Fungus of the Heart by Jeremy C. Shipp Review

By Jeremy C. Shipp
Raw Dog Screaming Press
ISBN: 978-1935738015
Review posted 02/25/2011


Fungus of the Heart is a collection of amazing and strange tales from Jeremy C. Shipp. In this work you deal with clowns, I myself hate clowns so were a bit freaked out by this particular story called How to make a Clown. There are also stories that have you guessing until the last moment such as The Sun Never Rises in the Big City where a rag is a duplicate person and a remote is much more than something you watch television with.

This collection keeps your feet on the ground so that you are able to walk the walls and then the ceiling. Then when you are done shaking yourself back into reality, you do it all over again. The strangeness of the stories and the fear, grabs a hold of you right away and you feel yourself drifting into the worlds that Jeremy C. Shipp has created.

Grab this collection if you want to be in a different world, experience a mind-altering sensation that can only come about while reading the words of these great stories.

Twisted Tales from the Torchlight Inn by Ty Schwamberger,Thomas A. Erb,Dean Harrison Review

By Ty Schwamberger,Thomas A. Erb,Dean Harrison
Wicked East Press
ISBN: 978-1617060045
Review by: Gina Desory
Review posted 02/24/2011

Welcome to the Torchlight Inn where nothing is what it seems. Twisted Tales from the Torchlight Inn is a collection of 3 novellas by Ty Schwamberger, Thomas A. Erb and Dean Harrison with an introduction by Jessica A. Weiss.

The first story in this collection is Last Night Out by Ty Schwamberger. Three students, Gabe, Alan and his girlfriend Erin, take a small trip to a place called the Torchlight Inn where a bartender acts crazy and pillars are not just decorations.

The second story Tones of Home by Thomas A. Erb, has Ashely and Maurice going to meet Ashely's parents. Then suddenly things take a wrong turn and the story has odd occurrences with what seems to be members from the band The Beatles.

The last story Off Limits by Dean Harrison deals with Ellen and her troubled brother Jack who takes Shawn, Ellen's boyfriend and her to what is know as the Torchlight Inn. Jack wants payback for what was done to him years ago and this time Ellen will really know what it feels like to be scared.

Each of these stories tell a twisted version of what it is to come to the Torchlight Inn. The stories wrapped around craziness and people's own sense of being, made for these stories to be a wild roller coaster ride.

Tones of Home left me wondering at times what was going on and something was lost in having to figure out where as a reader I was at at times.

Off Limits made was a tale that shook the fear out of me. A scenario where anything was possible and yet it happened.

Last Night Out started a bit like a Young Adult type scenario where you thought vampires were about to come out, but then you get surprised and the story flows with not only horror and gore, but a nice twist to the ending.

If you are a reader who enjoys the oddness of things, the fear of the unknown, you need to pick up Twisted Tales from the Torchlight Inn and stay for awhile, if you dare.

Cursed by Jeremy C. Shipp Review

By Jeremy C. Shipp
Raw Dog Screaming Press
ISBN: 978-1933293868
Review by: Rob Walter
Review posted:2/23/2011

Nicholas is a person who likes to make lists of everything people do and say including himself. He also makes dolls as well. His life is an up and down series of events. He is cursed. He meets Cicely who struggles with forces outside her control and holds onto a tennis ball and squeezes it repeatably. He goes through several different situations including getting slapped by his roommate.

I'm not normally into the odd and bizarre, but this story grabbed my attention as I read through the life of Nicholas and his trials. I was interested to keep going and learn what would happen next to him. It was a very surreal type of experience and one I recommend to anyone who wants to read something a bit different.

Zombie Ohio A Tale of the Undead by Scott Kenemore Review

By Scott Kenemore
Skyhorse Press
ISBN: 978-1616082062
Review posted 02/22/2011

Peter Mellor wakes up disorientated with a car crashed nearby. He is unsure what has happened to that car. Was he in a car accident? He also doesn't remember who he is. Getting up slowly, he grabs his hat and places it on his head, which is now half-gone.

He runs across some people who recognize him and give Peter some semblance of his memory back. When he comes in contact with an old friend named Sam, he starts to realize something is not right. Zombies are all over the place and maybe he assumes he had the car crash because he was running from them. After looking at himself in the mirror with his head half-off, he started wondering if perhaps he is a zombie.

Later, he watches a zombie move and eat. Something feels right about that. As it turns out he can still walk and move okay, but Peter learns in fact he is a zombie.

Kenemore takes readers on a different take of an undead story, from the perspective of a zombie. However, not just any zombie, but one that talks and acts like a regular human, he just has a preference for a little different type of food, brains.

