supernatural

On a disturbance scale, Mother! falls somewhere between other Darren Aronofsky films, Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan, with a story more comparable to Noah combined with an all-out assault on social etiquette and political correctness that creates the strangest kind of satire.  

In a movie of characters' without names, Jennifer Lawrence plays the titular mother. Wife to a famous poet, played by Javier Bardem, she single-handedly rebuilds their house which has been lost in a fire. She paints, builds, and decorates all day long while he attempts to write. Quiet and secluded, their existence

Sleepy Hollow, the television series, takes an old story and gives it a new twist, blending the original Revolutionary War element with the modern world. 

Ichabod Crane, a British-turned-American-patriot soldier, is a captain in George Washington’s army. According to Crane, Washington was fighting more than a physical war; he was also fighting a supernatural one. Crane is a soldier in both wars. During the course of one skirmish, he battles with a deadly, seemingly unkillable horseman, resulting in Crane’s death and the horseman’s decapitation.

Through his wife’s witchcraft, Crane is set to

I’ve been obsessed with Abigail Thomas’s work, and I've been reading everything she’s written one after the other. I decided I wanted to read something else, not only to cleanse my palate, but so I would have a book I already know I’ll love waiting for me at some time in the future when I really, really need a good book to read. So I compromised and read an author whom Thomas had thanked in her acknowledgments. It worked out beautifully. Stephen Dobyns is a poet with a large body of work, but the only title readily available was The Burn Palace. I’m not typically drawn to police procedurals

​Popular Sookie Stackhouse author Charlaine Harris has just finished a trilogy set in Midnight, Texas. Midnight Crossroad introduces the small town and the people that live there; a vampire, a witch, a spiritualist, weretigers and angels, with just a few people thrown into the mix.

Midnight is an old town with lots of boarded up windows; it's a place where some secrets will never see the light of day. When strangers wander into the crossroads and start killing themselves in increasingly brutal ways, the Midnighters rally together to figure out why. Lemuel acquires help translating ancient

I happened upon Witches of Lychford as it lurked, unnoticed amongst row upon row of bestsellers, midlist titles, and forgotten classics--not unlike the way Autumn stumbled upon the gateway to another world. It was there all along, simply hidden in plain view.

Cornell, writer of comics like Batman & Robin, Wolverine, and Doctor Who, puts a witch, a reverend, and a non-believer of both in the middle of a clash between quaint little town lovers and the corporations that want to modernize them with big box stores. The threat of modernization is both tantalizing and threatening. The town is

Don’t watch Horns if you can’t, or don’t want to, imagine Daniel Radcliffe as anyone but Harry Potter. Admittedly Horns has supernatural elements. And it does deal with moral issues – doing what’s right even if it means a personal sacrifice. But there the similarities end. Horns is a murder-mystery/dark fantasy/horror/revenge/love story.

The protagonist in Horns, Ig Perrish (brilliantly portrayed by Radcliffe), is accused of killing his girlfriend. Despite repeatedly and passionately denying the accusation, everyone around him, including his family, believes he did it. They see him as evil, a

The main character in Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson series is a type of heroine I like to call “the flawed hero who can’t stop herself from helping those in trouble even if it gets her into trouble; sometimes potentially fatal trouble.” There are a number of supernatural series that feature this type of character - Harry Dresden from Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files, Rachel Morgan from Kim Harrison’s Hollows, Sookie Stackhouse from Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse, the women in Kelley Armstrong’s Women of the Otherworld.

These people have weaknesses, faults, and limitations that they don’t

Some readers like their fictional friends kept safe, never truly in harm’s way, despite immediate apparent dangers; you just know they’ll make out just fine in the end. I am not one of those readers—I like it when happy endings are not guaranteed, and the protagonist gets knocked around a bit.

And hoo boy does October “Tobey” Daye, protagonist of Seanan McGuire’s Rosemary and Rue, get knocked around. A lot. The half-Fae private investigator was once a knight of the Fae court, until she lost 14 years of her life in the line of duty; now she wants nothing to do with them. Unfortunately, she

After the Event, people see the dead. They are as normal to life as breathing now, but Veronica wishes that life would return back to the way it was before. Now, the ghosts are becoming stronger and they want to return to their lives and become part of the living again. Veronica and her best friend Kirk decide to investigate what caused the ghosts to appear and how they might send them back into the afterlife.  Along the way, Veronica must battle with a nefarious former teacher who wants to try and use Veronica to bring his dead daughter back to life.

In this thrilling tale, the dead are no

It’s been awhile since I first started reading Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files series, at least ten years and thirteen books ago. I recently came across the first book in the series, Storm Front, and decided to reread it. I’m glad I did. It gave me a chance to reacquaint myself with Harry Dresden, wizard for hire, before all the ensuing mayhem and madness that descends upon him in later books.

