Article written by Rayne Hall in celebration of The Haunted Train: Creepy Tales from the Railways ︶︶︶︶ In real life, we seek to avoid fear, worry, panic, and terror. Yet in book form, they grant delicious thrills, and we choose to spend our time with the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson, Stephen King,…
The Lovely Bones By Alice Sebold {Warnings for The Lovely Bones: sexual and physical violence} The Lovely Bones is about moving on, both after death and for those who are still living and have experienced a death or trauma. Its message is sound and practical, and leads with a semi-omniscient narrator, Susie. The point of…
‘Salem’s Lot By Stephen King ’Salem’s Lot is a book you could take and plop into any time period you wished, and it would still work. It’s your typical genre piece that I feel every writer gets around to at some point. That’s not saying it’s bad. Not at all. I quite enjoyed my read…
Acceptance By Jeff VanderMeer We did it! The Southern Reach Trilogy is finished! Before I get into the third book, Acceptance, I’d like to talk a little about the series as a whole. I’m still fully of the opinion that the second book, Authority, could’ve existed as 150 pages lighter with no real drawback in…
Authority By Jeff VanderMeer Alright, well, the Southern Reach Trilogy had a good start; I’ll give it a big thumbs-up there. Before I get into the second book, I’ll remind you I haven’t yet read the third and final book of the series. However, Authority, while well-written when looking solely at craft and structure, borders…
Annihilation By Jeff VanderMeer Annihilation! Nope, not the creepy little tune by A Perfect Circle. . . . Though now that I think about it, that song fits this book pretty darn well. Why? Annihilation (Book 1 of the Southern Reach Trilogy) is all about will and adaptability! Before you ask: yes, the movie was…
The Shining By Stephen King Oh boy, oh boy, was this book nothing like I expected. I’ll start by saying I’d never seen the movie and that I knew . . . well, essentially nothing about the book. Actually, the only thing I knew about The Shining was the few seconds of it shown at…