This story shows that even a zombie has to deal with moral issues and try to discover who they really are. It is a brilliant collection of characters with a background story that will surely make you reconsider a zombie outbreak.

Jack's Magic Beans By Brian Keene Review

By Brian Keene
Deadite Press
Review posted 02/18/2011

Jack's Magic Beans by Brian Keene once again showcases the author's talent of the strange, horrific and enjoyable aspects of a short story.

In this collection of 5 stories we have:

Jack's Magic Beans that tells of a supermarket gone astray. Where people act in a hostile nature hurting each other and killing everyone they come in contact with. Their rage, unknown. Jack, who was asleep during the start of the chaos, wakes up to hear screaming and pounding on a door. He along with a few others who have not been infected with this unknown rage, try to survive whatever comes next. Jack offers a solution, but does this solution really work?

Without You tells the tale of a man who has lost his self-worth. He is in a dead-end job that he just got fired from, in debt and married to a woman he fell out of love with. He remembers how it used to be where he would say to her "I would die without you." Under circumstances in which he can no longer take, he has made a choice to kill himself, but does he really die?

I am an Exit tells the story of a killer where certain aspects of the situations becomes what they consider "an exit."

This is not an Exit deals with two people sitting at a bar discussing things. The topic comes up about if they ever killed anyone. They both agree yes they have. One only killed a family, the other has killed more. What could this type of conversation produce as a result?

The King in: Yellow starts with a homeless man telling this couple they have to see the show Yellow. Of course Finely and Kathryn think it is just ramblings of a lost soul. They go to a restaurant and see a woman yelling and singing something about "Yellow." They think it's odd and leave. Then later Kathryn wants to see a show called Yellow that she sees on a advertisement on the street. They go to the show, but will they ever be the same again?

With intensity and a flare for the extreme, Keene opens the eyes of the readers who dare turn the pages of this collection. You think of things not heard of, you experience the words like the taste of a fine wine. There is no collection that will make you enjoy a story and fear the ending as much as this.

Napier's Bones By Derryl Murphy Review

By Derryl Murphy
ChiZine Press
ISBN: 978-1926851099
Review by: Dana Bell
Review posted 02/8/2011

Numbers. It's all about numbers and they're effect on each of our lives. People, nature, living creatures live and die by them. They're everywhere and those who invented them haunt us day in and day out.

So is the tale of Dom. He wanders in from the desert and begins a quest with a shadow named Billy and a young woman named Jenna. They travel the US and other places do discover the secrets and wrestle them away from the ancients. They meet those who have gone before, speak with them, and discover the doorways to new equations and possibilities.

Along the way there is good every day events. Visiting the ATM, eating food, staying in hotels and a love angle that never happens despite the characters attachment to each other and an intangible enemy who doesn't seem very threatening or even dangerous. There's even a brief encounter with an ex priest discussing theology.

Mostly it is a story of a journey not just physically but also into the discovery of numbers and their uses. The pair unlocks the mysteries and steps into a realm most in their profession could only dream about.

Well written in an almost mystical way with numbers being a type of magic that can be wielded and used.

Suggested for an audience that understands mathematics and the references to them which are lost to the general reader. Also not for those who are offended by swear words, puck or references to the male anatomy.

The Door to Lost Pages by Claude Lalumière Review

by: Claude Lalumière
ChiZine Press
ISBN: 978-1926851129
Review by: Robert Walter
Review posted 02/7/2011

The Door to Lost Pages is Claude Lalumieres’ newest book by ChiZine Publishing.

While this book was thought provoking, it was confusing to me in many regards. Confusing in that the timelines of the threads in the story jump at times and took a number of re-reads to re-establish where I was in the story and or who was currently the narrator in the story.

This is definitely not a book for the younger generation as it contains some graphic sexual descriptions.

At the beginning, there is a description of Yamesh-Lot, the great antagonist, or source of evil, but other than continuing mentions throughout the rest of the book does not bring this to any conclusion or direct conflict with the Green, Blue and Brown God. The Shipfan-Shap (similar to angels) do battle against Yamesh-Lot then fade away through the rest of the book.

The titular book store, Lost Pages, would be the kind of bookstore one would love to be able to find having whatever one was looking for, no matter what the subject, language, time period or reality. Alternate realities are discussed briefly, but they are not followed or described further in the story. Simply that they exist.

The main character, Aydee and a secondary character, Lucas, follow similar paths to the bookstore, but at different times along slightly different paths. A unique technique used in this book is a letter “read” by Aydee, that adds a story line, but never reveals the author.

In the end, the story is a simile for the dichotomy of life.