Love Wars
Divorce is often described as a battle, but Love Wars: Clash of the Parents shows what that battle feels like from the vantage point of a child caught in the crossfire. This is Matthew Tower’s own story, told through the […]
Following Jimmy Valentine
I went into Following Jimmy Valentine not really knowing what to expect. I spotted the O. Henry credit and before this I honestly thought O. Henry was just a candy bar. Turns out it is that too, so I guess
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Halcyon Nights
Sometimes you stumble across a story that hits exactly the right note for the mood you didn’t know you were in. Halcyon Nights turned out to be one of those listens for me: warm, funny, and unexpectedly addictive. I went
Falling Angels
Falling Angels opens with a flashback to 1979, where a young Maxx King is already proving he can take a hit and give one back. It’s a quick reminder that this guy has always been wired for survival. From there,
Apocalypticon
I picked up Apocalypticon after I had some weird half-memories of it from reading on my Kindle a decade ago. I remembered that I liked parts, disliked other parts, then filed it away under “maybe revisit someday”, but otherwise remembered
The Lavender Blade
There’s something immediately satisfying about a story that knows exactly what kind of world it’s playing in. The Lavender Blade has that rich, old-world texture where the air smells faintly of coal dust and class divides, and where the wealthy
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With Stars in Her Eyes
I was feeling in the mood for something light-hearted and the all-knowing Audible algorithm suggested “With Stars in Her Eyes” by Andie Burke while I clicked through the “also-reads” based on others I had listened to. The blurb sold me
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The Peacock Detectives
I picked up The Peacock Detectives because my youngest is reading it for school, and it sounded like the sort of story we could share. It’s outside my usual listening bracket, aimed at younger readers, but that comes with the
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3 Days, 9 Months, 27 Years
Part of The Time Traveler’s Passport collection, 3 Days, 9 Months, 27 Years works perfectly well on its own, which is good because I didn’t notice it was part of a larger collection of short stories! It’s a compact, neatly
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The Long Shoe
I first came across Bob Mortimer through 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, where he occasionally appears as a guest to spin surreal stories and generally make everyone lose it laughing. He’s always had that offbeat, quietly absurd kind
When the Angel of Death Tells Bedtime Stories
I enjoy a quirky title, and When the Angel of Death Tells Bedtime Stories nails it: weird, unsettling, and somehow entirely accurate. It makes it sounds like something between a dark fairytale and a theological thought experiment, and in a
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