protean depravity

Hey, hey! I'm not doing much these days except for working, reading and hanging out on my balcony drinking self-made mocktails, so I don't have much to report until I'll have some vacation next week. So I hope you enjoy the short reviews, there are some nice books out there!

It's thriller time again! I preferred my thrillers in the shape of audiobooks this past month, as there's so much to do when the weather gets warm and that amps my energy levels up. It is a special kind of happiness to finish an audiobook while cleaning your windows and at the end of the day you have another title crossed out of your list and you can look through clear windows. Or have a squeaky clean bathroom. Or enjoying whatever it is you are cleaning. The haul of titles this time is truly a mixed bag, ranging from awesome to meh, so let's take a look at them. Enjoy!

  Every year in June, at the middle of the road, I turn back to take a look at the year in horror and the books I have read so far, and since time is nothing but a blur these days, we're there already, if not a little late. In order to do so I answer a series of questions that we used to sum up our reading year/half year over at the Shine and Shadow reading group on Goodreads. At this point I have some bad news, though... At the beginning of this year I quit my role as admin of the group, as people returned to their normal lives and spent less and less time on Goodreads (and no need to say, reading less and less) and the workload of the group became much bigger - because nobody did the work anymore. Also people just stopped communicating and that was really frustrating and annoying. So, I jumped off that train although I loved my reading group and talking with people about the books we read together. But hey... Things always keep on changing and I hope that I'll find new peop...

To ape someone. To monkey around. Monkey business. Ape arms. Monkey basket. Monkey see, monkey do. From the top of my head, I can think of quite a few idioms and sayings involving monkeys, and none of them have an even remotely positive connotation. Why is that? Well, I'm not an expert, but I think apart from their often aggressive and unpredictable nature, I would say that it's the same underlying fear as with dolls - their resemblance to us. Monkeys  look like humans, but they're not quite us. They surely act like us, but in a distorted way and that's eerie. We tend to be afraid of human-like things that look like us, but are underneath strange, that's somehow unsettling. So, take a doll, a toy in the shape of a monkey and it's double scary, especially with creepy eyes and teeth and a lethal music instrument, for whatever reason... Stephen King milks that fear to its full potential in his short story The Monkey , where such a toy monkey causes death every time...

Alex Grass is the author of several horror, SF and dark fantasy novels based in Brooklyn, NYC. His new book "Infernal Tramps: Tales of Weird Terror", a short story collection of seventeen short stories that I reviewed here , will be published this summer, on July 15th, by the Dickinson Publishing Group. I was mesmerized and delighted by this collection and even more delighted when Alex accepted an interview with Protean Depravity... 

Hello and hi! I hope you're starting a great and sunny week. I have been reading older stuff these past weeks, like Donoso's The Obscene Bird of Night , that has been beleaguering my tbr for years, or 'Pemi Aguda's Ghostroots that I wanted to read ever since its publication a couple of years ago. I'm always proud of myself when I can cross titles out of my backlist, so consider this post a success! I hope you enjoy it too and find something you'd like to read, even if it's not brand new.

Enjoy the short stories of the last month and have a great day!

Here come the crime write-ups from the past month or so, enjoy!

The latest short reviews are here, enjoy!

Welcome to the short story lover's guide to Stephen King! In this penultimate post about Stephen King's second short story collection Skeleton Crew we'll take a look at one science fiction horror, two inanimate horror and one rat horror pieces of writing as well as one poem he wrote for his son, author Owen King. It would be good if you read along, or at least know or be familiar with the stories because I will spoil everything! Let's go! 

Here are some short reviews from the past month. Writing this post I realized that I've been reading A LOT OF short stories and I'm in a proper short story fever! If that speaks to you, I hope you find something to your taste, enjoy!

Enjoy the latest short reviews! 

Jenny Kaplan is as New York City as they come – independent and complex, trying to make a living through a severely underpaid job at the lifestyle magazine Bread and Circus , and always one rent away from being evacuated. Her biggest accomplishment is a very personal and honest piece of autofiction that includes her break up and abortion, titled “Drano”, which got her the most views and support she ever had, but also brought along powerful enemies, such as The Brotherhood and, unfortunately, the owners of her workplace.

The new year started so busy that I almost forgot about publishing the short reviews. Luckily, because of that, there are quite a few now since they added up. In the meantime I discovered a new favorite author, Drew Huff, I fell in love with The Divine Flesh,  the way it was written and the subject matter was totally up my alley, so I have been stocking  up on Huff's books (because I'm totally expecting to do nothing and sit on my couch and read books as long as the snow piles up outside, the way it does now). I also really want to focus on short stories this year, and to put a dent in my TBR by finishing all the horror anthologies I collected over the years, and I started doing that. Hope you enjoy my short reviews, have a great winter time! 

It's finally time for some crime, thriller and mystery again, let's go! I've had tons of time to read over the festive days (it was so wonderful), so there are quite a few short reviews today. Enjoy.

Let's start the year 2026 with the hope that these empty cinema seats will be the only places to witness horrors and that horror will stay strictly confined to fiction. And the first opportunity to fill those seats will be during the upcoming film season - our first station is the  Fantasy Filmfest White Nights  on January 24 and 25, which is like a mini winter break weekend for horror fans. I usually only watch a couple of films during the White Nights, but this year I feel like 2025 wasn't that great of a year for horror, and I feel somewhat starved for more movies. So I decided to take a leave from Hammett on that Saturday and to watch all the films on the first day, and three films on Sunday. Let's take a look at the trailers and talk about them, in order of their appearance at the FFF.

Hello back with the first short reviews in the new year 2026, a year who saw a turbulent start already, but will hopefully be better for us all (later 😭). Enjoy!

Here we are again, standing at the end of the year, taking a last look back before moving on. Moving on has been the motto for the entire last year, honestly, as I feel like I was standing before a heap of shards and rubble from the year before and decided to completely concentrate on myself and, fitting the Chinese year of the snake, shed my skin, I let go - I removed many many things that are unnecessary and superfluous in my life, and focused on my healing and well-being, but also let older things back in that I feel are important to who I am and that I have been neglecting. So overall I feel good about myself and this past year. Of course, everything around the world is still going south and the rage that ensues from watching stupid politicians and death and destruction and fear makes it hard to find inner balance. I have no idea where the world is heading and I'm not very optimistic nor very enthusiastic to find out but there's nothing else to do but go with it. There'...

All right, friends, can you already hear the snare drums rolling in the distance? Before announcing the bests of the year 2025, I need to come to a closure with all the challenges I plead to finish this year though. It didn't look very rosy until this morning, but I made use of my Sunday to finish some books and rearrange my prompts as well as I can, so that I have finished most of my challenges of the year, except for one. Can you guess which one?

After breaking routine in the last installment of "The Short Story Lover's Guide to Stephen King" and comparing a novella with its film adaptation, here we are back to our usual, continuing discussing the short stories in the second King collection Skeleton Crew . It would be good if you read along, or at least know or be familiar with the stories because I will spoil everything! Let's go!