The Glass Demon by Helen Grant

The Glass Demon is Helen Grant's follow up to The Vanishing of Katharina Linden, a book previously reviewed on this blog back in June. The Glass Demon is every bit as gripping as Grant's debut, starting from the killer first lines. Demon is a dark and sinister, modern myth, and, like its predecessor, takes place in Germany. Grant is expert at evoking the claustrophobia and clique-ishness of small town life where locals close ranks against outsiders and rumors and gossip fly like nobody's business.

In the wake of a career setback, Lin's father uproots the family from their home in England and packs them off to the remote German countryside to spend the year living in a rundown castle in the middle of a forest. When the family arrives, they come across an old man lying dead in an orchard, the ground around him littered with shattered glass, and when Lin's father refuses to report the corpse to the police, the reader knows this cannot bode well. Indeed the family discovers that their castle has no internet, no cell phone reception and no phone land line and as the story progresses this technological isolation of the family from the nearby town and help takes a sinister and dangerous turn.

Lin's father's on the trail of a set of very valuable, very ancient, long vanished stained glass windows steeped in myth and bloody legend. In fact locals believe the windows that once adorned a nearby abbey before it was dismantled to be cursed and better off lost to the sands of time and history. When other corpses turn up also surrounded by shattered glass and later sinister incidents occur leaving more shattered glass in their wake, it's clear to Lind, if no one else in her family, that the locals are intent on warning her father off the trail of the windows and running her family out of their town.

Even as Lin is preoccupied with these dark occurrences, she's blinded to the insidious disorder taking root in her sister's psyche and body. When Lin finally does see what's right in front of her, she realizes she has no one to turn to for the help her sister needs. In the end, for better or worse, Lin decides that if she wants answers, she's going to have to be the one to find them because her vain father, drama queen mother and conflict avoiding sister will be no help in this hunt.

In addition to the disturbing and frightening events driving this family to its breaking point, Grant adds another layer to the story in the portrayal of the dynamics of this family. Specifically the parents' lack of parental concern and failure to respond to parental responsibilities are just as distressing as the external threats to the family. Many times it seems like Lin is the only family member with the common sense, gumption and courage to take action even as she realizes that she cannot count on any of her family members for back up or support.

I highly recommend this book. It's a fast read and hard to put down especially during its extremely frightening conclusion.

--Reviewed by Ms. Angie

How To Be A Heroine: Or What I've Learned From Reading Too Much by Samantha Ellis

I feel as if I could write a book subtitled "What I've Learned From Reading Too Much" except all my lessons would be culled from Greek mythology, the Babysitters' Club, the lives of British queens, crime mysteries, suspense thrillers and celebrity and entertainment gossip. I first ran across How To Be A Heroine by Samantha Ellis in an ad in BookPage. The title sounded intriguing and once I looked it up on Amazon, I was in for reading it. It reminds me of the literacy autobiography writing assignment that I had in one of my English composition classes in college--except this is the literacy autobiography on steroids. The premise of this book is that the author revisits the seminal texts that she read in her youth by examining the lessons and impressions of the novels that she had upon her first readings when she was younger. Ellis has then re-read the novels as an adult specifically for the writing of her own book to see if the novels hold up to her original i

Heat Lightning by John Sandford

I'd previously read John Sandford's first Virgil Flowers novel, Dark of the Moon , a few years back and found it to be a quick, well written read. Recently I discovered he has since written three more Flowers titles and decided to start with the second title and read through to the fourth and most recent one. Heat Lightning is the second Flowers installment. The darkness of the crimes committed that must be solved in the novel are leavened by the lighter presentation of Flowers and the story. It works well together--a dark crime doesn't always need dark prose to back it up. Virgil Flowers is Lucas Davenport's go to man in the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension when there's a sensitive, tough or otherwise puzzling case to solve. Flowers has a high clearance rate and can often turn around a case in about a week. This particular case is especially perplexing with quite a few red herrings thrown into the mix to throw everyone--Flowers and the reader in

The Whisperers by John Connolly

If there was one thing Jimmy didn't care for, it was competition, ... There were some exceptions to that rule: he was rumored to have a sweet deal with the Mexicans, but he wasn't about to try to reason with the Dominicans, or the Columbians, or the bikers, or even the Mohawks. If they wanted to avail themselves of his services, as they sometimes did, that was fine, but if Jimmy Jewel started questioning their right to move product he and Earle would end up tied to chairs in the [bar] with pieces of themselves scattered by their feet, assuming their feet weren't among the scattered pieces, while the bar burned down around their ears, assuming they still had ears. from page 86 The Whisperers is John Connolly's newest Charlie Parker installment in which some beloved characters reappear and in which previous characters from another Parker installment reappear to shed further light on the big baddie that may or may not be coming for Parker in the future. This newest inst

A Series Of (Un)Fortunate Reviews

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