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NEMESIS Agatha Christie

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NEMESIS . Agatha Christie. 1971. This edition published by William Morrow. In the next-to-last Miss Marple novel, the elderly amateur detective is sent on a mission by a deceased acquaintance, Mr. Rafiel, who gives her precious little information on exactly what it is he wants her to do, The two met during  A Caribbean Mystery , in which the old lady saw herself as "Nemesis," a role that Rafiel wants her to continue in. Miss Marple learns that the dead man has booked her on a tour of stately British homes and gardens, and that somehow as the trip continues she will figure out what it is she needs to do -- right some wrong, fix an injustice, solve a murder. She later learns that there is a dead girl, and Rafiel's son is somehow involved. Also owing to the manipulations of Rafiel Sr., she winds up in the home of three sisters who live in a crumbling mansion, and were intimately acquainted with the dead young woman. Miss Marple sets out to solve the crime and succeeds. For m...
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WHAT HAPPENED TO ELLEN? Nancy Grace

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     WHAT HAPPENED TO ELLEN? Nancy Grace with Benee Knauer. 2025; Regalo Press.  In this tome news commentator Nancy Grace expresses understandable outrage over the murder of Ellen Rae Greenburg, who died in 2011. At first her death was labeled a suicide, even though the great many wounds could hardly have been self-inflicted, and indeed one was inflicted after she was dead. There was also the fact that Greenburg was in the middle of making a salad when she was attacked and was looking forward to her wedding (although there were signs that she may have been having misgivings about that). Greenburg's parents spent years trying to get the authorities to reverse the suicide ruling and begin a real investigation into the crime. To this day, no arrest has been made, and although Grace is careful in her statements, a careful reading of the book points inevitable to the rather obvious main suspect, who may have gotten away with murder -- so far. As for the book itself, it i...
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SOUTH OF NOWHERE

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SOUTH OF NOWHERE . Jeffery Deaver. Putnam's; 2025.  The fifth Colter Shaw novel by Deaver has our hero coming to Hinowah California where a levee has collapsed and the entire town is in danger. Colter's sister, Dorian, a professional who deals with disasters for a living, is on the scene as well. When Colter is attacked by a violent suspect he nicknames Bear, it becomes clear that what happened to the levee may be sabotage, and there could be more bad stuff to come. If that weren't enough, Colter has to use all of his considerable skill to rescue a family of four who were caught in the river when the levee collapsed, as well as a man's fiancee who is now lost in the woods. As the suspenseful story proceeds, it develops that some of the characters are not quite who they claim to be, and Colter must learn who's behind the scheme to flood the town along with his or her motive. An added ingredient is that Colter and Dorion learn they may have a half-sister who could rep...
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HIDDEN WORLD

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HIDDEN WORLD . William Schoell. Raven Tale; 2025. I first became aware of William Schoell through his books on comics -- and one he did on 20th century opera -- but I also knew he wrote several horror novels back in the days of the horror boom. He also wrote a more recent novel entitled  Monster World  in which scientists use a time machine to bring dinosaurs to the 21st century, and it was excellent.  Hidden World  is a short, fast-paced novel in which a group of people, led by a determined and desperate woman, descend into a huge cavern under a Greek island to find an ancient city and in particular a certain mystical artifact. Schoell peoples the book with a host of interesting characters, some of whom meet dire fates, not unexpected when you consider the creatures -- huge lizards, rapacious rats, and even giant cannibals -- that he throws at them at regular intervals. You might be surprised at who survives and who doesn't. Written with Schoell's customary verve an...
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THE INVISIBLE MAN . H. G. Wells. First published in 1897. Although written over a hundred years ago,   The Invisible Man   is written in a very accessible style and fast pace. The inn he stumbles into at the opening is not the Lion's Head as in the film, but the Coach and Horses. There is some humor in the book, but certainly not as much as in   Whale's film version. There is no love interest to speak of, and the protagonist, Frank Griffin, winds up in the home of Professor Kemp, whom he knows, by accident. In the film Griffin is driven crazy by an ingredient in the invisibility formula, but in the novel he's pretty much a self-absorbed sociopath from the beginning. He doesn't derail any trains -- although he does plan to embark upon a "reign of terror" -- but he does murder one man and attack many others. This is certainly not   Wells's   best novel, but it is fascinating, highly influential, and a good read to boot.
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BLOOD MONEY: A History of the First Teen Slasher Film Cycle

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BLOOD MONEY: A History of the First Teen Slasher Film Cycle . Richard Nowell. Continuum; 2011. This book reads like a college thesis, which is probably how it originated. An editor would probably have been wise to cut out the passages where Nowell writes about what he's   going   to be saying in the rest of the chapter, which we can actually read for ourselves on the next pages. His constantly spelling out and summing up -- making the same points over and over -- gets annoying. That being said, it must also be said that this is   not   a critical study of the slasher genre, at least not of individual movies, although Nowell does make some interesting points about them as a by-product. Instead the book looks more at the business end of the teen slasher cycle, how it came about from a commercial stand-point, and which films actually influenced the cycle in both the financial and creative sense. Nowell argues that the first teen slasher pic was actually the Canadian ...
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ALLIED ARTISTS: HORROR SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY FILMS

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ALLIED ARTISTS: HORROR, SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY FILMS . Michael R. Pitts. McFarland Publishers. 2011. In this entertaining trade paperback, Pitts examines the output of Allied Artists, which focused primarily on genre items, exploitation films, and the occasional foreign import. Pitts provides lengthy synopses of each film [these may seem too long for films you're very familiar with, but are quite welcome for those movies you've never seen or even heard of], followed by representative reviews, production notes, and often his own reaction to these movies. You'll find everything here from   Attack of the 50 Foot Woman   to   Invasion of the Body Snatchers   with a few   Roger Corman   films along the way, such as Attack of the Crab Monsters . Barbara Steele is represented with more than one movie, and you'll also encounter everyone from Mel Welles to   Barboura [sic] Morris   to   Susan Cabot . You'll love the cover with the poster of ...
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WES CRAVEN: THE ART OF HORROR

