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A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay My rating: 3 of 5 stars It’s hard to believe this is the first horror novel I’ve read in a long, long time. Mostly I liked it, but it also reminded me why it’s been so long since I’ve read a horror novel, and why I quit…

Conversations with John Steinbeck by Thomas Fensch My rating: 4 of 5 stars If you want to know something about America’s greatest author but don’t the the time or attention span for a full-on biography, this is the book for you. Steinbeck was a shy man and, despite his ongoing moonlighting as a journalist himself,…

The Lawless Land by Dusty Richards My rating: 3 of 5 stars Dusty Richards is a heck of a nice guy. I’ve met him at a few writers’ conferences and have several of his books, but hadn’t found time to read one. Then I found myself at another convention and I’d forgotten the book I…

The Nations by Ken Farmer My rating: 2 of 5 stars Eh. The story itself wasn’t so bad, but Ken Farmer’s reading of the book made me want to slam my head against the steering wheel of my car. He typically paused after about every third word, often with a rising inflection as if he…

Cutthroat Trail by David R Lewis My rating: 4 of 5 stars The Urban Dictionary offers this definition for the term “book hangover”: “When you’ve finished a book and you suddenly return to the real world, but the real world feels incomplete or surreal because you’re still living in the world of the book.” I…

Killdeer Trail by David R. Lewis My rating: 4 of 5 stars A crazy old woman’s poisoned a church well, killing 13 people because her son died in the church after the rattlesnake he was loving on bit him. The woman then flees across state lines to avoid capture, which puts Rube, Homer, and Marion…

Ogallala Trail by David R. Lewis My rating: 4 of 5 stars The fifth book of David R. Lewis’s Trail series see Rubin, Marion, and Homer traveling much further northwest than just Ogallala as they track a band of renegade Indians and half-breeds who crippled one of Marion’s friends and stole a girl. It’s another…

Payback Trail by David R. Lewis My rating: 0 of 5 stars In this installment of David R. Lewis’s The Trail Series, young Rubin Beeler and his crusty old marshal friend Marion Daniels have to travel south into the backwoods of northwest Arkansas to bring justice to some hillbillies what don’t seem to know the…

Calico Trail by David R. Lewis My rating: 4 of 5 stars I can’t really add more to this review than what I said about Nodaway Trail last week. David R. Lewis continues to write a rip-roaring Western saga with lots of action, lots of humor, and developing characters. The writing is simple, the story…