Harry Dresden fits the description of a hard-boiled detective–he’s tough and he regularly confronts violence and danger. Although he does have a soft spot for women in distress, you don’t want to see

Die for Me, written by Amy Plum, is a story of love, loss, desire, and the supernatural. Kate and her sister Georgia have suffered the tragic loss of their parents, who were so horrifically injured in a car accident that Kate could not even recognize her father’s face. After the funerals, Georgia who is now acting as the legal guardian to Kate decides that they will go live with their grandparents in France.

Kate is distressed, depressed, and horribly lonely. While France is a familiar place, as she visited every summer growing up and can speak French fluently, she cannot get over the void

Gone is a "what if" story. What if everyone over the age of 14 suddenly disappeared? What if this phenomenon was localized, affecting a small slice on the California coast? What if there was no visible way to escape the affected area and get back to the "normal" world? The story sounds a bit like the Lord of the Flies on a larger scale with boys and girls of all ages, from babies up to age 14. But there is a twist. Even before all the adults disappeared some of the kids were experiencing...something strange, developing unusual powers that ranged from mild to deadly. What these new talents have

Juliette has not been touched for over three years. She has not seen a single soul, except for the hand that brings her food once a day, if she is lucky. Juliette can never be touched. It is her curse that she has borne since her infancy, and it is the cursed ability that landed her in an asylum and torn away from a life where she was shunned by everyone, including her parents. Juliette is immediately turned upside down when she is re-introduced to the only kind soul she has ever known, the soldier Adam, and the only person who can ever touch her without dying. Juliette is then thrown in the

Kelley Armstrong has created a whole world similar to ours but with the addition of supernatural creatures, the stuff of myth and legend come to life.  She calls this series, Women of the Otherworld. The first book in the series, Bitten, focuses on Elena, an oddity even for this odd world. Elena is unique, the only female werewolf. There are two ways to become a werewolf. The first way is hereditary – males pass along the werewolf gene to their sons. The second way is to be bitten by a werewolf and then to survive, rare occurrences since werewolves are unlikely to stop at just one bite.

Bitte

Dead Reckoning is the 11th book of the Sookie Stackhouse series, about a southern girl with telepathy living in a world where vampires and other supernatural creatures have come out of the closet.  In this latest novel, author Charlaine Harris is obviously trying to start wrapping up the series.  In a hodgepodge manner we are finally given the answer to many questions arising throughout the series, such as, "Why is Sookie telepathic?", "How can a blood bond between a vampire and human be broken?" and others.   Unfortunately, the story does not have the clever dialogue and suspenseful storyline

In this sequel to Demon Princess: Reign or Shine, author Michelle Rowen returns to the life of teenager and Demon Princess, Nikki Donovan.  Nikki is determined to live a “normal” life, even after saving her father, the King of the Shadowlands, from the diabolical scheming of his sister.  So, Nikki returns to Erin Heights High School hoping to be able to maintain control of her demon side and not letting anyone find out that she is only half-human.  Unfortunately, Rhys, the new Faery King, has just enrolled at Erin Heights and is doing everything in his power to make sure Nikki is discovered. 

Enamored as I was with Armstrong’s Bitten, I was excited to try her other titles. What a disappointment. Where Bitten piqued my interest in paranormal fiction, Industrial Magic left me bored and disenchanted.

 Bitten appealed to me because, while I don’t actually believe in werewolves, Armstrong painted a picture in which I could envision one trying to exist in a modern American city. It reads more like women’s fiction than supernatural fiction, as Elena copes with love, relationships, and secrets. Industrial Magic, on the other hand, felt like Armstrong was trying to stuff every type of

In the last couple weeks, there's been some odd Internet buzz to the effect that Warner Bros. and CBS are trying to turn Stephen King's The Stand into a feature film.

It's odd for several reasons: It's been tried before, and that effort ended up in "development hell" for a decade, partly because of the length of the novel. Eventually, ABC made a mini-series of King's post-apocalyptic epic, with decidedly mixed results -- some good performances marred by weak special effects and budgetary constraints. Well, leave it to Hollywood to try, try and, if necessary, try again. We'll see.

Meanwhile

Ysabel, by Guy Gavriel Kay, blends history and fantasy, facts and imagination. Ned Marriner, a 15-year-old from Canada, travels with his father to France. His father, a famous photographer, is there to shoot pictures for his next book. What starts off as a vacation for Ned quickly turns dark and confusing as first he meets an American girl, Kate Wenger, and together they run into a strange and frightening man. Who is this man? Where did he come from? What, if anything is his connection to Ned? Why is Ned experiencing what can best be described as paranormal, supernatural? Ned and Kate get

Charlaine Harris has become fairly well-known for her Sookie Stackhouse series. She has also written several other series, including the Harper Connelly series. The main character, Harper Connelly was struck by lightning when she was a teenager. This left her with the ability to sense dead people. As well, she can sense their last few moments of life, essentially giving her information about the cause of death. Harper and her stepbrother, Tolliver, travel around the country to wherever someone hires them to find a dead body. While Harper's unusual ability qualifies this series as supernatural