1-6f315128db35#edition=24726108&idiq=39387324



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Wednesday, October 21, 2026

Poems To Be Afraid Of by Pixie Bruner

 


This haunting collection of poems explores phobias, from various cornophobias (fear of a particular color) to the made-up phobia coined by cartoonist Gary Larson: Luposlipaphobia, the fear of being pursued by timber wolves around a kitchen table while wearing socks on a newly waxed floor.  The poem, "Aichmophobia", a fear of sharp objects, tells the tale of Sleeping Beauty, who has been told to avoid the spinning wheel with its sharp needle.  "She's a beautiful idiot, as practical as a decorative vase," and "She could only use a silver spoon because what if a fork tine went rogue?" and is "sheltered from a lifetime of potential pricks.", a statement that could be taken more than one way.  Sleeping Beauty stupidly pricks her finger, causing her entire kingdom to enter into a deep, long-lasting sleep.    

The poem "High Infidelity (Commitmentphobia)" is another favorite of mine.  It examines desire, which "is just an excuse for need. Need-- dressed to kill, Tarted up, tipsy on stilettos".  This poem also looks at the physicality of love, desire, and need.  The imagery of the crisp white sheets with wet spots and the "id-entity" make this a poem worth reading.  The artwork in this book is amazing. The creepy picture of a young girl with button eyes for the poem "Koumpounophobia, the fear of buttons looks like something out of the scary movie Coraline, based on Neil Gaiman's best-selling book.  The author is a good friend of mine, but that doesn't mean she isn't an incredible writer.  This collection includes some of her greatest works, aside from the Dream Fruit poems she wrote for Katabatic Circus Vol. 2, which are fabulous.  This book was just published in time for Halloween.  
 
Pixie Bruner has been published in such esteemed tomes as Spectral Realms and Strange Horizons, and her book The Body As Haunted was nominated twice for the Elgin.      


Quotes
Sensation and desire are easier than love.
They do not cut to the quick of you as easily.
They can be costumed as
love for exposure therapy.
Pixie Bruner (Poems To Be Afraid Of, p.8)

Cynophobia--
Crawling through my skin
to avoid the blues.
Pixie Bruner (Poems To Be Afraid Of, p.12)

Egrets give me regrets
make me scream and regress
Pristine pure, too too clean
blood cells lacking heme.
Pixie Bruner (Poems To Be Afraid Of, p.35)

She could only use a silver spoon
because what if a fork tine went rogue.
Pixie Bruner (Poems To Be Afraid Of, p.37)

Desire is just an excuse for need.
Pixie Bruner (Poems To Be Afraid Of, p.46)

"Love" is only used in self-defense.
Pixie Bruner (Poems To Be Afraid Of, p.47)

Need is only a man's excuse for neglect.
Only they need.
We must only love love love
until we are hollowed out
or fill ourselves at great risk
and shown the door.
Pixie Bruner (Poems To Be Afraid Of, p.47)

To cook is to make mis-steaks
Pixie Bruner (Poems To Be Afraid Of, p.57)

Smile lines reflect, etched into skin
telling a story I am not ready to hear.
Pixie Bruner (Poems To Be Afraid Of, p.74)

Language is a virus.
Pixie Bruner (Poems To Be Afraid Of, p.96)






Link to Authorities Press: authortunitiespress.com



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Monday, October 19, 2026

Grave Secrets by Alice James

 

This sassy, supernatural comic thriller features vampires, zombies, and a necromancer.  Toni is a powerful necromancer who has to raise the dead for a short while or deal with being antsy.  She is also an estate agent in Staffordshire, England, who is looking for a place for a vampire, Oscar, to live.  In Europe, being a vampire is legal.  In other places, like America, it's more of a stake-on-sight.  The English vampire Assemblage has a huge problem with a Chicago mob Assemblage that has moved in on their territory and plans to take it over.  Oscar is a member of the English vampire Assemblage and has Peter, a German doctor, in his coterie, who hates living at the Assemblage.  Toni and Oscar fall in love, but they have to overlook faults, like his desire to drink her blood (Yuck!). There's also the matter of the head vampire of England wanting Toni to pledge fealty to him in exchange for protection from the other vampires, and the EDL, an anti-vampire faction that wants to kill all vampires and those associated with them.  

