A heightened sense of fear

My latest for DVD Netflix focuses on Alfred Hitchcock’s output during the 1940s, a decade fraught by global war. It was a time laced with suspicion, doubt, daring, and misplaced trust. He knew what plagued an audience’s psyche. These stomach-knotting thrillers use the paranoia and instability of World War II to his advantage.

Top Ten Tuesday: All Time Favorites

Well this is just mean. Choose your top ten favorite books of all time. Somehow. Working under the assumption that this is basically impossible, I am going to choose ten that are amazing and are way up there, but are in no particular order and is not meant to be definitive. These are books that…

REVIEW: THE DOLL by Daphne du Maurier

The Lost Short Stories These tales written very early in her career (1926-1932), long before Rebecca.  Some were published much later, some not at all.  It’s fascinating to see the writer she would become taking shape in these early stories.  Sometimes they style is slightly more simplistic as though they were first drafts or rough…

REVIEW: THE LANTERN by Deborah Lawrenson

This is yet another recent book that cements my assumption that Provence is enchanting.  Of course, in my fantasy, there is significantly less murder and suspicion than in this book (or Death at Chateau Bremont). Still, I too dream of a run down but livable field stone farmhouse, with an aging orchard and lavender fields,…