Tag: Fiction

Children of the Mind

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Card, Orson Scott. Children of the Mind. Tor Books, 2002.

Reason read: started in October in honor of Science Fiction Month.

Children of the Mind is the second half of Xenocide which explains why the residents of planet Luistania are still looking for a way to escape the decimation of their planet. This is also the final book in the Ender quartet. The survival of the children of the mind hinges on Computer Jane’s ability to move the humans, buggers, and pequeninos to a more hospital planet for colonization without overtaxing her bandwidth. Every jump takes her down a notch. Meanwhile, Peter Wiggin, Ender’s older brother, travels to meet with the Starways Congress to convince them to stop their campaign to destroy Lusitania. Only Peter isn’t Peter. He is another entity of Ender. In fact, Ender has three bodies: his own, Peter’s and Young Valentine’s. Children of the Mind, like the other books in the series gets a little didactic and preachy.
I have to wonder how many people freaked out when they got to the demise of Ender as we know him.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror” (p 224).

Downbelow Station

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Cherryh, C.J. Downbelow Station or the Company Wars. Daw Books, 1981.

Reason read: January is another science fiction month.

Confessional: I felt like Cherryh was speaking directly to me when she said she wanted to write a book for readers who love to detect connections between books. Cherryh called Downbelow Station a “novel of interstellar conflict and ambition” as part of the Alliance-Union Universe series. Above all else, it is a human story, a love story even. Cherryh wanted to create a wider universe that would be consistent in a series set in the future a few centuries from now. Her story is populated with tribes of spacefarers and groundlings. We begin Downbelow Station with Book One Earth and Outward between the years 2005 and 2352 but most of the action is nestled comfortably between the years of 2352 and 2353 on a space station orbiting the Downbelow in the Tau Ceti star system. During this time space is not explored by NASA or the like. Private corporations rule the galaxies with their exorbitant wealth. Sound familiar? Old River is angry and the mill is not to be lost. The surviving companies need to plot an attack against the Union or else become refugees and, if that happens, where would they go?
Downbelow Station is packed with action, but as I mentioned earlier, hidden amongst the sci-fi is a human story and maybe a little romance. I appreciated the friendship Damon and Elene extend to Josh Talley, the prisoner who had his memories erased. He becomes the unlikely hero in the story. More human emotion is displayed when Elene Quen goes missing.

Author fact: C.J. Cherryh is Carolyn Janice Cherryh. I loved, loved, loved C.J. Cherryh’s advice at the end of her introduction – go out to where city lights don’t block your view and look up. Interesting fact about Downbelow Station – the stars are in real locations. Another fact – Cherryh worked with multiple cardboard clocks to make the multiple timelines agree.

Book trivia: Downbelow Station won a Hugo award and the story was so popular it was made into a board game.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Space Operas” (p 210).

Chequer Board

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Shute, Nevil. The Chequer Board. William Morrow & Company, 1947.

Reason read: Shute celebrates a birthday in January.

John Turner has been having attacks of giddiness and fainting spells. As a veteran of World War II he lives with inoperable shrapnel in his head. The story opens with him learning he has maybe a year to live because of this horrific wound. There is nothing the doctors can do. This abbreviated time on earth has prompted John to want to reconnect with three men he met in military hospital: Philip Morgan, a soldier prisoned in Burma during the war; Pfc Dave Lesurier, a soldier accused of attempted rape of a naive English girl; and Corporal Duggie Brent, a soldier who had killed a man during a bar fight. What had happened to these troubled men? Turner wants to find them and improve their lives if he can.
A side story is John’s relationship with his wife. His marriage to Mollie has strained for normalcy. From the very beginning the reader learns that Mollie did not visit Turner in the hospital; not even once despite the fact he was there for a week. She claims he hasn’t needed he. Neither has done anything kind for the other. A death sentence changes both of them. As a way of understanding Mollie urges John to find his former friends from the hospital.

Shute has a funny way of describing things. [She was] “about to produce an infant” (p 29) instead of saying she was pregnant once a year.

