Emma Chapman in her first novel, How To Be A Good Wife, has done the unthinkable. She had written a story that leaves the reader with more questions than answers when they reach the final page. The open ended nature of the final paragraphs will leave you either angry, sad or confused. But surprisingly it will not leave you unfulfilled.

"...Hector's mother organized everything: she liked things to be done right, and made it quite clear she thought I was too young to understand. Her wedding present to me had been a book: How To Be A Good Wife, which she said would teach me everything I needed to know..."

Marta Bjornstad has spent the last twenty years being the good wife. She diligently prepares her husbands meals. Presses his clothes. Takes extra care not to bother him when he is tired or stressed. She is the perfection of a modern Stepford Wife. Until she does the one thing her husband constantly tells her she must do; she stops taking the medication he gives her.

Marta begins to hallucinate. To see a young girl trapped in her home. Hector begins to look like someone else. Not her loving husband but a man much different than she believes him to be. Are these hallucinations Marta keeps seeing or worse, are they memories?

"...I sink back into the desk chair. Perhaps Hector is right. Perhaps the girl is only in my imagination, a part of the old me that I am better off forgetting. I have a good life here, with a loving husband and son, and there are lots of things to look forward to. There is the wedding, and watching Kylan's life unfold. Grandchildren. Perhaps we could even move closer to the city..."

As the medication wears away Marta is assaulted with visions and thoughts of a young girl, taken in the night and kept locked in the basement of her home. A girl drugged and kept. A girl who just may be Marta herself.

How To Be A Good Wife is a rare psychological thriller that is seldom seen much less attempted in a first novel. It is daring and innovative. A wonderful risk which tempts us with more to come.

The Memory of Trees - FG Cottam

F. G. Cottam's The Memory of Trees is definitely better than just three stars but not quite a four. The pacing is stunted and the action slowly driven. The main characters are hard to bond with and you are not so sure you are wanting them to win as much as you want the villain to win even less. What it does have and what makes it so intriguing; is story. This is a well developed and written story. In fact, in my opinion, could have been developed and built upon even more. Spanning centuries in its scope and blending science and mythology, Cottam's The Memory of Trees is as moving in story as it is unsettling.<br /><br />...Yes, you honoured the old gods. They had known that in the ancient world. Even when the sum of human knowledge had been compiled in the library of Alexandria, When the answers to every possible question had been within reach of the scholars there, they had remembered in ancient times the oldest and most universal rule: if you wish to survive and prosper, you honour the gods...<br /><br />Eccentric billionaire Saul Abercrombie has decided to do something quite radical on a remote strip of land on Welsh coast. He plans to restore the ancient forest that once ruled the land. It will be a grand undertaking that will leave his mark on this land long after he is gone. To help him he hires the young scientist Tom Curtis. Tom sees this as a last opportunity to win back his family and cement his reputation in his own field.<br /><br />However Abercrombie is keeping a truth of this barren land from Curtis. A truth of an ancient evil once defeated that is binding its time to return. A forgotten power, that if restored, may heal Abercrombie from the disease that is ravaging his body. An evil, that craves the forgotten forest to live again.<br /><br />The Memory of Trees is a story that spans the dawn of time to medieval battles to modern day horror. It creeps along, sometimes a little too slowly with the twists that are coming easily seen, but steadily it does build. Until the end where our heroes, flawed and weak as they are, face down the evil that awaits them.

Stoker's Manuscript by Royce Prouty - A Honest Book Review

I had a tough time with Royce Prouty's; Stoker's Manuscript. I loved the subject matter and the premise but felt the delivery of the novel to be disjointed and uneven. Much like a good movie torn apart on the editing floor.

..."You already did, by agreeing to go. There's danger there, a type not like here. You won't like what you see, Joseph, and you'll never be able to purge it from your memory."
"Can I have your blessing?"
"If only I could," he said. "Where you are going, God's eyes do not watch."...

Joseph Barkeley, a manuscript authenticator, is commissioned to procure the original draft and notes of Bram Stoker's classic novel, Dracula. The buyer is from the oldest family in Transylvania and wants the manuscript delivered to the legendary Castel Bram in Romania. The birthplace of Joseph, where he was orphaned as a child.

In researching the piece Joseph finds that the original manuscript has a different beginning and ending than does the novel that has been published since. In the notes there are passages of graveyards and secret burials. Barkeley travels to Romania with the manuscript and finds that the buyer is descended from Vlad the Impaler, whom the character of Dracula was based upon. It is this descendant who wishes the forgotten text of the manuscript to find the most desired of the what the family needs to carry on. This descendant who is far more than he seems.

..."Herr Barkeley." My host shook a finger at me. "Beware the dark."
"I'll be careful."
"Die Todten reiten schnell...faster than you." The dead travel fast...

