#ThePlasticPriest by @NicoleCushing

When the soul has been thoroughly poisoned, the body must abandon it. Everything feels unreal afterwards, but plastic heads shed no tears. Bram Stoker Award® winning author Nicole Cushing offers an excursion into the Weird, a quiet novella of a madwoman in a mad town, as an Episcopal priest grapples with the meaning of faith, reality, and if there is anything real to either of them, at the end of it all.

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Reverend Ford is not Revered Ford.

– The Childless Mother Introduced

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(@CemeteryDance, 12 December 2023, e-galley, 108 pages, #ARC @NetGalley)

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I enjoyed The Plastic Priest a lot. I expected it to be more of a horror read and it goes get there, very subtly and not until the final pages of this short, gripping read. I liked the fact the priest is a woman and a married one at that, a bit feisty and starting to question her lot in life. Her descent into madness is almost heart-breaking and I really felt for her.

#BeneaththeZoo by @thecreativepenn

Some secrets should stay buried.

When renowned architect Arania Webb returns to Bristol Zoo — once her childhood sanctuary but now a derelict ruin — she discovers her late father’s hidden underground lab, which harbours a dark obsession.

Inside, she uncovers his journals documenting twisted experiments to fuse arachnid DNA with humans, creating unnatural creatures that blur the line between species. As Arania descends into the shadowy depths and explores further, she realises the terrifying extent of her beloved father’s attempts to play god.

With demolition charges set to raze the derelict zoo in minutes, Arania has little time to process the ethical transgression and madness that drove her father down an unholy path before the truth is buried forever.

But when the site manager stumbles upon her macabre discovery, Arania knows she must act swiftly to protect her family’s legacy — and her own future.

Will she find a way to escape the ruins with her father’s monstrous secrets? Or will the horrors hidden beneath the zoo ultimately consume them both?

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Ariana Webb stood alone before the padlocked gates of Bristol Zoo; her slender figure silhouetted against the wrought iron entrance of the Victorian ruin.

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(Curl Up Press, 20 December 2023, e-galley, 24 pages, ARC from the author)

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I’m a huge fan of the author and really enjoyed Beneath the Zoo. This story is action packed, full of twists and turns and plenty happens when Ariana and Ethan stumble across her father’s secret lab beneath his public lab. Their lives will never be the same again. Ariana is reeling from the revelations of where her father’s obsession and madness led. Ethan is horrified by the discovery. Choices are made that can never be taken back. I enjoyed this story a lot.  

#TheLastCaretaker by @jessicastrawser

Katie’s divorce was, in a word, humiliating. So when her friend Bess offers a fresh start—a resident caretaking job at a nature preserve—Katie accepts. No matter that she’s not exactly a “nature person.” How hard can it be?

But from day one, something feels off. Katie’s new farmhouse looks as if the last caretaker barely moved out at all. When a frantic, terrified woman arrives late at night, expecting a safe place to hide, it’s clear caretaking involves way more than Katie bargained for.

Suddenly, Katie is no longer sure who she can trust: the brooding groundskeeper, the daily regulars—hikers, dog walkers, birdwatchers, photographers—even Bess.

As Katie digs deeper for clues in what the last caretaker left behind, she must discover courage she never knew she had—and decide how much she’ll risk to do the right thing.

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Bess had neglected to mention the guard shack.

– 1

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(Lake Union Publishing, 1 December 2023, e-book, 348 pages, bought from @AmazonKindle via #AmazonFirstReads)

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I loved The Last Caretaker, my first from the author. I was hooked after a few pages and didn’t want to stop reading. As soon as the shaken woman turns up in the middle of the night, expecting refuge and steps to be followed to lead her to safety I knew I was going to love the book. And I did. Every time I started to read I had to force myself to stop. So much happens in the book and I never knew where Katie would end up next. This is a riveting read.

5/5

Convenience Store Woman by @sayakamurata

Meet Keiko.

Keiko is 36 years old. She’s never had a boyfriend, and she’s been working in the same supermarket for eighteen years.

Keiko’s family wishes she’d get a proper job. Her friends wonder why she won’t get married.

But Keiko knows what makes her happy, and she’s not going to let anyone come between her and her convenience store…

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A convenience store is a world of sound.

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(@GrantaBooks, 5 July 2018, paperback, 163 pages, borrowed from @NACLibraries)

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I loved Convenience Store Woman. It’s a short book but a lot is packed into it’s scant pages. The book is very funny, quite satirical and has some dark undertones. I found Keiko very endearing, her love for her job is evident on every page, despite her family and other people around putting it down, telling her she needs to get a ‘real job’, get married and sort her life out. Her resilience is wonderful to read. When you find the thing that’s meant for you, cling to it and never let go. The book is sad at times as Keiko contemplates giving into other’s expectations but there is a lot of love as well.