Quote to quote, “He like to drive for an hour to some country pub or roadhouse and drink beer in an atmosphere of smoke and laughter and good company” (p 31). That sounds like an amazing time. Can I come, too? Here is another, “Rather than fall into their hands, it was preferable to fall into the hands of death” (p 100).

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Nevil Shute: Too Good To Miss” (p 198). Pearl warns her readers that there would be racist language in The Chequer Board. I expected the derogatory name calling but not the all out blatant racism. Even in the twenty-first century, there is a lot of that going around. With the death of Rob Reiner there is a resurgence of people watching “All in the Family.” The character of Archie Bunker is not exactly all that politically correct. Those were the prejudices of the time and somehow acceptable.

Three Doors To Death

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Stout, Rex. Three Doors to Death: a Nero Wolfe Threesome. Viking Press, 1949.

Reason read: I first started the series fifteen books ago in honor of Rex Stout’s birth month.

Man Alive (published in December 1947) – A man once thought to be dead of suicide is found dead again.
Omit Flowers (published in November 1948) – as a favor to a friend, Nero Wolfe takes on the wrongful accusation of murder. Virgil Pompa, a restaurant chain manager has been fingered for the crime.
Door to Death (published in June 1949) – my favorite of the bunch. Nero’s caretaker of over 10,000 orchids, Theodore Horstmann, has taken leave indefinitely to care for his ailing mother. This abandonment is absolutely unacceptable to Wolfe. The travesty forces him to leave his beloved brownstone to recruit a replacement who has, of course, been charged with murder.

As an aside, for as many times as Archie says Nero never leaves his brownstone, I wonder if someone has actually counted up all the times he has and why.

Author fact: Stout passed away at the age of eighty-eight.

Book trivia: to track Stout’s publications one has to be pretty savvy. Three Doors to Death is comprised of three novellas which were published as stand alone stories. The three stories were republished in a collection called Five of a Kind.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe: Too Good To Miss” (p 226).

Daughters of Simon Lamoreaux

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Long, David. The Daughters of Simon Lamoreaux. Scribner, 2000.

Reason read: Sisters Week is in January.

The Daughters of Simon Lamoreaux has been described as the “effect of not knowing on a tragedy’s survivor.” I lost a friend two years ago (it’ll be three at the end of June) and I have absolutely no clue what happened. Was it suicide? Possibly. He mentioned ideation more than enough times. Was it an accidental overdose? Possibly. He admitted he was addicted to pain killers. Was it the damage from the near-fatal stroke he had? Possibly. He was still struggling with his health. But. I will never know.
Hartford, Connecticut (1973). Miles Fanning and Caroline (Carly) Lamoreaux are typical teenagers, skipping out on choir practice for the sake of young love. Only Carly does not meet Miles at the prescribed spot nor is she ever heard from again. Fast forward twenty-four years later Fanning is the founder of SunBreak Records and still does not know what happened to his old girlfriend all those years ago. He has since married and moved to Seattle, Washington. In all honesty he hasn’t thought about Carly all that much. Life has carried him in a different direction…until suddenly Carly’s sister, Julia, sweeps into his life, dragging the memory and mystery of Carly behind her. Julia’s line of questioning is off-putting and abrasive; the way your teeth feel when you bite down on eggshells in an otherwise fluffy omelet or finding sand in your ice cream. Julia interrogates Fanning like his soul has committed a serious crime. She is a strange woman to whom Fanning cannot help but be drawn. What I found so interesting about The Daughters of Simon Lamoreaux was the lack of detail about the investigation into the disappearance of Carly Lamoreaux. Miles Fanning is an obvious suspect but once he is cleared, the reader does not get a sense of urgency to find Carly. It led me to think more about the title. The focus is on the father, Simon. Does he hold the key to the mystery? In the end I found myself saying, yes, he does.

Author fact: Long also wrote The Falling Boy which is on my Challenge list.

Book trivia: this should be a movie.

Real music: Count Basie, Te Deum, Kodaly’s Psalmus Hungaricus, Keith Jarrett’s Koln concert, Soundgarden, Chopin, and Erik Satie’s “Gymnopedies.