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WES CRAVEN: THE ART OF HORROR . John Kenneth Muir. McFarland; 1998. Wes Craven burst on the low-budget scene with the controversial   Last House on the Left , then hit the big time with   Nightmare on Elm Street . Craven had mixed success with the films that followed, but then came the   Scream  franchise which was extremely successful. Then as a producer, Craven's name was often attached to projects that he did not direct -- "Wes Craven Presents" -- such as   Mind Ripper  and   Wishmaster . Muir follows a biographical/career section with lengthy essays on each of Craven's movies up until 1998. He also covers Craven's telefilms, the movies he produced but did not direct, and his short-lived television series,   Nightmare Cafe . Craven tried unsuccessfully to mimic the success of the   Nightmare on Elm Street  films with the psycho Horace Pinker character of   Shocker , but it didn't work. Muir obviously admires Craven's work (m...
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STAR TREK 365: THE ORIGINAL SERIES.

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STAR TREK 365: THE ORIGINAL SERIES . Paula M. Block with Terry J. Erdmann. Abrahms; 2010. This out-sized hardcover covers the original   Star Trek   series with William Shatner, although even fans may wonder if there's anything left to say about the show. Nevertheless, Block does manage to come up with some new and sometimes amusing observations about these original episodes. The book isn't in chronological order, which is a little strange, but a bigger problem is the unwieldy shape and heaviness of the book, not to mention the too small and light typeface, none of which, of course, is the author's fault. The book, however, is packed with big beautiful photographs, which may be the chief appeal to the   Star Trek   fanatic.
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SCIENCE FICTION, FANTASY AND HORROR FILM SEQUELS, SERIES AND REMAKES

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SCIENCE FICTION, FANTASY AND HORROR FILM SEQUELS, SERIES AND REMAKES :   An Illustrated Filmography with Plot Synopses and Critical Commentary . Volume 1. Kim R. Holston and Tom Winchester. McFarland; 1997. Foreword by Ingrid Pitt. You gotta love a book that has a foreword by the one and only Ingrid Pitt of Hammer horror fame. But there's lots more to enjoy afterward, including synopses of hundreds of movies, along with a brief analysis of each film and interesting quotes from reviews both good and bad. There are also lots of photographs in this very thick volume, which covers everything (in more or less alphabetical order) from   The Abominable Dr. Phibes  to   Zapped Again , with stops along the way to look at multiple versions of   Invasion of the Body Snatchers , the   Halloween   and   Friday the 13th   films, Roger Corman's Poe series, the many, many Frankenstein and Dracula movies, and a whole lot more, covering the classics up to the ...
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THE WAR OF THE WORLDS H. G. Wells

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THE WAR OF THE WORLDS . H. G. Wells. " In another moment the huge wave, well-nigh at the boiling point had washed upon me. I screamed aloud, and scalded, half blinded, agonised   [sic] , I staggered through the leaping, hissing water towards the shore. Had my foot stumbled, it would have been the end. I fell helplessly, in full sight of the Martians, upon the broad, bare gravelly spit that runs down to mark the angle of the Wey and Thames. I expected nothing but death."  " Surely if we have learned nothing else, this war has taught us pity -- pity for those witless souls that suffer our dominion. " H. G. Wells' 1898 novel   The War of the Worlds , besides bringing into being the whole genre of invasion from outer space and alien life forms, is a brilliant novel written in a style that is still quite vivid and accessible today despite its being a work of the 19th century. Wells' distinctive and descriptive prose brings to shuddery life a true horror and scien...
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ROD SERLING'S NIGHT GALLERY: AN AFTER-HOURS TOUR

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ROD SERLING'S NIGHT GALLERY: AN AFTER-HOURS TOUR . Scott Skelton and Jim Benson. Foreword by John Astin. Syracuse University Press; 1999. Now that this series has been released on DVD, it is much easier to re-evaluate, although twenty-six years ago authors Skelton and Benson did an estimable job of doing so with this scrupulously researched volume. Let me say at the outset that, having watched all the episodes in their original form, I am not as carried away with the program as the authors -- in fact, in some ways I found the book to be more entertaining than the series -- but whether you have fond memories of   Rod Serling's Night Gallery   or thought it personified the expression "boob tube," you might still enjoy this book. In addition to supplying plot synopses and critiques of each episode and segment, the authors bolster the manuscript with dozens of fresh interviews with the show's cast members and creative personnel. They write with intelligence and author...
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THIS ISLAND EARTH Raymond F. Jones

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THIS ISLAND EARTH . Raymond F. Jones. 1952. Fiction House Press. This novel which became the basis of the science fiction   film of the same title   was expanded from a story originally published in   Thrilling Wonder Stories  ("The Alien Machine"/1947) and its two sequels. The first half of the novel is quite similar to the film, in which a scientist, Cal Meachum, receives instructions to build an "interociter," which leads him to a secret conclave of people who seem to have some unknown mission. Although the protagonists in the book do eventually wind up on an alien planet, most of the second half of the movie is invented by the screenwriter. There's no decimated husk of a planet or mutated hulking monsters in Jones' novel. Instead Meachum learns that earthlings are simply being used to build interociters to help the aliens in a struggle against a dark intergalactic force which has now set its sights on Earth; Meachum and his lady love convince the aliens ...
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