Category Archives: Book Review

Non-Fiction Review: Disaster Movies by Michael Rose and Glenn Kay

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

What’s the only thing scarier than being trapped in a real-life disaster?

Being trapped in a disaster movie!

First published in 2006, the full name of this guide to the disaster genre is Disaster Movies: A Loud, Long, Explosive, Star-Studded Guide to Avalanches, Earthquakes, Floods, Meteors, Sinking Ships, Twisters, Viruses, Killer Bees, and Alien Attacks In The Cinema.  That title tells you pretty much everything you need to know about this affectionate but likably snarky look at all the movies that have been made about earthquakes, fires, torandoes, and …. well, basically all the stuff listed in the title.  

On a movie-by-movie basis, this guide reviews disaster movies that are both well-known and obscure.  All of the big ones — Airport, Towering Inferno, Titanic, Independence Day, Poseidon Adventure — are listed here but, even more importantly, so are the obscure ones.  In fact, the book features a lot of films that you might not have heard about but will probably want to track down after you’ve read about them.  The reviews are respectful to the conventions of the genre while also acknowledging the obvious, i.e., a lot of these are not good films.  But the authors understand that sometimes, a bad disaster film can be even more enjoyable than a good one.  The Poseidon Adventure is a classic of sorts but how about Beyond The Poseidon Adventure?  How about Flood!, a film so exciting that it even has an exclamation mark in the name?  How about Avalanche, the best of the snowy disaster films?  What about Meteor?  If love The Swarm but you can’t appreciate Meteor, I don’t know what to tell you.  

Disaster Movies is a well-written guide.  Most readers will discover the existence of at least one film that they previously knew nothing about.  And, hopefully, they’ll be inspired to watch a few of the film reviewed in this book.  In a disaster, it’s always helpful to be prepared.

Book Review: The Surprise Party by R.L. Stine

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Last summer, after her boyfriend Evan apparently shot himself in Fear Street Woods, Ellen moved away from Fear Street and her friends were left to attend Shadyside High without her.  However, a few months have passed and Ellen now feels safe about returning to Fear Street, if just for a visit.  Her friend, Meg, is super excited!  Meg wants to throw Ellen a surprise party!  Great idea, Meg!  Meg wants to throw it in Fear Street Woods, at pretty much the same location where the dead body of Ellen’s boyfriend was found.  Wait, what?

Meg is shocked when she starts to get phone calls from a mysterious stranger, telling her to cancel the party.  She’s even more upset when someone destroys the invitations that she spent so long working on.  Meg does exactly what I would do in those circumstances.  She makes a list of all the people who she thinks might be responsible.  A few people are put on the list for understandable reasons, i.e., being near the invitations before they were destroyed.  The rest are listed because Meg dislikes them personally.  One kid is listed because he’s way into playing Wizard and Dragons.  Meg’s extremely petty suspect list is probably the most realistic thing about The Surprise Party.  My suspects lists are always a combination of people who have blocked me on twitter and celebrities that I’m sick of hearing about.  My Congressman is usually on the list because he supports the ProAct.

Anyway, it does turn out that there is more to Evan’s death than anyone originally realized.  And yes, the truth comes out at the surprise party.  And yes, all of the twists don’t really make that much sense.  First published in 1989, this was the second of R.L. Stine’s Fear Street books and, to be honest, it’s a little bit disappointing.  There’s nothing supernatural about anything that happens.  Instead, it’s just one of those mysteries that can’t be solved because Stine doesn’t give us all the clues until the very last minute.  I spent the whole book thinking Meg was the culprit because throwing a surprise party in the woods where your friend committed suicide is just incredibly insensitive.  And, if this was a later Fear Street book, I have no doubt that Meg would have an evil twin or something.  But no, this is an early book and Meg’s just dumb.

Oh well.  That’s life on Fear Street!

Book Review: Haunted Places: The National Directory by Dennis William Hauck

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As I’ve said before, you don’t necessarily have to believe in ghosts to have fun searching for them.

Myself, I don’t believe in Ghosts, UFOs, conspiracy theories, or Bigfoot.  But I still enjoy reading about them and occasionally visiting the places where they’ve supposedly been spotted.  In fact, I would say that being a skeptic makes it even more enjoyable to visit a haunted house.  On the one hand, you would think that, because you don’t believe in ghosts, you wouldn’t be frightened about the possibility of running into one of them.  However, from my own personal experience, I’ve found the opposite to be true.  Haunted houses are even scarier when you don’t believe because you’ve always got that voice in the back of your head saying, “What if you’re wrong?”