Fake music: Billy Caughan’s “Hard Knock Turn,” and Nella Randolph,

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Sibs” (p 199).

Xenocide

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Card, Orson Scott. Xenocide. Macmillan Audio, 2004.

Reason read: to continue the series started in October in honor of Science Fiction month.

As Orson Scott Card moves away from the childlike narrative of Ender’s Game the series becomes more deeply philosophical. In each subsequent Ender novel, Card questions the argument surrounding free will. Xenocide expands on these ideas as it examines cultural differences, religious ideology and the ethics of destroying a race because of its potential danger. Card takes his readers to the planet Lusitania where humans (including Andrew Wiggin and his family), the Pequeninos (Piggies), and the Hive Queen are all under threat by the Starways Congress. The Congress is hellbent on blowing up the planet because they fear the Descolada virus which is essential to the Pequeninos but deadly to humans. Card keeps Ender and his family mostly in the background as he explores these heavier concepts. I found it to be heavy mucking.

Book Audio trivia: there is a whole cast of narrators for Xenocide: Scott Brick, Gabrielle de Cuir, Amanda Karr, John Rubinstein, and Stefan Rudnicki.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror” (p 213).

Natives and Strangers

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Dawkins, Louise. Natives and Strangers. Houghton Mifflin, 1985.

Reason read: Kenya gained independence in December. Read in recognition of that event.

Natives and Strangers examines the human heart through the lens of culture and status in an African landscape. Natives and strangers, whites and blacks, rich and entitled. British colonists and native Africans. Young Marietta Hamilton hasn’t been brought up to be colorblind, but despite her English heritage her friendships are without barriers. Her best friend is the daughter of her mother’s servant. Natives and Strangers tracks Marietta’s coming of age as she navigates her identity through childhood, college, marriage and motherhood. This was a struggle for me to read because I didn’t really care for the characters.
Detractors – Dawkins gets a little didactic by addressing religious differences like Christianity versus Paganism.
Another negative: I have read reviews complaining about how unnaturally the characters speak. Dawkins tells the story of Natives and Strangers mostly through the classic vehicle of monologue and dialogue. For example, Virginia needs to explain to Marietta why she is sending her daughter away to a boarding school. The monologue is mostly historical context and more for the benefit of the reader than for Marietta. Because all characters do this (even the children) Dawkins loses believability and authenticity. All of her characters appear long-winded and unwieldy in their manner of speech and their conversations.

Author fact: Louisa Dawkins is a pen name.

Book trivia: I was warned that the dialogue between characters in Natives and Strangers is not natural.

Music: the Rolling Stones.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Africa: a Reader’s Itinerary” (p 2).

Radetzky March

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Roth, Joseph. Radetzky March. Translated by Joachim Neuroschel. Overlook Press, 1995.

Reason read: Hanukkah is in December.

The premise of Radetzky March is deceptively simple. At the start it follows the three generations of the Trotta family at the end of the Hapsburg Empire. Grandfather, Captain Trotta, saved the life of Emperor Franz Joseph and was forever known as the Hero of Solferino. All in all, the characters of Radetzky March are incredibly dismissive. One character has a relationship where after twenty years he still cannot remember if his friend has sons or daughters. He only knows Herr Nechwas has now adult children. Herr von Trotta und Sipolje can never remember the personal details of another human’s life. A father decides his son’s profession by simply saying “I’ve decided that you’re going to be a lawyer” (p 15). Never mind what the son wants. You have to feel sorry for Carl as he is always under the thumb of his father; insecure around other men of military standing. Radetzky March follows Carl’s life as he makes his way under the shadow of a hero grandfather and a unsympathetic father. He can never live up to their grandeur and his life descends into a world of debt, adultery, alcoholism, and a lost sense of self. Joseph Roth has written a beautiful tragedy.

Confessional: something always gets lost in translation when I read a book originally not written in English. For example, how do sofa cushions slide slyly and cautiously toward someone? I could see cushions losing the battle against gravity and slowly toppling over when someone sits down next to them. And this – Trotta dropped a blade and it made a jingly whimper when it landed. The jingle, I understand. the whimper? Not so much.

