Mark Schiffer

More funny/creepy than stomach churningly grotesque, which I'm not mad at.

CW: domestic violence

More of a collection of crimes and occurrences in Kingsmarkham over a season than an actual murder mystery, though there's at least one of those in here too. Impeccably constructed and told, has inspired me to go back to the beginning of the series and read all the Wexfords.

Gorgeous, dark as hell, and in the end quite cryptic.

A psychopath loses his “healthy coping mechanism” and it all unfolds both exactly like and completely differently from how one might expect. Rich in psychological depth and full of incident, all in less than 200 pages. Maybe the closest to horror I've read from Rendell, wintery and riveting.

I HATE reading Biblical analysis, and this book is packed with it. Plenty of entertaining behind-the-scenes-type stories, so it was still an enjoyable read.

Two horrific incidents (one a bank robbery and shooting, the other the slaying of a family on a wooded estate) spiral into one of Rendell's darker psychological murder mysteries. One of the few I've read from her which could arguably be described as a locked-room/impossible mystery. So so good.

Muggy, dark, dreamy, cryptic, longing, tangled

Adaptations of adaptations of memoirs written in journals left in backpacks

Like all of Ward's work, it's a Lot. But what lands, lands hard. Totally worth a look if almost overly metatextual queer psychodrama is something of interest.

Informative and entertaining, though it wore thin after awhile. Definitely an easy read.

Wasn't expecting too much from an early Wexford - the only one in the series I've read is From Doon With Death which didn't do too much for me - but I've been on a Rendell kick so I thought I would give this one a go. ~200 pages, complex but not convoluted puzzle at the center, solid read with a great stinger at the end. Shame it took place in the summer time.

Snow, the lottery, murder, con artists, unheated homes, independent contractors, tarot, schizophrenia, misguided altruism, and one bratty kid. All in less than 160 pages. Rendell is a BOSS.

Fast, scary horror novel set at an orphanage in 1905. Short chapters, vivid setting, grotesque imagery. Solid recommendation if ya like easy reading horror. Docked a point because I don't love demonic possession stories or horror about kids, but this is definitely worth a look.

A culty cosmic queer coming of age horror story. Dig it!

The statisticy, numbersy stuff didn't really give me much I didn't already know, but the month-by-month accounts of teachers experiences over the course of a year made this book a must-read.

Occasionally repeats itself, but gives some great info about how statistics and junk studies can be abused with the goal of conning folks.

Informative and fun, with some gorgeous artwork! Nice to see so much love given to pinball playfields.

The perfect accompaniment to the nursing of calcium deposits in my lower abdomen. I read the back half horizontal on the couch, drinking glass after glass of water.

The mystery has no real bottom, and thats a feature not a flaw. A few more proper nouns than I was always ready to keep track of but once I get the geography straight it was riveting.

I came out the other side of this one deeply moved. Might actually be a 5 star read. Def gonna read more Strout. Olive is one of the better realized characters I've encountered recently.

Really lovely, humanist middle grade for everybody.

Economical, supremely entertaining camp thriller about an aging singer. Some great twists, and a killer audiobook reading!

Gotta admit I really loved this one. Tore through it in a day.

5 stars for execution, 3 stars for some editorializing/slightly dated passages/stretches redundant with other Thomson books I read recently, 4 stars averaged out.

Any film lover would be well-served by picking this large-scale history of the medium. Super readable and personal without getting in the way of the actual meat and potatoes information.

Breezy collection of capsule reviews covering movies shot in the Pacific Northwest. Didn't change my life but the writing/artwork was quite fun!

Wanted to like it more than I did but it was nice to spend time at an Alaskan resort/cruise ship/deserted island with some complicated queers.

Biography as century-spanning psychological novel. Tiptree/Sheldon was fascinating, and I felt like I knew them so well by the end. So, so good.

I found myself skimming every now and than, but man oh man am I glad there's a full length non fiction text around this topic.

Well-researched and at times quite powerful exploration of problematic-to-nightmarish artists. However, I've been developing a slight allergy to nonfiction books which turn out to be mostly memoirs.