edited by Michael Reaves & John Pelan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2003
A few clunkers aside: a very entertaining volume.
Conan Doyle’s immortal creations Holmes and Watson battle enigmatic forces of darkness in this smartly conceived collection of 18 new tales of intrigue, detection, and horror.
Each story proceeds from the premise that the dauntless duo are engaged to solve crimes whose perpetrators are eerily reminiscent of phenomena described in H.P. Lovecraft’s grisly Ctulhu Mythos stories. The manual of black arts studied by such creatures is the dreaded Necronomicon, conveniently described (in editor Reaves’s “The Adventure of the Arab’s Manuscript”) as “a compendium of ancient lore and forbidden knowledge concerning various pre-Adamite beings and creations, some of extraterrestrial origin, who once ruled the earth and who anticipate doing so again”). Several stories do too little with the core idea of overreaching antiquaries who unwisely summon slumbering supernatural entities. But there are several noteworthy exceptions. The volume is neatly bracketed by ever-dependable Neil Gaiman’s witty imagining of Holmes’s first encounter with his archenemy Professor Moriarty (“A Study in Emerald”) and Simon Clark’s “Nightmare in Wax,” in which Moriarty gains possession of the Necronomicon, with amusingly ghastly and surprising consequences. The best of the remainder: a delicious battle of wits between Holmes and a Balinese beauty who pits herself against a man-eating demon (Steve Perry’s “The Case of the Wavy Black Dagger”); the combined efforts of Holmes and his sedentary, brilliant sibling Mycroft to rescue a sea captain cursed by an exotic stone carving (Brian Stableford’s “Art in the Blood”); John P. Vourlis’s nicely plotted tale of an entire village overcome by an unnatural sleeplessness (“A Case of Insomnia”); and F. Gwynplaine McIntyre’s stunning “The Adventure of Exham Priory,” an ingenious reworking of the familiar incident of Holmes’s misadventure at the Reichenbach Falls. Other notable contributions are by genre veterans Barbara Hambly and Tim Lebbon and less familiar authors Steven Elliott-Altman and James Lowder.
A few clunkers aside: a very entertaining volume.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45528-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2003
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by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2004
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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