Author fact: Roth wrote a sequel to Radetzky March called Emperor’s Tomb but I am not reading it for the Challenge. Instead, I am reading What I Saw: Reports from Berlin 1920 -1933.

Book trivia: my copy of Radetzky March has an introduction by Nadine Gordimer.

Music: Straus’s Radetzky March, Tannhauser Overture, Wandering Tinker, “The Internationale,” and “God Save.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the simple chapter called “Berlin” (p 36).

Second Confession

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Stout, Rex. Second Confession. G.K. Hall and Co., 1992.

Reason read: to continue the series started in November of 2024. I am now a year into the Nero Wolfe series.

It all starts when a father wants to hire Nero Wolfe to confirm or deny his daughter’s fiancé is not a Communist. James Sperling believes his daughter’s suitor needs to be investigated before they marry. At first Nero is reluctant to take the case for he knows Sperling has connections to the mafia. That is the least of his troubles when the man in question is found murdered and all evidence points to Nero. [Stout likes vehicular homicide and it is Wolfe’s vehicle with the blood evidence.]
It is rare that Nero Wolfe leaves his brownstone in New York City as the country makes him nervous, yet, in Second Confession Wolfe finds himself in Chappaqua, just above White Plains, New York. Another variance of this Nero Wolfe mystery is a different set of law enforcement running interference. Despite these differences, fear not! Archie is his old sarcastic witty self.

As an aside, I truly enjoy learning more about the highly entertaining Archie Goodwin. This time we learn he has gone to high school in Ohio.

Lines I liked, “I wouldn’t go to the extreme of calling him a cheap filthy little worm, but he is in fact a shabby creature” (p 93) and “There are numerous layers of honesty, and the deepest should not have a monopoly” (p 276).

Author fact: Rex Stout served as chairman of the war writer’s board.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe: Too Good To Miss” (p 209).

Avalon

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Lawhead, Stephen R. Avalon: the Return of King Arthur. Avon, 1999.

Reason read: King Arthur was born in December…supposedly.

The is a classic tale of the struggle between good and evil. Cast as the power hungry antagonist is Prime Minister Thomas Waring. When the last King of England committed suicide Waring was under the impression he would lead England from his seat in government. Out of nowhere along comes James Stuart, an apparent nobody with all the credentials to prove it is he who is actually next in line for the throne. All of the characters you expect from King Arthur’s time are represented in modern day Britain. Ancient enemies are present with a modern day twist.
My favorite parts were when James experiences fiosachd, a kind of mental time travel where he can see his surroundings in a medieval light. Sights and sounds shimmer into his mind like a memory but appear before him as real as his own skin. Modern day dissolves to reveal a time before time.
My least favorite part was the relationship with Jenny. She rebuffs James and seems to fancy another until she does a surprising 180.

Confessional: I went back and forth about whether or not Avalon was part of the Pendragon series. In the end I decided it wasn’t because I couldn’t care enough if it was or wasn’t.

Book trivia: Avalon is the LAST book in the Pendragon Cycle series (according to Lawhead’s website). Once again, I have read these books out of order.

Author fact: several of Lawhead’s books have been made into television series for 2025.

Music: “Auld Lang Syne,” “Bowl of Punch Reel,” Gerry Rafferty, “Crown Him with Many Crowns,” “Amazing Grace,” “We Rest on Thee,” “Wedding March,” “O Worship the King,” “Blest Be the Tie That Binds,” “Scotland the Brave,” and “Be Thou My Vision.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “King Arthur” (p 136). What Pearl does not tell you is that at the time of the publication of Book Lust, Avalon was the last book in the Pendragon Cycle series.

Breakdown, Recovery and the Outdoors

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Bremicker, Christopher G. Breakdown, Recovery and the Outdoors. Running Wild Press, 2025.

