Public interest pollster Alan F. Kay is irritated with the money-compromised integrity of commercial polling organizations. Gallup Roper Zogby and similar outfits have to please their customers. The commercial pollster’s client is an... Read More

Commuting as spiritual practice may not be the easiest path to enlightenment as it presents so many opportunities for frustration, irritation, and even rage to erupt. Marking off his own daily commute on the Major Deegan Expressway in... Read More

An ominous voice on law student Kayla Beck’s cell phone offers her a horrible choice: If Kayla doesn’t try to rescue a kidnapped woman, the chained woman will starve to death — or take another way out with the razor blade provided... Read More

If the “interpretation of dreams are the royal road to the unconscious,” as Sigmund Freud once said, "Birthday" by Koji Suzuki is a highway to the horrors of human evil. Composed by Japan’s bestselling postmodern master of chill,... Read More

The novel begins with a prologue too often a red flag for readers and truly one in this case. The disjointed prologue—a background information dump—links to the remaining 230 pages of this novel via a television. The boy who received... Read More

“We do not attract what we want, but what we are”; the words of author James Allen might serve as an answer to the many who question why after having visualized, intended, and used many other tactics to attract desired results into... Read More

At its best (Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Salman Rushdie, Angela Carter), magical realism lures in its readers, making the impossible seem merely improbable. Antonio Muñoz Molina’s novella, "In Her Absence", is a supreme example of this... Read More

Travel writer Meg Parker appears to have a dream job living and working in the French countryside, but the reality of having to deal with an inattentive husband, two young children, and incompetent home remodelers is forcing a rude... Read More