Much like Jonathan Harker before him, Joseph Barkeley embarks on his mission and steps directly into the web of darkness and vampires. Unlike Harker, Joseph finds his own family history tied to the legends of the Castel Bram. Until he must decide whether his actions will increase the power of evil or if he can destroy it.

Unfortunately, unlike the heroes and heroines of Dracula, you never really feel like rooting for Barkeley. His depressive attitude and self serving greed make him pretty unlikeable. His actions contribute to the deaths of those he holds dear as he falls in servitude to the Dark Prince. The Dark Prince himself is poorly rendered image of a vampire that has survived for centuries untold yet loses a debate with Joseph over the merits of his faith in Christianity.

When you decide to take on something like Bram Stoker's Dracula and expand on the original; there should be a sense of respect for the original that demands a much better effort.

Overall the premise and subject could have been done much better. This book will leave you with a sense of so much promise and yet so little delivered.

A Chorus of Wolves - Alex Kimmell

 

A Chorus of Wolves by Alex Kimmell is a collection of short tales, vignettes of life not as we know, but how we hope it will not be. These are not sweet bed time stories to sooth the restless night. No in fact they are exactly the opposite.
In A Chorus of Wolves, Kimmell has put together short stories and excerpts from novels to come of that world that exists on the periphery of our mind. The world where darkness creeps just a little closer to the light and in response the light retreats.
There is Pall. Death. Who in his duties and travels finds the one thing worse than himself. Love.
Kodi the faithful dog that protects those he loves in the only way he can.
Lowell and Danika and the torrid nights they share in hopes of saving a dying species. Love means being strapped to bed but not in ways most of today's novels explore. Will Danika survive until the next full moon begins to wane?
There are old women in this book. Women who shed the maternal grandmother stereo type. Women to beware. The old drunk woman at the corner of the bar. Don't buy her a drink and don't let her buy you one. Or the old spinster down the street in the small town you grew up in. The old lady who's massive trees always seem to be bending in the wrong direction, as if somehow they were following you.
The stories in this book are appetizers. Teases of a larger tale to come. And perhaps that is the one lone fault with A Chorus of Wolves. Each story, though it stands on its own, leaves you wanting for more. The rest of the tale. The sense that something must come next. That they are just a glimpse of a much bigger story.
But that is always the thing with a good short story. It leaves you wanting more. Like a stolen kiss in the back seat of your dad's car. Enjoyable but the mystery of what is yet to come lingers.
Each tale in A Chorus of Wolves is not a full meal but instead a well crafted and paced series of tapas delivered to your table for you to try. So pour a nice glass of wine and enjoy. It may not fill you, but you leave satisfied.

Burial Rites - Hannah Kent

 

Few stories haunt. Truly haunt. Whether through fear or injustice or that simple reticent feeling that stays with the reader well past the turn of the final page. Few stories haunt. In her debut novel, Burial Rites, Hannah Kent has created a truly haunting tale of murder, injustice and the aftermath of the crime.

...They said I must die. They said that I stole the breath from men, and now they must steal mine...

Agnes Magnusdottir has been convicted of the brutal murder of two men. Along with two accomplices she has been sentenced to die. Awaiting her sentence she is removed to an isolated farm in the farthest reaches of Iceland. The family she is sent to stay with is horrified to have such evil in their home, afraid of how her presence will taint their peaceful lives.

...It was not so hard to believe a beautiful woman capable of murder, Margret thought. As it says in the sagas, Opt er flagd I fogru skinni. A witch often has fair skin.
But this woman was neither ugly nor a beauty...

The family is drawn into the plight of Agnes as she waits in their servitude. Neighbors come to gawk and gossip. Believing somehow that her act of violence is a sign of supernatural power. Whispers of witchcraft follow. Agnes requests a young priest named Toti, whose duty it is, to make her feel repentant for her crime. Something Agnes cannot do.

Slowly, instead of confessing and asking for absolution from God; Agnes tells her tale. A story of loss and desperation. Of betrayal and trust. A live of bitter disappointment that ended one night with a blade in her hand. How Agnes came to be in the home of the victim Natan and the promises made to her that he found so easy to break. Her alliance with the young thug Fridrik and the teenage girl Sigga and how their anger erupted one night in blood and fire.

Burial Rites is based on a true happening. The research done is detailed and well gathered. The novel itself embodies its setting in much of the story and becomes a central theme to the impoverised lives of those who survive in this remote part of the world.

Agnes Magnusdottir was the last person to be executed in Iceland. You will not forget her. She will haunt you in these pages long after the book is closed.

Night Film - Marisha Pessl (Book Review)

 

 

Reading Night Film by Marisha Pessl is more an experience than just a read. I have not read such an atmospheric novel in quite a long time. This one really took me away to a place and time and feeling I haven't enjoyed in quite some time. This book would have to be in my top ten reads of the whole year.

