Writer and Editor C.B. Calsing/ G.G. Royale

Without planning to, I read two stories back-to-back which featured an abused wife running with her son from her law-enforcement husband. Both protagonists end up in a situation with a mysterious stranger whose motivations are unclear. But really, that is where the similarities between The Haunting of Orchard Hill and The Beasts of Vissaria County end. Douglas Ford’s The Beasts of Vissaria County follows Maggie as she attempts to start a new life with her son after an alleged suicide attempt. She has run from her husband, an ICE agent involved in some dubious activities, and she is living with her father. This was the one issue I sort of had with the story. Maggie refuses to carry a cellphone because she thinks it can be used to track her, but she’s gone to stay at her dad’s, and her dad, Vernon, is friends with her husband. Her husband even bought him a truck. One would think she would find a less obvious place to hide. But for the story to work, she does need to be found, and she i...

Sara Crocoll Smith's The Haunting of Orchard Hill  is solidly a paranormal novel and solidly a romance in the gothic style. It begins with tension as Nina, our protagonist, and her infant son flee an abusive husband, who also happens to be a cop, upping the stakes. When her car breaks down in a rural town, she is taken in by a widow who owns an apple orchard. There are whispers about her too. Did she kill her husband? Then Nina meets the mysterious farmhand, Colin, and is instantly smitten. Colin, however, has his own secrets. The text of this story was well-written and well-edited. Its highlight is definitely the folksy, mysterious widow who offers to take in Nina and her son. Like Nina, in the beginning I could not tell whether this woman was truly kind or had nefarious motivations. I was really cheering for her to be good because Nina already had enough crap going on in her life. The tension is high throughout, and as a reader, I was very interested in finding out what was going...

Our Lady of Mysterious Ailments by T.L. Huchu is the second book in a series. Ropa Moyo, our protagonist, is a ghost talker and takes on odd jobs helping the deceased finish their unfinished business. She lives in a caravan in the slums with her grandmother and little sister. She wants nothing more than a better future for her family. In this installment, she is hired by a hospital to help figure out why some schoolboys are falling sick. She also comes across a fortune hunter who wants her to help prove an inheritance. In an alternate reality, after a worldwide catastrophe, magic and cell phones coexist on the streets of Edinburgh, and Ropa repeatedly finds herself in altercations with gangs, magicians, and bureaucrats. I don’t usually read sequels without having read the first book in a series. I don’t like risking that I might get lost in some of the details, nor do I particularly like going back to read the first book when I know a lot of the exposition or backstory. However, I mad...

If you like Rocky, but would like it more if it were about a princess and a fairy, then you will love Tasmyn Muir's Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower. This is a short, fun audiobook that follows the adventure of Floralinda, who has been locked at the top of a tower, each floor of which is stalked by a different threat. The point of the tower, the witch says, is to lure princes. It's high art for the witch, but Floralinda would rather be home with her parents. As time passes, it becomes clear that no prince is going to make it to the fortieth floor, and with the help of the fairy, Cobweb, Floralinda decides to try to get out of the tower rather than wait for someone to get her out. The conflict of this story is less about the challenges at each level of the tower and fighting the beasts therein, but more about challenging roles assigned to us and fighting expectations. Floralinda begins her journey relying on the information she has been fed about what it means to ...

Don’t Look Back starts off and ends up a fairly standard gothic thriller. Adam and Ella win a contest to become the caretakers of a mansion in Cornwall. They are grateful for this chance because one of their twin sons has died, and the remaining three family members all seem a bit lost. Even before they move into the house, they know something mysterious is going on. The original owner hanged himself, there’s (of course) a locked door to a room that is off-limits, and some years previously, another family went missing within its walls. The current owner swears it’s haunted by her dead mother. Once the new family moves in, the house seems to have an effect on all three: Adam writes more, Ella appears happier, and Henry (the surviving son) becomes brave and gets his appetite back. Slowly, however, things descend into darkness, and no one knows whether to blame the supernatural or more mundane forces. First off, the narrator did an excellent job. Ralph Lister set a tone that supported th...