Haunted Places: The National Directory is just what the title on the cover says it is.  It’s a listing of places across the country that some believe to be haunted.  Some of the places are said to be inhabited by ghosts.  Some of the places are better known for the UFOs that have supposedly visited.  Some places have been visited by Bigfoot.  There’s a few lakes that are rumored to be home to underwater monsters.  It makes for interesting reading and, like many paranormal directories, it’s a treasure trove of potential inspiration for the aspiring horror writer.  The latest edition of the book as published in 2002 so don’t expect to find information of recent hauntings and some of the locations may have been torn down in the past twenty year.  It happens.  That said, Jeff and I used this book to plan a road trip a few years ago and we had a great time, even if we didn’t see any ghosts.

Novel Review: The Thrill Club by R.L. Stine

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Let’s hang out with The Thrill Club!

The who club?

The Thrill Club!  They’re the group of high school students who are at the center of R.L. Stine’s 1994 novel, The Thrill Club.  They get together at night and they read the scary stories that they’ve written.  Perhaps the most macabre of all the writers is Talia, who always comes up with stories about people getting cornered by scary ghosts and ripped up into little pieces.  The other members of The Thrill Club are a bit upset because Talia keeps using them as a characters in her gory horror stories.  (Of course, what they don’t know is that Talia’s boyfriend, Seth, has secretly been writing Talia’s stories for her.)  I’m not really sure why that would upset anyone, especially people who are supposed to be horror fans.  Part of the fun of reading a scary story or watching a horror movie is imagining what you would do in that situation and why it would inevitably lead to your horrible death.  Anyway, Shondel asks Talia not to use her name in any more scary stories.  A few days later, Shondel is dead …. murdered …. and somebody’s responsible!  (Yes, that is a line from Plan 9 From Outer Space.)

Who killed Shondel?  Everyone in the Thrill Club suspects that it was Talia and isn’t that the way it always goes?  You write a few stories about your friends being brutally murdered and then, once they are, who is automatically the number one suspect?  Of course, it also doesn’t help that, on the night of Shondel’s murder, Talia comes to the Thrill Club meeting wearing a blood-stained sweatshirt.  And then there’s the fact that someone claiming to be Talia called Shondel’s mother and confessed to the crime….

Oh my God!  Could Talia be guilty!?

The mystery is eventually solved, of course, and it’s all pretty dumb.  Anyone who remembers the episode of Saved By The Bell were Zach thought he had brainwashed the entire student body into wanting to take him to the school dance will automatically see The Thrill Club‘s twist coming from a mile away.  That said, I enjoyed the book because I used to write short stories featuring my high school friends as well.  Of course, in my case, everyone always ended up having fun at the mall or shoplifting makeup from Target.  I enjoyed high school.

I was thrilled to also enjoy The Thrill Club.

Non-Fiction Review: Encyclopedia of the Strange by Daniel Cohen

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Many years ago, I found of a copy of this enjoyable little book at Recycled Books of Denton, Texas. I bought it, despite not being a believer in any of the things discussed in the book.  I actually have a fairly large collection of books about the paranormal and it always amuses me when people assume that, just because I own them, that means that I believe in them as well.  So, just to make clear, I don’t believe in ghosts.  I don’t believe in vampires or werewolves.  I don’t believe in UFOs.  I don’t believe in conspiracy theories.  I believe in art, love, imagination, and dance.

Now, back to the book:

Just as the title suggests, The Encyclopedia of the Strange a collection of entries about things that most people would deem strange, like the occult and UFOs and secret societies and all of that good stuff.  None of the analysis is particularly in-depth but the entries do provide a nice introduction and an overview to the topics that many would consider to be paranormal.  Fortunately, the entries are written from a skeptical point of view.  One gets the feeling that the author understood that the majority of this stuff was nonsense but he also understood that it’s always enjoyable to read about this stuff and let one’s imagination run loose.

The book is divided into sections, each dealing a with a different paranormal subject.  My favorite section was the Strange People section, which featured entries on Pope Joan, The Illuminati, the Rosicrucians, Cagliostro, and Saint-Germain.  For those who are not into “strange people,” there’s also entries on everything from the Great Pyramid to ancient astronauts to the curse of the Hope Diamond to Atlantis and the Kingdom of Prester John.  It’s an enjoyable read and for the aspiring bauthor looking for inspiration, it’s potentially a valuable tool.