Christopher Bremicker tells a believable story about Mike Reynolds, a Vietnam veteran struggling with schizo-affective disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder in equal measure. [As an aside, I met a veteran who refused to call PSTD a “disorder.” He said he was living with posttraumatic stress. Period. It was not a disorder. I have never forgotten his plea for normalcy.] Mike Reynold’s days are filled with self-medicating with alcohol and the outdoors. Alcohol numbed his feelings while homelessness staved off his claustrophobia. Hunting and fishing kept his demons at bay and his days normal. The emotions Mike experienced are so raw and believable that I was grateful for Bremicker’s disclaimer that he did not serve in Vietnam although I suspect there are elements of autobiography in Breakdown to make it so realistic: the relapse after five years of sobriety, for example. In Bremicker’s acknowledgements he mentions alcoholism and mental illness.
Short chapters move Mike’s story along at a fast pace even though it is a relatively simple story: hunting, recovery, relationships. You find yourself rooting for Mike, even if you don’t know him very well.
I noticed Breakdown was a little repetitious here and there (he mentions being proud to be a veteran but hated his appearance a few times).
Only annoyance: Andy, Alan, Anne, Bill Gillette, Bunk Knudson, Cinder, Corky Fowler, Dave, Dick “Smithy” Smith, Dick Anderson, Emma, Grace, Gunderson, Geiger, Gary Nicholson, Hagman, Jake, Jason, Jack, Jim, Jonas, Joanne, Jeff Huchinson, Lewis, Lou Johnson, Lucas, Muhammed, Myron Nelson, Nancy, Penny, Powers, Rob, Ryan, Sam, Santiago, Sheila, Steve, Sasha, Teller, Tim, Vicky, Weaver, Wetzel, Whitman, Willy, and Wade. Did I really need to know all these names? It was like a science fiction novel with a bunch of characters who mean nothing to the plot. Yet, at the same time who knew Mike had a brother named Tim? He didn’t factor into Mike’s recovery at all.

Author fact: the very first words of Breakdown, Recovery and the Outdoors are “I did not serve in Vietnam” (unpaged).

Book trivia: Loose pages make for difficult reading. They kept falling out so I ended up throwing them away after I read them.

Natalie connection: every time Mike or Vicky had a drink I thought of the 10,000 Maniacs song, “Don’t Talk,” a song about being in a relationship with an alcoholic.

Vampires of Chicago

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Cymry, Wynneth C. The Vampires of Chicago: A Subversive Satire, Gothic Fantasy Action Thriller. Lunatica Libri, 2025.

Reason read: for the Early Review Program from LibraryThing.

This turns everything you thought you knew about vampires on its head. Did you know vampires sing at a certain frequency to heal a wounded friend? Or that they have to sleep in cathedrals? Or that they can be afraid of blood? Vampires can eat garlic! You will learn about the Sybilline oath: not to kill, maim, torment or forswear. This is the story about a battle between vampires and the church where priests try to use the vampires to achieve immortality. The Covenant of Blood is strong. Be prepared for a variety of surgeries.
My first reaction after reading Vampires of Chicago was that I wished the character development could have been stronger. I did not know them well enough to care. I wasn’t dismayed when Aaron was pronounced dead. Nor did I cheer when he was revived. Same for Leander. He is dead. No, he is not. Maybe this is where the satire comes in?
My second reaction after reading Vampires of Chicago was that I felt as though I had been dropped into the middle of a situation and had to catch up to the plot.
All in all, it was a fun read.

If I had a dollar for every mention of a sehreb, sehrebim, sehrebimi, and sehrebimo I could buy myself a latte and donut. It is the only weapon the vampires and priests seem to use.

Music: “Agnus Dei” (I have to admit I love the Michael Smith version of this song).

Speaker for the Dead

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Card, Orson Scott. Speaker for the Dead. Macmillan Audio, 2006.

Reason read: to continue the series started in October in honor of Science Fiction Month.

