Review — Road of Bones by Christopher Golden

A road lines with snow-covered, frozen trees. Road of Bones
By: Christopher Golden
Release Date: January 25, 2022
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Rating:


Award-winning author Christopher Golden’s newest horror novel depicts a cold, frozen landscape that mimics the January landscape of its release date. Road of Bones follows a two-man filming crew as they traverse the Siberian landscape in order to make a documentary about the most northern place still inhabited by humans. However, the only road there is Kolyma Highway, otherwise known as the Road of Bones, for those who died during the road’s construction were simply laid down and buried in the permafrost beneath it.

Review — Lemon by Kwon Yeo-Sun and Translated by Janet Hong

Silhouette of a woman in a yellow dress Lemon
By: Kwon Yeo-Sun
Translator: Janet Hong
Release Date: October 7, 2021
Publisher: Apollo
Rating:


Lemon is a slow, introspective story about a cold case murder expertly written by author Kwon Yeo-Sun and translated from the original Korean by Janet Hong. Despite being focused on a cold case, this isn’t so much a whodunit, traditional murder mystery, or thriller. Instead, we find a slowly paced, introspective tale featuring a myriad of people left behind after the murder of the nineteen-year-old Kim Hae-on: how they cope and do not cope, how they move on and how time stops in that moment forever.

Review — The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa

Front cover of the novel The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa The Cat Who Saved Books
By: Sosuke Natsukawa
Translator: Louise Heal Kawai
Release Date: December 7, 2021
Publisher: HarperVia
Rating:


Books about books is a genre that many if not most readers often find themselves drawn to. This is true for The Cat Who Saved Books by Sosuke Natsukawa’s novel as well. Translated from the original Japanese by Louise Heal Kawai, this is a Japanese novel about Rintaro Natsuki, a young man whose grandfather has recently passed away. His life is immediately upended, as his grandfather was also his guardian.

Review — Rizzio by Denise Mina

Front cover of the novel Rizzio by Denise Mina Rizzo
By: Denise Mizio
Release Date: September 2, 2021
Publisher: Pegasus Crime
Series: Darkland Tales
Rating:


Denise Mina’s slim novel Rizzio packs one hell of a punch within a mere 118 pages. The multi-award-winning author brings us a new novel centered on a crime—the murder of Mary, Queen of Scots’, private secretary, David Rizzio. This is an utterly outstanding work of literary and crime fiction, one that will keep you at the edge of your seat regardless if you know the true-life story of David Rizzio and Mary, Queen of Scots.

Review — The Haunted Forest Tour by James A. Moore and Jeff Strand

A bus being grabbed by tree roots that look like a hand The Haunted Forest Tour
By: James A. Moore and Jeff Strand
Release Date: October 1, 2007
Publisher: Indie
Rating:


Horror novel The Haunted Forest Tour was co-written by James A. Moore and Jeff Strand, two authors with significant writing skill and a plethora of novels to each of their names. Moore is an award-winning author of more than forty novels. Strand has also written upwards of forty novels and has been nominated for the Bram Stoker Award ten times. Here, the pair come together for a creature feature of epic proportions.

Review — The Red Menace: How Lipstick Changed the Face of American History by Ilise S. Carter

The Red Menace: How Lipstick Changed the Face of American History
By: Ilise S. Carter
Release Date: November 15, 2021
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Rating:


Ilise S. Carter, freelance cosmetics and beauty writer, examines how lipstick in particular and cosmetics at large have influences the changing tides of American history in The Red Menace: How Lipstick Changed the Face of American History.

Review — An Atlas of Extinct Countries by Gideon Defoe

An Atlas of Extinct Countries
By: Gideon Defoe
Release Date: September 3, 2020
Publisher: Europa Editions
Received From: Publisher
(All reviews are our own, honest opinions.)
Rating:


Gideon Defoe brings the life and death of countries that are no more into the hands of readers in a compact volume now available in paperback. Forty-eight countries are outlined in three to five pages, each of which includes a map and some quick statistics.

Review — The Ice Lion by Kathleen O’Neal Gear

Sabre Tooth Tiger in a snow-covered, Seattle in ruins The Ice Lion
By: Kathleen O'Neal Gear
Release Date: June 15, 2021
Publisher: DAW Books
Series: Rewilding Reports #1
Rating:


Author and archaeologist Kathleen O’Neal Gear has written several books, including multiple series. Her latest novel, and the start to a fresh series, is The Ice Lion, a novel set on a future earth that has suffered an apocalyptic event. With the world having returned to an ice-age state, people live as they did in the far past, and creatures long extinct in our time freely roam the land.

Review — A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers

A robot and a person driving a wagon on a road A Psalm for the Wild-Built
By: Becky Chambers
Release Date: July 13, 2021
Publisher: Tordotcom
Series: Monk and Robot #1
Rating:


Becky Chambers is known for works set in futuristic fictional worlds that often drift more towards the slice-of-life than something heavily plotted. A Psalm for the Wild-Built is no different, the story following a tea monk and a wild-built robot they meet one day on the fringes of civilization.