...Everyone has a Cordova story, whether they like it or not.
Maybe your next-door neighbor found one of his movies in an old box in her attic and never entered a dark room alone again. Or your boyfriend bragged he'd discovered a contraband copy of At Night All Birds Are Black on the Internet and after watching refused to speak of it, as if it were a horrific ordeal he'd barely survived...

The novel tells the tale of the death of Ashley Cordova, daughter to famed and eccentric film director Stanislas Cordova at the age of 24. Ashley committed suicide and her death is the catalyst that sends the other characters into a hunt for the truth behind her act. Disgraced reporter Scott McGrath whose expose on Cordova ending up destroying his own career finds himself once again chasing down the enigma that is Cordova.

...Even thought I was firmly not a believer in the paranormal, there was still the nagging remembrance of how Ashley had appeared the night at the reservoir. I hadn't told Nora about it. I hadn't told anyone. The truth was, I was no longer certain of what I'd seen. It was as if that night could be separated from all the others as a night without logic, a night of fantasy and strangeness, born of my own lonely delusions, a night that had no place in the real world...

McGrath and his team dig deep into the world of Cordova and find unexplained death and missing persons and legend upon legend of the dark director piled upon one another. There is mystery and fantasy and McGrath struggles to separate the two. Is there something truly sinister about Cordova as he has always believed? Are the tales of witchcraft and rituals done on Cordova's estate The Peak true. The stories that all of Cordova's films were done sequestered on his estate and that no actors that worked there were ever the same again.

..."Darkness. I know it's hard to fathom today, but a true artist needs darkness in order to create. It gives him power. His invisibility. The less the world knows about him, his whereabouts, his origins and secret methods, the more strength he has..."

For every stone McGrath turns over he finds himself deeper and deeper the in the darkness that is Stanislas Cordova. And what of Ashley? Who's suicide spurred the investigation. She, like her father, is layers and layers of secrets and magic. Is the dark magic she possessed real. Why did she inspire such love and fear in all that met her. Had she been destroyed or protected by her father. Which of the two was the real monster. Or is the truth something more real and more terrifying than all the dark fantasy McGrath can dig up about Cordova?

...She eyed me disdainfully. "You've done a lifetime's worth of mining, Mr. McGrath. Maybe it's time to come back to the surface and go home with whatever lumps of coal you've managed to dig loose."

And just like that reader, you realize that along with McGrath you too have been reading this book just underwater with the surface right above you. Will you continue or will you come up from air? For it is here that you realize how deeply you've have stepped into the world of Stanislas Cordova, the Night Film and Marisha Pessl.

Very well done.

Kylie Minogue - Better The Devil You Know (Alan Carr 2012) [Live]

Ghost Bride

 

THE GHOST BRIDE by Yangsze Choo

 

A Book Review by Albert Garcia

 

 

 

   The Ghost Bride is a journey into the realm of Chinese Mysticism and the afterlife. As well as the beings and spirits that dwell there.
   Li Lan, the daughter of a bankrupt family has seen her future change and now with little to no opportunities she is offered a chance out of the looming poverty that is coming for her and her family. A Ghost Marriage. She is to be betrothed to the dead son of a wealthy family. The rich Lim family want her to be wed to their dead son in an effort to appease the unsettled spirit.

…”Hush,” said my father. “Don’t fret so. Whatever else I’ve failed to do. I won’t force you into this ghost marriage. I thought that the best thing would be to betroth you to someone else. Then everyone would save some face. I’ve been asking around discreetly, but have had no luck. It’s my fault. I didn’t cultivate new or useful friendships since your mother died. Those old friends I approached were under the impression, no doubt from Lim, that you were always betrothed to his son. But we’ll think of something.”
Tears filled my eyes. If I started to cry. I would be unable to stop. My father stared at his desk, guilt and shame written across his countenance. Then he glanced involuntarily at his opium pipe. I felt a stinging rebuke rise to my lips. No wonder Amah had grumbled at him so often. I had always defended him, feeling that my father doted on me and was sweetly unworldly. But now I began to comprehend the true cost of his failure…

   To add to Li Lam’s despair, she begins to receive a nightly visitor in her dreams. Her dead betroth. The ghost of the son of the Lim family and he is waiting for her to be his bride.
   Li Lam must find a way out of the ghost marriage and in doing so begins a journey into the spirit world where she is neither dead nor alive. As her spirit travels she begins to understand the anger of Lim’s dead son. His murder and cover up. His inheritance given to another. His anger at all that was taken away and the one thing he will have is his bride.
   Li Lam will also uncover the secrets of her own family and how the Lims and her family are closer than even they will tell.
The Ghost Bride is a well written novel of love and fear and the realm of the Chinese spirit world and all it entails. The tale of a young bride and her desires to live her own life