As a small child, Andrew “Ender” Wiggin saved planet Earth from war with the Buggers. Now as an earthly yet ageless thirty five year old adult, Ender is faced with a second alien invasion with the piggies. War seems to be inevitable. Ender has transformed himself into a Speaker for the Dead and must reconcile his horrible past as Ender Wiggin the Xenocide. Not many know he is one and the same. It is a dance of identity to come to terms with the past.
I found it interesting to learn that in order for Speaker for the Dead to work Ender’s Game had to be a full blown novel. The sequel actually birthed the first book’s existence.
As an aside, I do not know how Speaker for the Dead can be pigeon holed into the genre of science fiction when it carries themes of philosophy, religion, family, psychology, religion, socio-economics, ethics, ecology, genetics, mysticism, hatred, and science.
I applaud any book that makes the reader feel something whether intended or not. If the author can be clever enough to hide personal feelings while promoting an unfavorable view, more power to him or her. Speaker for the Dead made me laugh and cry, hate and love, all at the same time.
The best part of Speaker for the Dead was Ender’s conversation with the Bishop about death – how another culture could see death as the greatest honor.

Line I liked, “I think, said Ender, that you should not plant anymore humans” (p 415).

Author fact: to look at Orson Scott Card’s list of books is impressive. I am only reading seven Ender books for the Challenge.

Book trivia: Speaker for the Dead is an indirect sequel to Ender’s Game. You can get by without reading Ender, but why would you want to?

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror” (p 213).

Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine

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Campbell, Bebe Moore. Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine.

Reason read: Campbell died in the month of November. Read in her memory.

Who was the first person to say the truth hurts? Never is this more true than within the pages of Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine. The premise of Campbell’s 1950s story could have been ripped from the headlines of yesteryear or buried in the back pages of yesterday’s online paper. Armstrong Todd is a smart fifteen year old who knows a little French. Being from Chicago, he does not realize life in rural Mississippi is racially divided and prejudicial hate runs deep. One slip of the tongue in the direction of a white woman ends up costing him his life. Never mind that it was an accident; the teen was not speaking to Lily. Never mind that the white woman did not understand what Armstrong had actually said in her direction. Suddenly, justice for a black teenager in southern Mississippi becomes a political fire starter around the topic of desegregating schools. Campbell doesn’t contain the perspective to just one side of the color story. Lily, the “offended” (and extremely ignorant) white woman, is a poor young mother with an abusive husband. She only understands debilitating poverty, a screaming newborn, a whiney toddler, and the urgent need to keep on her husband’s good side. She desperately walks a fine line of taking care of her starving family while scrambling for the little pleasures in life like a new tube of ruby red lipstick.
Beyond civil rights Campbell makes interesting connections between the lines of color. Women can be abused, regardless of race. A fist can bruise or split open any color of skin. Along those same lines, Campbell points out that women of any color use sex as a weapon to get what they want. Lila and Delotha are no different when it comes to using their bodies to manipulate their men.
Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine spans generations. Moore guides the pace through political and pop culture cues like which president is in office and what songs are playing on the radio. Occasionally, a historical event will make an appearance like the Kent State University shootings.

Line I liked, “She never danced when her husband was at home” (p 70). I have said it before and I will say it again, domestic abuse is color bland. Abuse is abuse is abuse.

Author fact: I am the same age as Campbell when she died. Can you imagine the stories she would be telling had she lived on?

Book trivia: this could have been a movie.

Setlist: B.B. King, Beatles’ “Yesterday,” Blind Jake’s “Sharpen My Pencil,” the Dells, Dianna Ross, Dinah Washington, Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog,” Frank Sinatra, Hank Williams, James Brown’s “Please, Please, Please,” Loretta Lynn, Louis Jordan, Marvin Gaye, Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” Muddy Waters, “No Good Man Blues,” “Oh, Mary, Don’t You Weep,” Patsy Cline’s “Blue,” “Rock of Ages,” Sam Cooke, Smokey Robinson, the Temptations, “We Shall Overcome,” Willie Nelson, and Willie Horton.

Miss Merchant connection: Natalie taught her fans the hymn “Oh, Mary, Don’t You Weep” back in 2000. Hard to believe that was twenty five years ago.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “African American Fiction: She Say” (p 12).

