Reading
The Secret History of John le Carré’s Career in the Intelligence Services
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‘People believe what they want to believe,’ wrote David to one of his lovers. ‘ALWAYS.’ he was referring to the ‘revelation’ that Graham Greene had continued working for British intelligence into his seventies. ‘No good me telling them that GG was far too drunk to remember anything, & that his residual connections with the Brit…
Broiler: Exclusive Excerpt and Cover Reveal
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Despite all that Mimi Jackson knew, the chicken fajitas still looked good. Smelled good, too. She watched the dark-haired waiter balance three plates on one arm as he hustled past her table and the five other women she’d invited to La Huerta. They were wives of Detmer Foods plant managers. They played bunco and were…
Goosebumps Remixes Its Source Material to Satisfying Results
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Adapting a property like Goosebumps, R.L. Stine’s beloved series of children’s horror novels, for the big (or small) screen in 2023 is a tricky proposition. Each of the sixty-two books in the original run, apart from a handful of sequels, stands alone, so an anthology format, like the one adopted by the popular Canadian-produced television…
Why Horror Fiction Matters for Telling Indigenous Stories
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I’ve been consuming horror films and books from perhaps a too young age, though it’s worked out fine for me. It’s been a formative genre for me as a writer and a person. I started watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer when it premiered, when I was eight years old, and it was long my favorite…
16 Spooky Novellas by Women and Nonbinary Authors
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What makes a spooky novella so satisfying? You might as well ask why a raven is like a writing desk. (The answer, of course, is that all three things remind me of my own mortality.) All riddles aside, the novella is, at best, a slippery beast. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association defines it as…
Dorothy L. Sayers and the Enduring Legacy of a Marriage of True Minds
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–Originally delivered as the Annual Speech (28 June 2023) for the Dorothy L. Sayers Society, edited. Exactly a hundred years ago this October, Dorothy L Sayers published Whose Body? It launched her career as an illustrious author of eleven novels featuring Lord Peter Wimsey that changed the detective genre forever. Sayers was, quite simply, unique.…
Dann McDorman on Exploring Literary Hijinks and Meta Mystery
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While mysteries can usually be trusted to compel the reader within the first chapter or even the first few pages, it’s rare for them to hook us from the first paragraph. But West Heart Kill, Dann McDorman’s clever debut, achieves this with intriguing tongue-in-cheek confidence. The book opens with the protagonist, detective Adam McAnnis, sitting…