Despite the fact that the book was written in 1987, most of the information felt up-to-date.  (It is obvious that Daniel Cohen wrote about the Illuminati long before the start of their current fame.)  One good thing about ancient mysteries is that you don’t ever have to worry about them actually being solved.  They serve as a Rorschach test of both one’s sense of humor and one’s gullibility.  They can be whatever one wants them to be.

Book Review: The Sleepwalker by R.L. Stine

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

With the last R.L. Stine book that I read, I was really upset when a cat was killed in the service of the plot.  In fact, I was so turned off that I pretty much just skimmed the book after the death of Mr. Jinx.

So, when I started reading 1991’s The Sleepwalker, I was understandably concerned with a black cat named Hazel made an appearance and started hissing at the main character.  “Oh no,” I said, “not again!”  Fortunately, Hazel not only survived the entire book but turned out to be a total badass!  Hazel is exactly the type of cat that you want on your side.  Not only will Hazel hiss at anyone who tries to go through your stuff but Hazel is also willing to use her claws if anyone gets out of line.  Go, Hazel, go!

As for the rest of the story, Mayra is a teenager who is totally in love with Walker, who is this weird kid who is into magic.  Unfortunately, Marya has a creepy ex-boyfriend named Link, who is also totally into magic.  (Link, I should mention, has a sister named Stephanie who is — get this — totally into magic!)  With Walker on vacation and Link acting all whiny, Marya gets a job working as a homecare assistant to old Mrs. Cottler.  Mayra’s mom once worked for Mrs. Cottler and apparently, it’s good to keep these jobs in the family.

Mayra, however, soon comes to suspect that Mrs. Cottler is a witch!  Afterall, Mrs. Cottler has a lot of strange occult-themed books and she also owns a black cat.  (Yay, Hazel!)  After one of Mrs. Cottler’s neighbors complains about her peach tree encroaching on his property, he suffers a broken hip.  Soon, Mayra is having dreams about walking into the middle of a lake and, when she wakes up, she discovers that she has been sleepwalking!  Could it be because Mrs. Cottler put a spell on her and is now trying to destroy her for some weird reason?

(Actually, considering that Mayra has dated two guys who are both into magic tricks and also how quickly Mayra jumps to the  conclusion that Mrs. Cottler must be a witch, I think it’s far more probable that Mayra herself is using her interest in the paranormal as a way to deal with past trauma.  I mean, it’s kind of remarkable that it never seems to occur to her that there might be a non-magic answer to all of her problems.  I get the feeling that her belief in magic is her way of avoiding having to confront anything.  That’s just my theory.  For the record, I don’t believe in magic but I do enjoy reading about it.)

Anyway, even by Stine standards, this is a silly story.  No one turns out to be who we originally believed them to be and it all links up to a mysterious death that occurred years before.  This is one of those things where almost every issue in the book could have been resolved by people just not being stupid.  But, and this is the most important thing …. HAZEL SURVIVES!

YAY HAZEL!

Book Review: Strange Crimes and Criminals by Carl Sifakis

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Are you familiar with the Astor Palace Riots?

In 1849, an English actor was selected to play MacBeth at New York’s Astor Place Opera House.  Capt. Isiah Rynders, a politician who had built up a following by denouncing the rich as being wannabe Englishmen, claimed that an American actor should have been given the role and he led a protest outside the theater.  When the play started, his followers pelted the stage with eggs and insults and the show had to be stopped.  When another attempt was made to perform MacBeth a few days later, Rynders and his people returned.  This time, the protest led to one of New York City’s biggest riots.  At least 23 people died and over 130 were injured.  The crowd attempted to hang the actor who played MacBeth but, fortunately, he was able to catch a train to Boston and then sailed back to England.  This, of course, was not the only time that Shakespeare would be linked to violence in America.  Abraham Lincoln would be assassinated by one of the country’s most popular Shakespearean actors, with some contemporaries alleging that John Wilkes Booth was inspired by Julius Caesar.

How about the 1857 police riots, which occurred when two different groups claimed the right to police New York City and spent so much time fighting amongst themselves that criminals were often allowed to go free in the confusion?

How about Kitty Ging, who was murdered by a man who claimed that another man had hypnotized him and ordered him to commit the crime?

Or the Lady Gophers, an all-female gang who developed a reputation for being tougher and more deadly than any of their male counterparts?