The Flood by @maggiegeewriter

The rich are safe on high ground, but the poor are getting damper in their packed tower blocks, and the fanatical ‘Last Days’ sect is recruiting thousands. When at last the sun breaks through the clouds Lottie heads off to the opera, husband Harold listens to jazz and their ditsy teenage daughter Lola fights capitalism by bunking off school. Shirley takes her twin boys to the zoo. The government – eager to detract attention from a foreign war it has waged – announces a spectacular City Gala. But not even TV astrologer Davey Lucas can predict the extraordinary climax that ensues.

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I am going to tell you how it happened.

– Before

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(@SaqiBooks, 16 April 2012, e-book, 187 pages, borrowed from @NACLibraries via @BorrowBox)

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I’ve read a couple of books by the author but wouldn’t rate myself as fan. I enjoyed The Flood a lot. I really enjoy dystopian fiction and books about the end of the world and the like so expected to enjoy this which I did. This is a short read but there’s plenty backed into the pages. It didn’t feel like a sparse book at all. I enjoyed this a lot.

The Bridges Of Madison County by Robert James Waller

If you’ve ever experienced the one true love of your life, a love that for some reason could never be, you will understand why readers all over the world are so moved by this small, unknown first novel that they became a publishing phenomenon and #1 bestseller.

The story of Robert Kincaid, the photographer and free spirit searching for the covered bridges of Madison County, and Francesca Johnson, the farm wife waiting for the fulfilment of a girlhood dream, The Bridges of Madison County gives voice to the longings of men and women everywhere — and shows us what it is to love and be loved so intensely that life is never the same again.

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There are songs that come free from the blue-eyed grass, from the dust of a thousand country roads.

– The Beginning

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(@PenguinUKBooks, 30 November 2013, e-book, 194 pages, borrowed from @GlasgowLib via @OverDriveInc)

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I love the movie The Bridges of Madison County and have seen it several times, weeping with every re-watch. I discovered very recently that it was based on a book so of course I had to read it. The events in the book are very close to the film. The book is structured as it the author has been asked to write a true story by Francesa’s children. This is a literary device as the book is purely fiction. I loved it. The book affected me as much as the film and I wept like a baby. What a beautiful, beautiful story.

Late Gifts by Richard Price

Late Gifts is a joyful and anxious book. The eponymous late gift, this book’s occasion, is a son, born to a middle-aged father. How does this change his sense of present and future, of time itself? The poet focuses on this demanding and joyful relationship in terms that are funny and re-energising, his world renewed. The child’s future makes more urgent the environmental and political themes which have long been a concern for the poet.

Here Price has developed new forms for his subject matter, including striking longer pieces which survey contemporary worlds with arresting imagery and a hypnotic energy, the twin gatherings of prose poems ‘Shore Gifts’ and ‘Shore Thefts’, and quieter, meditative poems of elegy and awe-struck praise. As Maureen N. McLane has written, ‘He is one of our most attentive, delicate, ferocious transmitters, singers, makers.’

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her child

who is my child

as holy

as loved

as inner thought

– NOBODY’S CHILD

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(@Carcanet, 7 July 2022, e-book, 130 pages, borrowed from @natpoetrylib)

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I enjoyed Late Gifts, my first from the poet. Many of the poems focus on the relationship between parent and child, father, and son. Poems that step outside these themes are very approachable and touch on universal ideas, beliefs, and concepts. The poems are well written and engaging, expertly crafted.

Rizzio by @damedenisemina

It’s Saturday evening, 9 March 1566, and Mary, Queen of Scots, is six months pregnant. She’s hosting a supper party, secure in her private chambers. She doesn’t know that her Palace is surrounded – that, right now, an army of men is creeping upstairs to her chamber. They’re coming to murder David Rizzio, her friend and secretary, the handsome Italian man who is smiling across the table at her. Mary’s husband, Lord Darnley, wants it done in front of her and he wants her to watch it done …

Denise Mina brilliantly portrays the sexual dynamics and politics of power – between men and women, monarch and subjects, master, and servants. The period is masterfully researched yet lightly drawn, the characterisation quick, subtle and utterly convincing. This breathtakingly tense work is a tale of sex, secrets and lies, one that explores the lengths that men – and women – will go to in the search for love and power.

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Lord Ruthven wanted him killed during the tennis match, but Darnley said no.