Mammoth Book of Twentieth Century Ghost Stories

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Haining, Peter, ed. The Mammoth Book of Twentieth Century Ghost Stories. Carroll and Graf Publishers, 1998.

Reason read: November 1st is Day of the Dead in Mexico. Read in honor of ghosts everywhere.

The stories:
The Golden Era –

  • “The Third Person” by Henry James – two spinster women live together in a haunted house.
  • “The Presence By the Fire” by H.G. Wells – a man mourns the loss of his wife.
  • “How It Happened” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – a man crashes his brand new car.
  • “Ghostly Duel” by Jack London – published in the Oakland Aegis and renamed “Who Believes in Ghosts?”
  • “The Hand” by Theodore Dreiser
  • “The Ghost of Down Hill” by Edgar Wallace – Wallace’s short stories were made into movies.
  • “Honeysuckle Cottage” by P.G. Wodehouse – no one is who they say they are in this haunted house.
  • “The Old Dark House” by J.B. Priestly
  • “Sophy Mason Comes Back” by E.M. Delafield – Dorothy Sayers was a fan of Delafield.
  • “In a Glass Darkly” by Agatha Christie – a man saves a woman from murder…or does he?
    Two: the Phantom Army –
  • “The Bowman” by Arthur Machen – is this story really fiction when there have been eye witness accounts of the World War I phenomenon?
  • “The Other Side of the Medal” by Stella Gibbons – another version of the Bowmen story.
  • “Three Lines of Old French” by Abraham Merritt – Haining said this could be a benchmark ghost story.
  • “The Lusitania Waits” by Alfred Noyes – Noyes was an English poet who, like John Mayer, did not wait to graduate college before becoming famous.
  • “Vengeance is Mine” by Algernon Blackwood – a chance encounter with a stranger changes a mild-mannered man’s life.
  • “We are the Dead” by Henry Kuttner – from the pulp magazine called Weird Tales.
  • “The Escort” by Daphne du Maurier
  • “The Elf in Algiers” by John Steinbeck
  • “The Mirror in Toom 22” by James Hadley Case – written while Case was serving in the Royal Air Force.
  • “Is there Life Beyond the Gravy?” by Stevie Smith
    Three: The Modern Tradition –
  • “Sloane Square” by Pamela Hansford Johnson – a ghostly subway ride.
  • “The Leaf-Sweeper” by Muriel Spark – one of my favorites about a man who confronts his living ghost.
  • “At the Chalet Lartrec” by Winston Graham – a story about time spent in an isolated mountain hotel.
  • “The Love of a Good Woman” by William Trern – mild-mannered salesman murders his wife for the sake of a mistress.
  • “The Haunting of Shawley Rectory” by Ruth Rendell – does history repeat itself?
  • “Voices From the Coalbin” by Mary Higgins Clark – a woman slowly goes insane thanks to childhood traumas.
  • “A Good Sound Marriage” by Fay Weldon – a pregnant woman has a heart to heart with her ghost of a grandmother.
  • “A Self-Possessed Woman” by Julian Barnes
  • A Programmed Christmas Carol” by John Mortimer – published in the London Daily Mail in 1994.
  • “A Figment in Time” by Peter Haining

My favorite observations: the spinsters in “The Third Person” were happy to have a man in the house, even if he was a ghost and in “A Programmed Christmas Carol” a descendant of Scrooge’s is living in the world of Apple computers and paternity leave.

Line I liked, “James Rodman had a congenital horror of matrimony” (p 147), “Rage pertained to savage days” (p 263), “The dangerous thing is for a woman to wait too long, so she end with nothing” (p 445)and “Curiously, too, I thought that although a lot of people die naked, I could not find a single story of a nude phantom” (p 480).

Author Editor fact: Haining has over 200 works to his credit. I am only reading The Mammoth Book of Twentieth Century Ghost Stories for the Challenge.

Music: “Good-bye to Tipperary,” “The Holly and the Ivy,” “Lillibullero,” “The Rogue’s March,”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the very obvious chapter called “Ghost Stories” (p 99).