Horns by Joe Hill
On a chilly summer morning, one year after the brutal murder of his girlfriend Merrin, Ig Parrish wakes up to find that two small horns have sprouted from his head. He is puzzled as to why they are there, but when he goes to ask people what to do about them they suddenly tell him their deepest, darkest desires. A doctor confesses he’d like to grind up some oxy and snort it. A cop tells him he‘d like to shoot him in the face because […]
The Everlasting by Katy Simpson Smith
I picked this one up because of the cover. I saw it featured at my local bookstore and put it in my basket without even reading the blurb on the back. Had I read the blurb, I would have KNOWN that it was meant for me none the less, but something about the neon pile of bodies reached into my brain and demanded to be brought home. Unfortunately, “brought home” was as far as the demand went. It sat in my literal TBR pile until […]
Raphael by R.A. MacAvoy
Raphael by R.A. MacAvoy (1984) – Satan, disgusted at being cast out of heaven and forced to dwell on the lower planes among humans, blames his brother Raphael. He has a plan to bring him to ruin by using a young lute-player and friend of Raphael’s to force the angel to lower his heavenly defenses. Saara, a powerful witch watching over Gaspare, holds the Liar to blame for killing Gaspare’s teacher and her lover, and attacks when Satan shows up in her lover’s form. She […]
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
They broke the mold after Dumas wrote “The Count of Monte Cristo.” There will never be a revenge plot as ambitious, as smooth, as Rube Goldbergian, as violent, as tense, or as passionate as this. This is the Ur Revenge Plot. I devoured this book. Inhaled it. And it’s partly because my brain melted a bit after the election, and then I was doggedly rebuilding my spirits with Solnit’s “Hope in the Dark” (TBR) (GET OFF MY BACK), and then it was Thanksgiving, and I […]
The Program by Charlie Lovett
This novel would be downright silly, if it weren’t so darned sweet. The premise of The Program is that Satan has launched a miraculous weight-loss program designed to ensnare the souls of millions of sad women who have been brainwashed into believing that curves mean fat, and fat means unsexy and unloveable. And so Lovett takes on the obsession with weight that dominates the world’s media, entertainment industry, fashion industry, and bedrooms around the globe, and presents us with a different reality, one in which […]
