In Ruth Franklin’s life of the author of “The Lottery” and “We Have Always Lived in the Castle,” the power of loneliness is the engine of a titanic imagination. Review by Megan Abbott.
The writing business is a harsh mistress. Plenty of really good books just fail to catch fire, subsiding under the waves after a few weeks, never to be heard from again. Even big-time household name novelists often have early or simply forgotten novels that have been eclipsed by their later, more celebrated works. That doesn’t […]
One of America’s foremost proto–mommy bloggers is also one of America’s masters of horror and suspense, and yet many audiences only know Shirley Jackson as one or the other. Readers tend to recognize her either as the author of the short story “The Lottery,” which has become a popular entree for middle school teachers to order […]
It has been an agonizingly long time since the last China Miéville novel was released (that would be 2012’s steampunky Railsea, a dusty, violent dystopian spin on the Moby-Dick mythos). We, the Miéville faithful (hello, my name is Rich) still must bide our time until whenever that as-yet-unannounced book drops, pacing the floor until we see what 2016’s novella This Census Taker will […]
The Creepy Small Town (CST), with its sharp picket fences and toothy smiles, is an enduring favorite for good reason: it’s got everything. Adorable home-town spirit? Check. Vague, unsettling sense of menace? Check. Gardens on point? Check. Human sacrifice? Seriously almost always check (memo to protagonists who find themselves in a CST situation: just assume it’s human sacrifice.) […]
