Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees by Patrick Horvath Review

Samantha Strong is a pillar of the community in her small town of Woodbrook.

She’s also a serial killer.

Maple Terrace by Noah Van Sciver Review

It’s the early ‘90s and Noah Van Sciver is a kid living in New Jersey with his Mormon family. The kids in the town he lives in are all obsessed with superhero comics, including Noah and his siblings, and this is the time of the great comics boom when everyone thought comics were great investments and creators like Todd McFarlane were becoming millionaires. Spawn #5 is the hot new comic - it’s sold out everywhere but luckily Noah’s brother Ethan has a copy. But oh no - in his perpetual nervousness, Noah’s accidentally torn and ruined it! How will he replace it without getting caught?!

The Land and Its People by David Sedaris Review

I don’t think we’ll ever get a great David Sedaris book again - like Me Talk Pretty, Dress Your Family or Santaland Diaries - because he’s become too rich, famous and comfortable, and those books contained a relatability and desperation that comes from not having those things. And I think he told his best stories in those books and hasn’t got any more.

Call for the Dead by John le Carre Review

British Intelligence Agent George Smiley interviews a potential candidate for a role in the Foreign Office but decides against hiring the chap. The man, apparently mortally upset at being turned down, offs himself that night, blaming Smiley’s decision in his suicide note! When Smiley visits the man’s widow the following morning he picks up the phone for a call intended for the deceased - but why would a man choosing to end it all that night then arrange for an early morning wake up call?

Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera Review

Makina’s brother crossed over to America - “the Big Chilango” - chasing a spurious land deal. Gone for a while, she now makes the Mexico-USA border crossing herself in search of him, with a message from their mother. Will she find him - is he even still alive?

Trust by Hernan Diaz Review

Hernan Diaz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Trust is a puzzlebox story wherein four different characters tell you their version of the same narrative and it’s up to the reader to decide which character they “trust”... even though it’s pretty obvious what is the right interpretation (and y’know also “trust” as in money).

Dear Historian by Joff Winterhart Review

Margaret Crypt, an historian in her 70s, is approached by Lucy, a TV producer in her 30s, to make a series of history programmes with her production company. The two become fast friends despite the age gap - but will their TV project reach fruition?

Karma Doll by Jonathan Ames Review

Happy Doll has ripped off an LA gangster and has to leave town for Mexico to hide out and get a new face. Getting tired of the rough and tumble life of a private detective, Doll decides to wait out the pandemic by continuing to study up on Buddhism and getting right with his karma. Though Doll may be done with violence, violence isn’t done with him and fate and his own sense of justice send him back to LA to begin building up more bad karma.

Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan Review

Set in 1970s England, Serena is a young Cambridge-educated mathematician recruited into MI5 and finds herself working as part of Operation Sweet Tooth. The op is to bankroll writers whose politics mirror those of the state - West/Capitalism good, East/Communism bad - in the hope that the fiction they produce will sway the minds of the populace. And then Serena falls for her writer target, Tom. Dawww! Love in a cold (war) climate indeed.

The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson Review

Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford appears to be a pretty uninteresting man who does his job well in his small Texas town and lives a quiet life - but who actually harbours a dark past and nature that is reawakened when he begins an affair with a local prostitute. The killer inside Lou stirs and the murders begin in earnest…

Goblin Girl by Moa Romanova Review

Goblin Girl is Moa Romanova’s debut memoir comic about a time in her young life when she found herself involved with a famous TV person, several decades older than her, via Tinder, and struggling with her mental health (depression, anxiety).

Absolute Green Lantern, Volume 1: Without Fear Review (Al Ewing, Jahnoy Lindsay)

An alien ship arrives above the small town of Evergreen, covering it in a green energy dome, stopping anyone from going in or out of the town. A god-like alien calling itself The Abin Sur descends to pass judgment upon the townspeople - which include friends Hal Jordan, John Stewart, Jo Mullein, and Guy Gardner. What does judgment entail? To be Without Fear.

Downfall by Inio Asano Review

A manga artist completes his years-long series - and then finds himself lost as he listlessly tries to decide upon a new project. Meanwhile his marriage is failing and his melancholy feelings begin to build, making it harder for him to move forward and create again. What happens when you put all of your time and effort into a creative field, at the expense of all else - and find that success is hollow?

Flesh by David Szalay Review

Istvan is a teenage boy living in a small Hungarian town when he inadvertently gets into a relationship with a married woman in her 40s. A violent incident changes the course of his life and from there he joins the army and is deployed in Iraq, before finding himself in Britain working as a bouncer, and from there life takes him to still further completely unexpected places.

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy Review

I

A summary of the evening redness in the west - A praise chorus in sotto voce - The Judge judged - A deeper meaning questioned - A master prose stylist - An experiment in chance - A middling verdict on a soon-to-be-established classic - People who’ve read the novel will know what I’m doing here

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Dawn by Elie Wiesel Review

WW2 has ended, the state of Israel is yet to be founded. In the years between these two events, a teenage Holocaust survivor, Elisha, is recruited into a Zionist terror cell to fight for an independent Jewish state in Palestine against the hated occupiers, the British. When one of their own is captured and sentenced to death, they capture a British officer in retaliation and propose a hostage exchange. If their comrade is executed at dawn, then so will the British officer - and Elisha will be the one to pull the trigger. Can Elisha reconcile going from being a victim of the Nazis to suddenly finding himself in the same position as they were - and will he go through with the killing?

Moan by Junji Ito Review

Moan is one of Junji Ito’s better horror manga collections. It still has the same problems of other Ito books - character motivations aren’t so much underdeveloped as ignored and the endings are bonkers and often abrupt, while the shortest stories, included at the end almost like B-sides, are always the most forgettable - but the stories here are more entertaining than in others.

Laura & Emma by Kate Greathead Review

Laura has a one night stand with a stranger she never sees again and gets preggo. Deciding to keep the baby, she raises her daughter Emma as a single mother, though luckily she belongs to an upper class Manhattan family which makes things easier. Laura & Emma is the story of the mother and daughter over the course of 15 years.

My Twisted Eating Disorder by Kabi Nagata Review

Lordy, life is difficult for some people, eh? Kabi Nagata’s previous autobiographical mangas have focused on her difficulties with her homosexuality, then becoming a drunk, then dealing with pancreatitis as a result of said boozing, and now her latest book, My Twisted Eating Disorder, is about her bulimia! She even mentions at the end of this book that there are other struggles she’s avoiding discussing so I dread to think what other burdens this poor woman is going through.

A Swell-Looking Babe by Jim Thompson Review

Bill “Dusty” Rhodes has it tough - he’d like to go to college but, with his mother out of the picture, he’s got to support his mentally-ailing, recently unemployed father by working nights at the local swanky hotel as a bellboy. There, he has to put up with a difficult manager, but meets interesting people like the gangster Tug and the beautiful Marcia Hillis, a newly-arrived guest at the hotel and an older woman who’s taken a shine to Dusty. Will she be the respite he craves from his life of unending drudgery?