– David Rizzio Plays Tennis with His Assassins

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(@BirlinnBooks, 2 September 2021, hardback, 103 pages, borrowed from @NACLibraries)

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I’ve wanted to read Rizzio since it was featured in an episode of The Big Scottish Book Club. I loved this book a lot. It’s a thin, tiny volume which touches on a vey dark part of Scottish history that I knew nothing about. Despite it’s slim size, more happens between these pages than books several hundred pages longer. I devoured it in one volume. I couldn’t stop reading because the book is so well-written and gripping. I was in tears before I reached the end, utterly drained.

Night Side of the River by Jeanette Winterson

Our lives are digital, exposed and always-on. We track our friends and family wherever they go. We have millennia of knowledge at our fingertips.

We know everything about our world. But we know nothing about theirs.

We have changed, but our ghosts have not. They’ve simply adapted and innovated, found new channels to reach us. They inhabit our apps and wander the metaverse just as they haunt our homes and our memories, always seeking new ways to connect.

To live amongst us.

To remind us.

To tempt us.

To take their revenge.

These stories are not ours to tell. They are the stories of the dead – of those we’ve lost, loved, forgotten… and feared. Some are fiction. But some may not be.

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Black coat. Black dress. Black hat. Black car.

– App-arition – A GHOST STORY (FOR NOW) FOR NOW

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(@JonathanCape, 5 October 2023, hardback, 320 pages, borrowed from @NACLibraries)

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I’m a fan of the author and a fan of ghost stories so really enjoyed Night Side of the River. The stories are split into themed sections such as Places and each section contains stories based around the themes and an anecdote about the author’s own encounters with the strange and odd. I enjoyed all of the stories. I liked the fact that even though the themes were the same for the grouped stories, the stories were all different. I liked the range of ghosts the stories explore.

The Murder of Halland by @piajuul

Bess and Halland live in a small town, where everyone knows everyone else. When Halland is found murdered in the main square the police encounter only riddles. For Bess bereavement marks the start of a journey that leads her to a reassessment of first friends then family.

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The night before, we sat in the living room.

– 1

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(@PeirenePress, 18 June 2012, e-book, 189 pages, borrowed from @NACLibraries via @BorrowBox)

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I really enjoyed The Murder of Halland. This short book is much larger than the sum of it’s parts. I felt like I’d read something much, much longer. The chapters are short and brutal as they explore Halland’s murder and its’s aftermath. Bess’s bereavement makes her act in ways that make people think she’s not grieving and may have had a hand in his death such as excessively drinking, partying, and laughing at inappropriate moments. This is a bleak yet powerful book about loss and grief.

The Illustrated Woman by @HelenMort

Let me kneel

before the sky and let me be humble, untidy,

let me be decorated.

Here are women’s bodies. Hungry adolescent bodies, fluctuating pregnant bodies, ailing aging bodies. Here are bodies as products to be digitized and consumed. Here is the body in nature, changing and growing stronger. Here are tattooed women through history, ink unfurling across their skin.

The Illustrated Woman is a tender and incisive collection about what it means to live in a female body – from the joys and struggles of new motherhood to the trauma of deep fakes. Amidst the landscapes of the Peak District and the glaciers of Greenland, Helen Mort’s remarkable poems transfix the reader in a celebration of beauty and resilience.

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… because of the virginity you took

and never knew, the meals you cooked

with aubergine and parmesan that made me feel

I could be your age. Because you let me

Undo my own buttons…

– FIRST

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(@vintagebooks, 7 July 2022, e-book, 96 pages, borrowed from @natpoetrylib)

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I’m a fan of the poet and wanted to read The Illustrated Woman when I saw the cover. I liked this collection a lot. The poems are about bodies, women’s bodies in all their array and beauty and how they can be treated or often mistreated, worshipped, and feared. The poems are powerful, unforgettable. I didn’t want to stop reading.

Drowned Country by Emily Tesh

Even the Wild Man of Greenhollow can’t ignore a summons from his mother, when that mother is the indomitable Adela Silver, practical folklorist. Henry Silver does not relish what he’ll find in the grimy seaside town of Rothport, where once the ancient wood extended before it was drowned beneath the sea—a missing girl, a monster on the loose, or, worst of all, Tobias Finch, who loves him.

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THORNGROVES SHROUD GREENHOLLOW HALL.

– 1: The Demon Of Rothing Abbey

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(@torbooks, 18 June 2019, e-book, 160 pages, borrowed from @GlasgowLib via @OverDriveInc)

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I enjoyed Drowned Country almost as much as Silver in the Wood. This picks up some time after the events of the first book with Tobias enjoying a life of freedom and Henry now the ‘wild man’ tied to the woods. In this book, Tobias and Henry team up to find a young woman who’s apparently gone missing but is more resourceful, spunky and careless than expected. I found this an engrossing read that I didn’t want to end.