There is also the matter of the Jane Doe in the morgue that Toni's brother, Wills, keeps asking Toni to try to raise her so they can find out her name and who murdered her.  Toni has little luck in this task since she needs a name to raise a corpse or control vampires.  The vampires supposedly wiped out all the necromancers, and Toni must keep the fact that she can control the dead and undead a secret or risk being killed by the vampires.   Toni is a snappy, sarcastic woman who refuses to put up with any gruffness.  She is a strong character who can mostly take care of herself.  Oscar is an inscrutable vampire with old-fashioned values about male-female relationships and doesn't tell Toni anything about himself or what life is like as a vampire.  Peter is forced to fill her in.  The pages fly in this fast-paced novel that will keep you entertained to the very last page.  This is the first of three books, and I can't wait to read more.  



Quotes

God blessed me with pale English skin that burns under light candlelight and tangerine-coloured hair that tangles when you are asleep.  And when you are awake.  And probably when you are dead.

Alice James (Grave Secrets, p.21)

I noticed what beautiful cursive handwriting he had.  My own looks like a mating ritual of the rare Amazon ink dancing spider.

Alice James (Grave Secrets, p.27)

"Have you got her?" he called...in an English voice.  A Birmingham voice to be exact.  I wasn't going to die at the hands of an escaped zombie or a blood-eating vampire.  I wasn't even going to be shunted off this mortal coil by a ninja or a Chicago hitman.  I was going to meet my maker at the hands of some thug from Shirley.  Thank you, posterity. You suck.

Alice James (Grave Secrets, p.37)

We really needed to get to first names soon. Still, we were both English and it had only ben five years.

Alice James (Grave Secrets, p.49)

Next time there was a work party, I was going to lock the door, take the phone off the hook, and watch all three Lord of the Rings movies with a kebab, an entire tub of ice cream and a bottle of vodka.  If there was any evening left, I would start on The Hobbit.

Alice James (Grave Secrets, p.67)

-Hello, Tori.  How's your decapitated corpse doing:

-It's finished bleeding on me and now it's just oozing onto my lawn.

Alice James (Grave Secrets, p.70-1)

Croquet is a game with two teams, six hoops, eight mallets, and too many rules.  The worst rule is that you are not allowed to use the mallets to club the opposition to death.

Alice James (Grave Secrets, p.85)

Toni, I grew up in Germany, remember?  There we think sausages are vegetables.

Alice James (Grave Secrets, p.89)

I wasn't so much unlucky in love as damn well cursed.

Alice James (Grave Secrets, p.99)

My idea of tidying up and feng shui was to line up all the piles of rubbish in a visually pleasing manner.

Alice James (Grave Secrets, p.142)

Don't listen to your heart.  It's a liar and deceiver and brings nothing but grief.

Alice James (Grave Secrets, p.189)

When you seek through the world for love, you should first look for friendship and kindness.  Without these, I think there is a great risk of the heart making bad choices for the head.

Alice James (Grave Secrets, p.279)


Link to Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Grave-Secrets-Lavington-Windsor-Mysteries/dp/1781088616/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.TifyQ6Ct-IdrTtuZA_sIhpUqoxnj_OO1iwKz-bgCncfGjHj071QN20LucGBJIEps.nVfr3e9kUiaiEEtbLaFZiJS9SNXEGfjCTBsTuyf3VS4&qid=1792267698&sr=8-1


Link to ThriftBooks:https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/grave-secrets-the-lavington-windsor-mysteries-book-1_alice-james/26135396/?resultid=3a780af1-608a-43bf-8b53-2769a1027d6f#edition=28875186&idiq=64844799



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Friday, October 16, 2026

I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones


 

Stephen Graham Jones has written another New York Times bestselling book that takes place in Lamesa, Texas and Tolly Driver who is looking back on the summer of 1989 when he was seventeen. Tolly's dad had died a year before in a car accident. He only has his mother who owns a hardware store and his best friend from school, Amber Dennison, the only Native living in town`.  Amber drives a Rabbit truck that runs on diesel.  The two are very close but not in a romantic way.  They are not in the marching band or the Future Farmers of America which puts them on the outside looking in. 

