ClimbingSky

Why Baseball, Books, and the Grateful Dead matter

BOOK REVIEWS

  • BOOK REVIEW: The Murder of Sleepy Hollow by Michele Pariza Wacek

    I have said it here often, I am an indiscriminate reader. That is how I ended listening to part of an audiobook then speed reading (and now reviewing) The Murder of Sleepy Hollow” by Michele Pariza Wacek. According to my research into Wacek and The Murder of Sleepy Hollow, belongs to a sub-genre of fiction Read more

  • SHORT STORY REVIEW: “Dracula’s Chair” by Peter Tremayne

    I came across Peter Temayne’s perfect Dracula short story “Dracula’s Chair” in a collection called Coffins: The Vampire Archives, edited by Otto Penzler. For a lover of Stoker’s Dracula, it is the perfect anthology. It contains stories by writers like Harlan Ellison, Robert Bloch, and F. Paul Wilson. Tremayne’s short-story is about a writer who Read more

  • BOOK REVIEW: The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

    Sherlock Holmes stories are something I return to quite regularly. In the month of September this year, I reread the Sherlock Holmes novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles. For those who have not read it, the story begins with Dr. James Mortimer visiting Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in London. He presents them with a Read more

  • SHORT STORY REVIEW: “The Birds” by Daphne Du Maurier

    In August of 1961, I was 16-months old, and lived just between Santa Cruz and Capitola, California. On August 18th of that year in the middle of the night there was an invasion of sooty shearwaters. Apparently confused by the dense fog the birds “invaded” the town, slamming into houses, cars, and stores. Windows were Read more

  • SHORT STORY REVIEW: “Dracula’s Guest” by Bram Stoker

    “Dracula’s Guest” is a short story by Bram Stoker, first published posthumously in 1914 in the collection Dracula’s Guest and Other Weird Stories.  It is widely believed to be an excised or early draft of the original opening chapter of Bram Stoker’s famous novel Dracula.  It is about a young, unidentified Englishman, en route to Transylvania, found Read more

  • BOOK REVIEW: Paperbacks from Hell by Grady Hendrix

    As someone who loves books about books, old paperbacks, and the Horror genre in general, when I first heard about this book a couple of years ago, I had to preorder it. In Paperbacks from Hell, Horror author and vintage paperback book collector Grady Hendrix offers his expert commentary and insights into the kind of Read more

  • BOOK REVIEW: Dracula the Undead by Freda Warrington

    My tendency here so far at ClimbingSky has been to review books, short stories, and poems that I like. But as an indiscriminate reader that is probably not practical. When you add in the fact that I am also a fan of anything to do with Bram Stokers’s Dracula (not necessarily vampires per se), it Read more

  • SHORT STORY REVIEW: “The Dead Children” by Sabina Murray

    “The Dead Children” is a short-story from Sabina Murray’s excellent collection of Gothic/Horror tales entitled Muckross Abbey and Other Stories. Murray really understands Gothic. The contemporary writer I would most compare her to Susan Hill. She is that good. At a quiet Vermont college Professor Judith is stopped by a woman she initially doesn’t recognize. Read more

  • SHORT STORY REVIEW: “Reconciliation Day” by Christopher Fowler

    “Reconciliation Day” is a stand-alone short story, written by Christopher Fowler, that is part of a series called Bibliomysteries: Short Tales About Deadly Books. Obsessed with the legendary “blue edition” of Dracula, a rare and supposedly altered version of Stoker’s classic rumored to contain a different ending and a chapter set in Dracula’s library, leading Read more

  • BOOK REVIEW: Stoker’s Manuscript by Royce Prouty

    The story of the writing and publication of Bram Stoker’s masterpiece, Dracula, in many ways is as interesting as most fiction. Here is at the basic information of the publication of Dracula: In Stoker’s Manuscript writer Royce Prouty takes the history of Stoker’s manuscript and reimagines its history. The plot of Stoker’s Manuscript centers on Read more