For this week, Christina found a few releases that you need to know about, and she snuck in a bonus review of John Boden's New Release, SNARL.
Enjoy!
SNARL BY JOHN BODEN
I don’t know how to start this one out. I just finished it and I want to start it all over again, but I know that I will never experience the same way again. But you can.
Marlin loves Lisa. Lisa is married to Joe who isn’t the nicest guy. And those not so nice ways are found out. Shenanigans ensue. Blackmail, backstabbing, and a cat all play into said shenanigans.
I needed this book in my life. My soul needed this book. Imagine if William Faulkner and Martin McDonagh had a literary love child and he wrote a book, it would be SNARL by John Boden. Faulkner’s ability to capture the smell, taste, sound, etc. of the surroundings are captured here numerous times and McDonagh, well, if you have read one of his plays or seen one of his movies, you know exactly the gritty, realistic feel I am alluding to.
Boden gives us so many beautiful lines in this story. Don’t believe me? Here are some of favorites (and please know, I highlighted about forty quotes):
“Ought to and should do don’t often match, Son. Ought is very rarely should and should is nearly never will.”
“Fast is for bandage pulling and slow is for glaciers. Sorrow and grief is a bit of both.”
“And he was made of secrets and glued together with guilt and regret.”
SNARL hurt. It’s a story of the love for a mother, guilt of the past that one has no control over, the want of affection, guilt as an excuse, and betrayal most bitter. Absolute and true perfection in a novella. Welcome to the last spot in my Top Ten list, Mr. Boden. You are amongst great company. A DOUBLE OFF THE CHARTS RECOMMENDATION 20/5.
Available 9/5/23
MISSED RELEASES: WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 2, 2023
Mainstream
VAMPIRES OF EL NORTE by Isabel Canas
Vampires and vaqueros face off on the Texas-Mexico border in this supernatural western from the author ofThe Hacienda. As the daughter of a rancher in 1840s Mexico, Nena knows a thing or two about monsters—her home has long been threatened by tensions with Anglo settlers from the north. But something more sinister lurks near the ranch at night, something that drains men of their blood and leaves them for dead. Something that once attacked Nena nine years ago. Believing Nena dead, Néstor has been on the run from his grief ever since, moving from ranch to ranch working as a vaquero. But no amount of drink can dispel the night terrors of sharp teeth; no woman can erase his childhood sweetheart from his mind. When the United States invades Mexico in 1846, the two are brought abruptly together on the road to war: Nena as a curandera, a healer striving to prove her worth to her father so that he does not marry her off to a stranger, and Néstor as a member of the auxiliary cavalry of ranchers and vaqueros. But the shock of their reunion—and Nena’s rage at Néstor for seemingly abandoning her long ago—is quickly overshadowed by the appearance of a nightmare made flesh. And unless Nena and Néstor work through their past and face the future together, neither will survive to see the dawn.
FEVER HOUSE by Keith Rosen
When leg-breaker Hutch Holtz rolls up to a rundown apartment complex in Portland, Oregon, to collect overdue drug money, a severed hand is the last thing he expects to find stashed in the client’s refrigerator. Hutch quickly realizes that the hand induces uncontrollable madness: Anyone in its proximity is overcome with a boundless compulsion for violence. Within hours, catastrophic forces are set into motion: Dark-op government agents who have been desperately hunting for the hand are on Hutch’s tail, more of the city’s residents fall under its brutal influence, and suddenly all of Portland stands at the precipice of disaster.... But it’s all the same for Katherine Moriarty, a singer whose sudden fame and precipitous downfall were followed by the mysterious death of her estranged husband—suicide, allegedly. Her trauma has made her agoraphobic, shackled within the confines of her apartment. Her son, Nick, has moved home to care for her, quietly making his living working for Hutch’s boss. When Hutch calls Nick in distress, looking for someone else to take the hand, Katherine and Nick are plunged into a global struggle that will decimate the walls of the carefully arranged life they’ve built. Mother and son must evade both crazed, bloodthirsty masses and deceitful government agents while exorcising family secrets that have risen from the dead—secrets, they soon discover, that might hold the very key to humanity’s survival.
Indie
BELDAM OF OZ by Kelvin Allison
England, 1817. A nation recovering from the aftermath of countless years fighting the hordes of Napoleon and La Grande Armée. Just one of thousands of former soldiers now jobless and living hand to mouth, Obadiah Moon, former rifleman in His Majesty’s Army, accepts a job as gamekeeper at the late Lady Ross’s Emerald Estate in Northern England, near the tiny village of Ozham. Taking his former comrades, the giant Welshman Dai ‘Cowardly’ Hughes and the cynical, older Vincent Hayman, with him, Obadiah sets out north on the stagecoach, The Tornado, looking forward to a new life of peace in the countryside, not realising that their arrival coincides with the return of four sisters from the North, South, East and West. What follows is a nightmare of madness and terror as the trio are forced to defend the Emerald Estate against the horrors of the Beldam. Were-beasts, and witches, and cannibals…oh my!!!
CUCKOO by Mike Ennenbach
Have you ever been in love? Truly, madly, deeply? Only to lose it? Your tether suddenly snapped. How broken can you become? And how can you ever hope to piece yourself back together? This is a love story.
BETA by Sammy Scott
Michael Danvers’ life of self-imposed seclusion is interrupted when he receives a strange invitation: the unique opportunity to move into and beta-test a fully automated, state-of-the-art smart home. A true marvel of modern innovation, the house is controlled by a sophisticated AI that ensures all routine tasks are taken care of, limitless forms of entertainment are just a voice command away, and nearly every physical need is met with efficiency. But soon Michael realizes that what at first presented itself as a futuristic utopia may be quickly devolving into a technological prison.
Godless
WHERE DREAMS ARE ENTOMBED by Chase Will
"How Desperate Are You?" Tommy knows what it is to be desperate, living in squalor and barely making ends meet while pursuing his rockstar dreams. When he's sent an invitation to become a collaborator at an experimental art gallery, he's offered a path toward financial security and personal fulfillment. But big dreams come at a high price...and the owner of the art gallery has her own plans for Tommy.
THE BUTCHER AND THE BABY by Terry Musalata
When The Butcher and The Baby was first published by German underground magazine Pochende Faust (Pounding Fist) in 1983, few at the periodical realised it sounded the death knell for their company. Following the international outrage for Musalata’s Baby in a Blender, the European Union—driven by Mary Whitehouse’s NVLA—instigated legal action to prevent publication of the story. As a result, it was banned—along with Baby in a Blender and Midgets on a Meathook—from sale across the Europe. Whitehouse went on to declare it as, “evidence of modern society’s decline into depravity,” which led to the story being banned in the USA, Australia, and all countries involved in trade pacts with signatory nations. In recent years, as global bans were rescinded, restrictions on the story have been lifted, but only Godless.com has shown the bravery to rerelease this abattoir abortion classic to the world. Now, outside of dark web distribution, it is finally available to the general public for the first time since its undemocratic and reactionary banning in the dark days of 1983.
Audiobook
BUNKER DOGS by Gage Greenwood
Don't just fear what you're hiding from, fear what you're hiding with.
Cassie's night of babysitting goes to hell when bombs explode in the distance, planes fly overhead at low altitudes, and alerts on her phone tell her to seek shelter. Luckily, the boy she babysits tells her his father has a bunker in the yard. When they make their way to this underground shelter, they soon discover they aren't alone. Something is living in the bunker, lurking in the walls, and it's hungry. What started as a simple night of babysitting, will descend into a psychological and claustrophobic nightmare Cassie couldn't have prepared for.
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