Cryptid Club – Sarah Andersen

I do love Sarah Andersen's work, particularly Sarah's Scribbles, but also the more recent branching out, such as Fangs. This is another direction again, and I first stumbled across strips from the Cryptids on Instagram. Here we have a whole collection of the weird and wonderful! So what exactly is a cryptid? The dictionary definition is: "an animal whose …

The Umbrella Academy (season 3)

(Usual spoiler: talking about how season 3 starts is kind of a spoiler for how season 2 ends) Meet the Hargreaves: seven 'siblings' who were brought together as babies by an eccentric millionaire who decided their highly unusual births - none of their mothers having been pregnant the day before - signalled something special. And …

The Dark Between the Trees – Fiona Barnett

"Five women in a Land Rover, heading out towards the distant treetops." A group of academics arrive at a fenced-off forest, unexplored for decades due to strange happenings: some kind of magnetic field is disrupting compasses, for a start. They're there - oh so prepared, they think - to try to find evidence of a …

Dewey Decimated – Allison Brook

"'Thanks, Aunt Harriet.'" This is the sixth book in the Haunted Library Mysteries series, and I think the best so far. My complaints about the series have been "a bit too chick lit", and very little reason for the whole premise: the library's ghost. This one, however, is a whole lot more balanced on the …

Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

"On March 3, 1969, the United States Navy established an elite school for the top one percent of its pilots" - and in 1986 we got a movie staring Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer, and Anthony Edwards, about a cohort of these elite pilots. Now, 35 years on, we revisit Captain Pete Mitchell, aka Maverick, as he's …

The Cliff House – Chris Brookmyre

"They had been on the island less than five hours and already the whole thing was falling apart." A group of women head to a remote Scottish island for a lavish hen do. But when someone turns up dead, the question of 'who dunnit' only stirs up the secrets surrounding each of them. Jen's friends include …

A Poisonous Page – Kitt Crowe

"Death is good for business." Welcome back to Confection, Oregon, with this second instalment in the Sweet Fiction bookshop cosy mysteries. The town might be full of sweet names, but there's also a killer on the loose! I really enjoyed Digging Up Trouble, where we first met Lexi, manager of her parent's bookshop, just as she …

Stranger Things (season 2)

My rewatch of the excellent Stranger Things continues as I run towards the new episodes. Season 1 both tied up the initial story and left an obvious way to continue. And so, welcome back to Hawkins, Indiana, just in time for Halloween, 1984. It didn't occur to me at the time, but each season revolves …

Of Charms, Ghosts and Grievances – Aliette de Bodard

"Up until Asmodeus spoke up, it had been an uneventful day - or, at any rate, not more eventful than usual." I'm annoyed at myself at still not having got round to reading the Dominion of the Fallen series, but instead started with this series of novellas. I'm told that you can read them as stand alone, and …

A Fatal Booking – Victoria Gilbert

"The only thing constant in life is change." Welcome back to Chapters, the book-themed B&B run by Charlotte, who inherited from the great aunt who may or may not have been an international spy! This time, Charlotte is hosting a book club retreat. The organisers are a little more hands-on and exacting than she usually …