Why are there no more magicians in England? In the Napoleonic era one man asks the question. Just why are there no more magicians in England? Yes, there are those who study magic, but there are no more practical magicians left. This at a time when the French emperor is trampling all over Europe. Thus far,…
Books for MAY
For winter’s rains and ruins are over, And all the season of snows and sins; The days dividing lover and lover, The light that loses, the night that wins; And time remembered is grief forgotten, And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, And in green underwood and cover Blossom by blossom the spring begins. ~Algernon…
REVIEW: MR MAC AND ME by Esther Freud
Freud has imagined the summer of 1914 for Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his wife through the eyes of Thomas Maggs, a thirteen-year old boy who lives on the Suffolk Coast. The artist couple takes a cottage in the small town, far from their busy, stressful lives in Glasgow. The novel is told a first person…
Peering Anew at My Own World – INTERVIEW WITH MICHAEL SIMS
I had the great honor to interview writer and editor Michael Sims about his newest book, The Phantom Coach and pick his brain about growing up in rural Tennessee, the (super)natural and what the ghost stories of our time will be like. Did that disconnection from what some might call “civilization” imbue you with an affinity…
REVIEW: THE PHANTOM COACH by Michael Sims
Michael Sims has once again curated a fascinating and perhaps unexpected collection of stories for the Victorian reader. None of these stories rely on scare tactics as such. They are unsettling. They get into your head and rattle around, like a ghost clinking its chains. They are all the more unnerving, just as ghostly movies are…