Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell is the first book since Minette Walters’ The Shape of Snakes that genuinely took my breath away. On the surface there is absolutely nothing pretty about the world in which 16-year-old Ree Dolly lives. The people of her community in the backwoods of the Ozark mountains are multiple generations into an existence of poverty, violence and drug addiction; a place where the primary source of income has evolved from making moonshine to cooking crank.
Fortunately for Ree her father, Jessup, is in demand as a crank chef, “practically half famous for it.” Unfortunately for her and the two younger brothers and mentally ill mother she’s struggling to keep fed and functioning, Jessup has gone missing after being released on bond, a bond secured by signing over the family home as collateral, following his most recent arrest. Unwilling to see her family split up if they lose the family’s meager homestead, Ree sets out to find Jessup and make him keep his court date.
Not only is Jessup nowhere to be found, however, but none of the locals, many of them extended members of the Dolly family, seem inclined to help Ree with her search. In fact, they are downright hostile to her inquiries and seemingly determined to derail her efforts, even by means of violence if necessary. Yet, Ree persists. And throughout it all Woodrell offers glimpses of the hidden beauty lurking beneath the surface of the stark environment, and conveys in no uncertain terms that the people who inhabit it have a deep sense of honor, pride and purpose, just ones that don’t necessarily mesh with what most consider normal. (more…)
Primarily known for his deft touch in combining horror and comedy, Dweller is Jeff Strand’s second ’serious’ novel, following the Bram Stoker Award nominated 
It takes serious balls to begin a book with your protagonist deliberately putting a bullet into his own head, but that’s exactly how Vincent Zandri kicks off his high-octane new thriller Moonlight Falls. Richard “Dick” Moonlight, you see, is not your typical protagonist. In fact, he’s seriously screwed up. As one character tells him, “You fell off the tree of fucked-up-weird and slammed every branch on the way down.” Fucked-up-weird notwithstanding, it’s the fragment of .22 bullet left in his brain following his book opening suicide attempt that forces Moonlight’s retirement from the Albany police department. 
One of the surprise sensations in the publishing industry last year was Quirk Classics’ Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a mashup which re-imagined Elizabeth Bennet as romantically jaded martial arts expert up to her eyes in zombies, also known as ‘dreadfuls’. Though railed against by some Jane Austen purists as sacrilege, adding zombies to such a well known, if intimidating, classic arguably exposed it to a new audience of readers who otherwise may well have never read it (in any form). Such success obviously called for a follow up, right?