Or Carter Harrison, the most corrupt mayor in the history of Chicago?  Everyone knew that Harrison was crooked but, when he was assassinated, the entire city mourned.

Speaking of Chicago, Chicago’s first official riot was in 1855, when the city ordered that saloons close on Sunday.  It was called the Lager Beer Riot and it nearly destroyed the city.

Did you know about the attempt to abduct a school bus full of children and hold them for ransom?  Did you know about Boston Corbett, the man who was celebrated for killing John Wilkes Booth but who then turned out to be a crazed religious fanatic who mysteriously vanished after performing a self-castration and then firing his pistols while standing in the gallery of the Kansas Legislature?  Speaking of disappearances, whatever happened to Judge Crater?

Everyone knows about the Hatfield-McCoy feud but what about Texas’s far bloodier Horrell-Higgins Feud?

All of these crimes and many more are discussed in Strange Crimes and Criminals, which is an encyclopedia of the odd, the bizarre, and the illegal.  Some of the entries are humorous.  Some of them are disturbing.  Some of them document man’s inhumanity to man.  Some of them celebrate the spirit of people who refuse to let something like the law get in their way.  It makes for interesting reading and, for the aspiring writer, it’s a treasure trove of inspiration.

It’s a strange world, isn’t it?

Novel Review: One Evil Summer by R.L. Stine

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

It’s summer!  That means that it’s time for the Conklin Family to take a vacation to the lovely resort town of Seahvaen.  Unfortunately, Mr. Conklin and Mrs. Conklin are both bringing their work with them and oldest daughter Amanda is having to take summer school classes because she failed Algebra.  (How do you go on a vacation and so summer school at the same time?)  Despite the fact that I never had to do a day of summer school, I could still relate to Amanda because Algebra was always my worse subject.  Fortunately, my sister kept all of her tests from the previous year so I was able to cheat my way to a passing grade.  I still suck at Algebra and, as Case can tell you, I still throw a fit whenever I have to discuss anything that has to do with math but the important thing is that my summers were mine.

(To be honest, I probably could have done just fine if not for the “show your work” requirement, which always struck me as being fairly nonsensical.  If I got the right answer, why did it matter how I got it?  Usually, I do most of my work in my head and the notes that I jot down are usually written in such a way that only I can understand what they actually mean.  That works just fine for me.)

Anyway, someone has to look after the youngest two Conklin kids during the day so Mrs. Conklin hires Chrissy, despite the fact that Chrissy has absolutely no references and is obviously batshit insane.  Amanda keeps trying to get her parents to understand that Chrissy is crazy and planning on killing everyone but her parents are just like, “That’s what you get for failing Algebra.”  Bleh!

The book has an intriguing premise and the first few chapters were so silly that I thought I was going to really enjoy One Evil Summer.  But then all three of the Conklin family pets died, including a cat named Mr. Jinx and two parakeets that got their throats slit and ended up bleeding all over the place.  That pretty much turned me off of the book, as it all just felt gratuitous and cheap.  I pretty much lost all interest in the story when Mr. Jinx died and the death of the two parakeets pretty much guaranteed that I wouldn’t get that interest back any time soon.  I did skim the rest of the book, just so I could be honest when I wrote this review.  Chrissy turns out to be a witch with a secret!  I figured out the secret pretty quickly.

To be honest, things get pretty silly towards the end of the book.  It would actually have been enjoyably over-the-top if not for all the dead animals.  But the death of Jinx and the birds just kind of made the rest of the book too depressing to really enjoy.  To Stine’s credit, Amanda to get a new kitten and the kitten got a bit of revenge for its predecessor but still, the whole book just left a sour aftertaste.

Book Review: Encyclopedia of Urban Legends by Jan Harold Bruvard

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Don’t you just love that cover?

The cover is based on the urban legend about the driver who stops at a gas station.  Usually, the driver is already nervous due to having heard a report about an escaped murderer or a missing mental patient.  When a frantic stranger approaches the car, the driver panics and drives off.  What the driver didn’t realize was that the stranger was trying to warn her that the killer was in the back seat of her car.

How about the one about the girl and the boy making out in the car when they hear a report that a killer with a hook for a hand is in the area?  I’ve heard several variations of that one but the thing they all have in common is that they never end well for the couple.  The underlying message, of course, is that the couple was punished for giving into temptation but, in all honesty, most people who hear the story are going to care more about the hook than the subtext.