Tolly likes to go to parties and get drunk, throw up and make a fool of himself.  For the most part the other students ignore him because he no longer has a father.  Stace Goodkin is one of those people who gets great grades and follows the rules.  One night, the In Crowd decides to show Justin Joss a lesson in why he would never be a part of their crowd by taking him to a oil pump horse, one of those machines that bobs up and down like a bronco horse.  They convinced him to climb on top and ride.  Justin ended up mutilated by the machine.  Stace tried to help him, but only managed to distract Justin into causing more damage to himself.

The In Crowd throws a party one night and Tolly, as usual, is plastered.  He got the brilliant idea to do a cannonball in the pool getting everyone nearby soaking wet.  One of them was a baton twirler in the marching band named Shannon who is sitting at a table flirting with a cute older guy.  Tolly has a severe allergy to peanuts, so Shannon's date who puts peanuts in his Coke makes Tolly drink it.  He has a major reaction and his EpiPen is in Amber's car.  The band members take their belts off their uniforms and tie Tolly to a lounge chair.  He starts throwing up to try to get rid of the peanuts.  

Amber and Stace are talking inside the house when Stace sees into the backyard Tolly convulsing on the lounge chair.  Stace, a gymnast, vaults into action to get his EpiPen to him.  She injects him and her and Amber start trying to get him out of the restraints.  Suddenly, the dead Justin Joss appears with a chainsaw and begins to kill those at the party who were responsible for his death.  Even Stace is included in this because she was there.  He doesn't kill her, but hurts her really bad.  Stace had called her doctor father to help Tolly so he's coming and the police likely are too.  There's also Justin to contend with so, everyone runs off.  

Unfortunately, Tolly gets a splash of Justin's blood on his forehead.  When he wipes it away, it goes into an open wound on his forehead.  This will cause Tolly to go psycho and start his own killing spree.   And while the Tolly looking back hasn't killed anyone since, he's recounting this to explain how he became a psycho for a while.  This is a sharp book that nails high school life and living in West Texas on the head.  Its also the perfect book for today, Halloween.


Quotes

Amber...leaned against the steering wheel to shove her own hand down under the front of he seat, closing her eyes to let her fingers see better. (Stephen Graham Jones I Was a Teenage Slasher p7)

You think big thoughts when you're seventeen. Big stupid thoughts. (Stephen Graham Jones I Was a Teenage Slasher p9)

My kind don't exactly do  funerals.  I know.  We're the reason for the funeral. Stephen Graham Jones I Was a Teenage Slasher (p25)

Make enough of an ass of yourself, you get noticed, right? (Stephen Graham Jones I Was a Teenage Slasher p22)

Still? I'd just lost my dada year ago, hadn't I?  This--me being an idiot--was probably some stage of grief. (Stephen Graham Jones I Was a Teenage Slasher p28)

Someone not necessarily full of promise, but full of promises. Stephen Graham Jones I Was a Teenage Slasher (p66)

His two big sayings that year, both of which applied that night, were that nothing good happens after midnight, and that the grass really wasn't that much greener on the other side of fifty-five miles per hour.  Though it could get bloodier real damn fast. (Stephen Graham Jones I Was a Teenage Slasher p64-5)

Its less about survival, more about who you're holding when that big irradiated shock wave blows you to ash. (Stephen Graham Jones I Was a Teenage Slasher p66)

The world's so much simpler when you've got a chainsaw in your hand, isn't it? A chainsaw, or a machete or an axe, that's the elegant solution to every problem. (Stephen Graham Jones I Was a Teenage Slasher p67)

You always want your mom when you're hurt. When you call you're dad is when you've done something he can maybe be proud of. For pain, though, it's moms all the way. Stephen Graham Jones I Was a Teenage Slasher (p128)

We all want to hide, don't we?  To not have to be constantly navigating between our true selves and people's expectations twenty-four seven. (Stephen Graham Jones I Was a Teenage Slasher p136)


   

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