Rob

I have a long history with Joe Lansdale. I've been reading his books since the very early 90's when I ran across Nightrunners in a used book store, and I still have that old beat up paperback. I firmly believe that he is one of the great living writers of today. Don't tell him that though, he'll get all uppity and stuff.

These short stories are in a word, excellent. I particularly enjoyed Sparring Partner and The Sabine was High. His writing style is conversational and makes for easy reading. You don't need to have prior knowledge of Hap and Leonard to read this collection of short of short stories. Highly recommended.

I really enjoyed this book by Alan Baxter. He's one of those writers that are an auto-buy for me. As soon as he comes out with a new book, I pick it up. I actually read this a while back, but I was rereading it in preparation for the sequel “Recall Night” and realized that I hadn't reviewed this. Excellent book. This is a very fast paced noir style book with supernatural dashes thrown into it for good measure.
We open the book with Eli Carver driving a car and he has no memory, and a young woman next to him is tied up, and ghosts of men he's killed are in the back seat haunting him. And he's fleeing from something, something terrible that he just can't face head on.
Baxter does a great job of feeding the reader the pieces of Eli's memory slowly, through excellent use of flashback technique that is seamless and well done. The writing is excellent (as always from Mr. Baxter). Everything builds to an explosive ending that's very satisfying. There isn't much in the way of horror here, it's more of a noir/crime novel and it is a well done one.

Thomas Perry writes good books. This one is no exception! This book is about a prison break, many prisoners break out and havoc ensues in the small town near the prison. A dozen are still out there unfound, the guys that planned the prison break. A local cop is given the task of tracking them down. I don't want to give too much of the plot away, so I'll leave it at that. The characterization is well done, and it is a page turner. Very enjoyable.

Gems like this are why I love the indie/small publishing scene. This was a delight to read. It's very well written and polished. The main story of the book is around an unemployed mid-30's musician that suddenly discovers that a song she is working on is a hit song on the radio, BY HER, but she never submitted it. Very mysterious stuff going on. I can't really get more into it without spoiling anything things, but the book has an x-files, horror, mystery collage going for it that works very well.

The characterization is done well, transitions are spot on, I enjoyed the ending quite a bit. This was an excellent read. Highly recommended.

I picked up this one on Kindle Unlimited on the basis of a youtube video from Well Read Beard, one of my favorite Booktubers that I regularly watch. He's usually on target for me and he definitely was with this one. This is a very good dark crime novel. I'm pretty sure it's her debut novel If so it is remarkably well written. There are no supernatural elements in this novel.

This a tough one to review without giving away too much plot, but I'll try, and be as vague as possible.

This is a story told mainly from the perspective of two people. Rebecca and James.
Rebecca is a ambitious woman married with a little boy and a job that faces her worst nightmare, the disappearance of her husband and son. She goes through grief and anger in trying to find closure slowly loses her mind and worse. James is the person responsible for the disappearance of her husband and son (not a spoiler, it's revealed right on the first page).

This book was very well done. The characterization was realistic and scene transitions worked well.

This was a good debut novella by Joshua Marsella. It's about a 12 year old boy, Connor, living with his mother in her childhood home that has some dark secrets best left uncovered. Connor decides to move his bedroom down into the basement and things start to get a little creepy.

I gave this 4 stars, but it's really 3.5, it's 4 stars for the story, as it's a good story, and I think the characters and plot were interesting. However, the writing and dialogue had some issues, there was some awkward transitions in the narration and things of that nature, so I give the writing itself 3 stars, for an average rating of 3.5 stars. But overall I think Josh really did a fantastic job for a debut, it was a creepy story, and had a really good ending.

Josh is working on a prequel to this, and I'm looking forward to reading that. I would definitely recommend this if you like horror, it's a quick read and worth your time.

This was a weird little novella. Reminded me a little bit of “Wool” by Hugh Howey. It's about four people in an underground bunker living day to day, with very little knowledge of why they're there and what's outside. There is an pervading sense of tension and claustrophobia throughout the story. It was a pretty good story, but I felt the characters were a little odd, and some of the situations were confusing to the reader. Overall I did find the story enjoyable and I liked the ending, but some people may not, as everything is not tied up neatly at the end.

This is a very good horror novella from Off Limit Press. It's about a woman grieving the loss of her grown son, who passed away from a car accident a couple of years ago. She spends every day visiting the site of his accident as a way to spend time with her remembrances of her son, but things aren't quite as they seem. As she begins to see things that aren't explainable and things start spiral out of control, just how much is she willing to sacrifice, to bring her son back to life again? Or is it really her son?

This was a very good read. Prose was excellent. The main character, Chris was well done. You can feel her pain and feel the gradual loss of control as the story moves along. The emotional impact and grief of the loss of a child is well done, as well. Also, there are some pretty gruesome parts in the story, if you like that type of thing. The ending was pretty good too, a cool surprise that I wasn't quite expecting. Definitely recommended. 4.5 Stars.

This was a very good horror read! It takes place in an old closed down carnival where some gruesome murders took place 20 years earlier. Sound like the same old thing? Not quite! This isn't your standard slasher book, although it has the usual bloody guts and gore that we all love and adore. It has some originality and some depth. The murderers have a history and the plot holds the reader's interest. The book jumps between 1989 and 2019, telling the story in present day and of how it came to become haunted. Very enjoyable read. I will definitely be looking for more books in this series and for books by Jessica Guess.

This book was an excellent read for me. It has a good mix of mystery, hard SF/space opera, amazing tech, astronomy, with a dash of horror mixed in with the addition of a very scary plague. It took me a while to get into the book, as it starts off slowly with a few different story-lines that eventually merge into one at the end. But once momentum gets going, it moves fast.

The first story-line involves Dan Sylveste, who is an archaeologist excavating ruins on a planet. The ruins were left by a mysterious alien race called the Amarantin. Another story-line centers around Ultras (humans that modify themselves with cybernetic upgrades to “improve” themselves). These Ultras are tracking down Sylveste because they think that Sylveste has the knowledge to help their captain, who is stricken with the Melding Plague, which attacks both human and cybernetic components. The last story-line is about an assassin who has been hired to assassinate Sylveste. These story-lines converge into one and it ultimately revolves around the mysterious Amarantin race and what happened to them.

Highly recommended for fans of hard SF/space opera.

This is basically the Coast Guard in space. I really enjoyed this, it has great pacing and the plot was interesting. I learned a lot about the Coast Guard even though this is in space, it seems like the general ideas are the same as the water based service.

Overall an enjoyable read. Thank you to NetGalley for providing a review copy.