Jake Weber is an inspired choice to narrate Marisha Pessl’s dark and utterly addictive new novel. He is at home in the noir, able to treat it as if the nightmarish confusion in which protagonist Scott McGrath finds himself is utterly real to him—and to make it real to you. Weber’s pacing is impeccable, his characters distinguished so subtly that you can’t even say how you knew that was, for example, Hopper speaking, but you unfailingly do know. Pessl’s plotting is intricate and gripping as McGrath is helplessly compelled to pursue the truth about the “suicide” of Ashley Cordova, gifted daughter of a maker of cult horror films, who may be just eccentrically private, or maliciously manipulative, or actually demonic. Trust me: You’ll care. B.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine
Summer’s rapidly approaching, but that doesn’t mean beach reads are your only option for staying cool. Why not get your chills along with your thrills by picking up a literary horror novel? These seven titles are as well written as they are goosebump-inducing, combining the best of lit fic with spine-tingling scares.
There are novels, and there are graphic novels—but these days, there are more and more books that fall somewhere in-between. These books seek to reinvent what the word “book” even means, incorporating not just images, but multimedia elements, internet links, and even smartphone apps to tell a story in a way that is more immersive […]
I will never forget the two days I lost to the astonishing novel The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger, in which an artist falls in love with a man who travels, unwittingly and uncontrollably, through time. It wasn’t the story alone that held me rapt, but the spell the author wove, with prose so […]
The Doorstopper: though common in the fantasy genre, in literature these books—topping 600 pages or so, heavy to carry around, and difficult to read in bed—are sometimes more of an exercise in expansive character and thematic immersion than thrilling potboilers. Think War and Peace or Infinite Jest, rewarding literary tomes that make you work for it. That’s not always the […]
Halloween is upon us again, and that means three things: one, we all get to dress up in costumes and pretend to be something else for a little while; two, all the candy we can eat before going into some sort of sugar-shock coma; and three, scary stories. Scary is a moving target, of course. […]