Jon Ransom’s debut novel, The Whale Tattoo, is filled with prose that picks you up in its wake and takes you on a journey. Complex, fraught and violent, The Whale Tattoo reads like an early Tracy Lett’s play - a steaming mix of blue-collar rage and menace. Joe Gunner is working in a chip shop... Continue Reading →
Book Review: Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune ★★★★
For some people, life starts at 40. For miserable, corporate manager Wallace Price, life started when he died. Better late than never. TJ Klune’s new novel, Under the Whispering Door, takes his breezy fantasy stylings and tackles a love story beyond the grave. When Wallace attends his own sparsely attended funeral, he meets Mei—a reaper... Continue Reading →
Book Review: The Dangerous Kingdom of Love by Neil Blackmore ★★★★1/2
“Everything is about sex. Except sex, which is about power”—the quote, apocryphally attributed to Oscar Wilde—sums up much of the machinations at the heart of Neil Blackmore’s brilliant The Dangerous Kingdom of Love, a thrilling retelling of the later years of Francis Bacon’s life with the seductive frisson of Choderlos de Laclos’ Les Liaisons Dangereuses... Continue Reading →
Book Review: Doubting Thomas by Matthew Clark Davison ★★★★
The gap between real support and performative allyship—the lurking fear that beneath the flag waving veneer of equality hides something untrustworthy, the thought that when push comes to shove straight people may not really have our backs—is the starting point for Matthew Clark Davison’s debut novel, Doubting Thomas. Thomas is an openly gay fourth grade... Continue Reading →