It’s kind of like the story of the girl who thinks that a killer is trying to enter her dorm room so she locks the door, just to discover, in the safety of the morning hours, that the person pounding on the door was actually her now dead roommate.  Aren’t you glad you didn’t answer the door? is written in blood on the outside of the door.  That story gave me nightmares the first time that I heard it, even if memories of it didn’t exactly keep me from going out at night.  Actually, being scared made me even more determined to go out.  I wasn’t going to let an imaginary killer tell me what to do!

All of those stories and many more are included in Jan Harold Brunvand’s Encyclopedia of Urban Legends.  Many of the urban legends included in here are frightening.  A few of them are a little bit ridiculous, especially the ones that were obviously dreamt up as a way to scare kids straight in the 60s.  (We’ve all heard about the stoned babysitter and the microwave, right?)  Some of them are funny.  Some of them are embarrassing.  Some, I’ve actually heard repeated as fact by many different people.  The book not only details various urban legends but it also has entries about the cultural and historical roots of those legends.  (Satanic Panic, for instance, gets an entry all of its own.)  It also takes a look at the urban legends of various nations, examining how several different cultures can adopt the same story and make it uniquely their own.  Jan Harold Brunvand is one of the world’s leading authorities on folklore and urban legends.  His encyclopedia is both entertaining to read and rather thought-provoking as it examines the roots of some of the oldest urban legends around.  As well, in the introduction, he takes some time to write about how much he disliked the film Urban Legend.  You have to respect that.

Encyclopedia of Urban Legends is a great reference book.  It’s one of my favorites.  For the aspiring horror writer, it’s treasure trove of research and inspiration.  And did I mention how much I love the cover?

Horror Novel Review: The Secret Bedroom by R.L. Stine

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Oh my God, y’all, this one is so good.

First published in 1991, The Secret Bedroom tells the story of Lea.  Lea’s family has just bought an abandoned house on — can you guess it? — FEAR STREET!  And Lea has just started school at — again, you know what’s coming — SHADYSIDE HIGH!  Not surprisingly, Lea is having a hard time fitting in at her new school.  (To be honest, if I was a student at Shadyside, I would automatically be suspicious of any transfer students because, as far as Fear Street and Shadyside are concerned, they always seem to bring a lot of drama and murder with them.  Seriously, hasn’t that school been through enough tragedy?)  Lea’s problem is that she has a crush on Don but Don is dating the school’s most popular megabitch, Marci.  Lea is already in trouble for accidentally spilling chili on Marci’s sweater.  When Marci sees Don talking to Lea, she decides to make Lea’s life miserable.  I swear, why is it the girls always end up fighting over the same boy rather than considering why the boy was flirting with another girl to begin with?  Lea directs all of her anger at Marci and Marci directs her ire toward Lea but really they should just be mad at Don.  Unfortunately, this book was written years before Spice Girls taught everyone the meaning of girl power so Marci just spends her time making trouble for Lea.

However, there might be a solution to Lea’s problems.  In Lea’s new house, there’s a mysterious, boarded up bedroom.  The room was boarded up because, long ago, someone was murdered in that very room!  However, even though no one has been in the room for years, Lea keeps thinking that she hears strange sounds coming from behind the boarded up door.  Despite having been told to say out of the room, Lea enters it anyway and she discovers that there is someone in the room!

That person is Catherine, who says that she’s the ghost of the girl who died in the room.  She says she wants to be Lea’s friend.  She also says that if Lea allows Catherine to enter her body for just a few moments, they can totally play a prank on Marci!  Lea agrees.  Needless to say, the prank goes terribly wrong and it turns out that Catherine wasn’t being totally honest either….

After being slightly disappointed with the previous two Stine books that I read, I really enjoyed The Secret Bedroom.  This is Stine at his most demented (and, perhaps not surprisingly, it’s also one of the earlier book in the Fear Street series).  Stine crafts a tale that includes ghosts, murder, mind control, false memories, peer pressure, jerky boyfriends, and gentrification.  The twists are nonstop and they’re so entertainingly weird that it doesn’t matter that they don’t always make sense.  In fact, the book plays out almost like a fever dream.  Anyone who has even been accused of stealing someone’s boyfriend will appreciate Lea’s growing paranoia about Marci.  Anyone who has ever heard a strange sound in the middle of the night will relate to Lea’s fascination with the boarded up room.  And, for those of you who love continuity, Wrong Number‘s Deena shows up at Lea’s best friend!  This book is an enjoyable trip to Fear Street.