fiction

I’ve often thought that the early death of Robert E. Howard is one of the great tragedies of American literature. Howard committed suicide in 1936 at the age of 30. Prolific, gifted and, driven, Howard’s work has been admired by Lovecraft and King. It’s possible this author altered the course of macabre writing. Some of his characters will perhaps be better known to you than the author himself: Conan the Cimmerian, Kull of Atlantis, Solomon […]

The timing of the mid-November release of The Hour I First Believed (Harper) leads one to think that this is the moment — this holiday moment — that the PR mavens at Harper had in mind when they thought things through all those months ago. A two-time Oprah pick, (for She’s Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True) Wally Lamb tends to sell a lot of books and a lot of people seem […]

It’s possible to know too much about an author before you read the book. For example, while reading This One Is Mine (Little, Brown and Company) I kept thinking it was very filmic and that, for various perfectly good reasons, it would probably make a terrific movie. And, of course, I knew going in that, not only is the book set in the glitzy glam world of west side L.A., this is the debut novel […]

Though City Wolves (Blue Butterfly Books) has a lot going on, at its core, Dorris Heffron’s latest novel is about the secret lives of wolves and how they relate to humans. Fascinating stuff. There’s more to this historical novel, of course. Quite a bit. It’s the entirely fictional story of Meg Wilkinson, Canada’s first woman veterinarian. And though the life she has chosen provides inspiration at every turn, she opts to take the best of […]

Laurell K. Hamilton is relentless. Since 1993, she has been dishing up her special blend of paranormal eroticism. Clearly, not everyone’s cup of hot beverage, but millions upon millions of fans line up, mostly, for new books in one of two series: the ever popular Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter books — the most recent of which was Blood Noir (Berkley) — and her lesser known and more recently launched Merry Gentry series, of which Swallowing […]