leisure books – Michele Lee

Wolf Hunt by Jeff Strand

Leisure (December 2010)
Dark Regions Press (limited)
ISBN: 9780843964653 (Leisure Edition)
Available: Limited, (Mass Market in December 2010)

Ivan is a total bad guy, a complete jerk who can point out people’s stupidity with sinister calm while gleefully killing them. He’s also the cargo of two stone cold, no-nonsense mafia transport men who are taking him across Florida to…well they don’t get paid to ask questions. Too bad Ivan just got loose and is now roaming suburban neighborhoods slaughtering people.

Jeff Strand’s Wolf Hunt is a wild ride, full of characters who don’t fall for all the typical horror novel tropes, and who face their circumstances with casual sensibility. This is definitely a stand out in horror fiction, not just werewolf tales. This is the story for people disillusioned with all the other werewolves out there, especially the thinly veiled alpha male stereotypes. Highly recommended for private and public collections.

Contains: Language, violence, gore

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April 24

Off Season by Jack Ketchum

Review by Lincoln Crisler

2006 Leisure Paperback Reprint, 9780843956962, $6.99

I picked up the Leisure reprint of Jack Ketchum’s debut novel, Off Season, last week and it returned my faith in dead Mr. Ketchum. My first foray into the feral world of Jack’s intensely descriptive violence was The Girl Next Door, a book I still sing the praises of a year after reading it. My second was last year’s Old Flames, which I found rather lukewarm in comparison. I’d been hearing about Off Season’s reputation for the last couple years, though, and with good reason; it put Ketchum on the map when it was first published in 1981 and garnered him a good amount of fandom even as Ballentine pulled the book from the shelves after being blasted for publishing torture porn.

Off Season tells the story of three men and three women shacking up for a week of fun in a cabin in the woods rented by Carla, a book editor on assignment. Their vacation is shattered the first night in when the local family of cave-dwelling cannibals attacks, slaying one of the cabin-mates instantly and eviscerating and eating another shortly after. Finally, reduced to an injured man and two women (one catatonic), the survivors stage an escape only to have the women dragged off and the man in hot (if somewhat slow) pursuit. The final showdown between the survivors and the cannibals is swift and bloody, the local law intervenes after finally making sense of a pattern of disappearances and when the smoke clears, only one of the original six is left standing… er… laying on an ambulance stretcher.

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August 19

Dark Hollow by Brian Keene

Important Note- 3/24/11: Many Dorchester (which includes Leisure and Kensington and more) authors have recently announced that Dorchester has been failing to send their royalty payments since mid-2010 and is also selling digital copies of books they no longer own the rights to and haven’t owned the rights to since December 2010. Furthermore they are refusing to release rights to books they aren’t paying royalties on and using you, the reader, as their excuse. More information is available here and while there are many wonderful writers under the Dorchester umbrella I have to, at this time, highly recommend that no one buy new books, print or digital, from Dorchester as the money is NOT going to the authors as it should.

I found The Conquerer Worms disappointing so it took me a while to pick up Dark Hollow by Brian Keene. And once again I’m disappointed, but this time it’s because I put it off reading this book for so long.

Dark Hollow is the tale of a small town in Pennsylvania, once a farming community, now home to Adam, a midlist mystery writer, his wife and their dog. But their town is also home to something else, an other-worldly creature, summoned long ago and finally awakened again with the first day of spring.

Dark Hollow is a very compelling tale. Sure there’s a monster in woods, and some creepy carnivorous demon trees, but the real horror is in the effect the events of the story have on the characters, particularly Adam and his wife. Keene is able to drive a man’s loyalty into very dangerous places, pitting his own nature against his ideals. The conflict made Dark Hollow hard to put down and held up through the very last line.

It’s easily my favorite Keene work so far. While it counts as horror, there’s less gore and violence and far more dread and conflict, which is exactly why Keene seems ready to cross the line into a position rare for a horror author–mainstream acceptance.

Category: Personal | 4 Comments