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Steve

@bookstagramsteve

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Massachusetts | Marketing guy | Constant reader | Former bookseller | Adult Spelling Bee Winner
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Carry Me to My Grave starts in 1956 in Indiana, where Malcolm Wise and his sister-in-law Violet are with Malcolm’s dying mother, whom some believe is a witch. Her bizarre final instructions send them on a journey to Maine that becomes an increasingly unsettling fight for survival.

I really enjoyed this one. Lots of monsters and evil entities. Christopher Golden creates a terrific sense of dread as the story takes off. I was never quite sure where things were headed at any point and I found that refreshing. The scenes on the train (and other modes of transportation) were unexpected and fun in the most relentlessly horrific way. There are plenty of creepy moments, lots of dark imagery, and a feeling of foreboding throughout the book. This was exactly the kind of nerve-racking horror I was in the mood for. And I love road trip horror novels. This needs to be a new trending subgenre.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

* Today I learned that there’s no silent W in “nerve-racking.”The same goes for “racking your brain.” I had no idea.

#carrymetomygrave #christophergolden #maggiewisewilltakeyoureyes #horrornovel taken in Marlborough Public Library by @bookstagramsteve

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5

a month ago

What a great read. This is a fun and fast-paced locked-room mystery set during the 1910 Halley’s Comet panic. Yes, it was a real thing.

https://www.readex.com/blog/all-human-life-our-planet-will-then-be-snuffed-out-halleys-comet-panic-1910

The story happens on a remote Cornish island that’s been sealed off overnight to protect its residents from poisonous comet gases. Paranoid Lord Stockingham-Welt is found murdered inside his locked study (not a spoiler), and Stephen Pike, a young under-butler with a troubled past becomes a prime suspect.

To clear his name, Stephen pairs up with Miss Decima, a clever, foul-mouthed 80-year-old aristocrat.

Author Ross Montgomery brings on all the charm of those Golden Age whodunits but he keeps the story fresh with dry humor and a clever, (literally) atmospheric plot. It’s a solid mystery with plenty of red herrings to keep you guessing. But the best part of the book is the dynamic between Stephen and Decima.

4.5 ⭐️

This is the first in a series of mysteries. Book 2 publishes in January 2027. taken in Marlborough Public Library by @bookstagramsteve

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0

a month ago

I really wanted to love My Friends more than I did. There’s lots of good stuff here: top-notch storytelling, complex characters, and themes of friendship, grief, art, and our impact on others.

But…the story went a little too long and got emotionally heavy at times. Borderline melodramatic.

At the same time, there are some beautiful moments. If you’re a Backman fan like me you’ll will find plenty to enjoy. As much as I love the author, I have to give this one 3.5 ⭐️

Good, not great. taken in Marlborough Public Library by @bookstagramsteve

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6

2 months ago

Having had 12 years of Catholic education, I always approach biblical fiction with a pretty sensitive radar. Just before I started reading The Butcher of Nazareth, I had concerns about unbridled blasphemy. (Hey, give me a break. I was an altar boy and a few years later, I read and studied the entire Bible over four years in high school.) Anyway, as the story unfolded, I felt the darkness was entirely justified to explore its central, chilling premise.

The book follows a literal butcher by trade from Hebron who was forced into Herod’s Massacre of the Innocents. He loses his own young son in the process. Severe trauma and unraveling mental health lead to terrifying visions of future crusades and inquisitions waged under the cross. He’s now fully convinced the child who escaped Bethlehem will grow up to unleash millennia of human suffering. So he sets out to find young man Jesus and end his life.

This is the “baby Hitler” moral dilemma played out 2000 years ago: Can you commit a horrific act today to prevent catastrophic evil tomorrow? What makes David Scott Hay’s execution so effective is the contrast: the Butcher isn’t hunting a monster. He’s after an ordinary, peaceful man who tends to his bees and lives a quiet life in Nazareth.

The Butcher of Nazareth is a dark, gory, thought-provoking examination of grief, free will and destiny. It succeeds where a lot of faith-based fiction falls short (not that I’ve read a ton of it, but I’ve read enough).

Highly recommended if you enjoy bold speculative fiction. Your religious background or lack thereof should not keep you from this book. You know enough from this review to know if this book is right for you. This would make a memorable book club discussion.

Should I ever make it back to confession, I’ll need to repent for this song choice 🤦🏻‍♂️

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

#thebutcherofnazareth #davidscotthay #religiousfiction #biblical #moraldilemmas taken in Nazareth, Israel by @bookstagramsteve

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4

2 months ago

Well, this was a nostalgia trip. I was 19 years old when this book was first published in paperback. I remember bringing it with me every day for a few weeks as I rode the A-train from my house in Queens to college in Manhattan. The book in the photo is the same copy, four decades later, still in pristine condition except for some spine curvature and a faint line down the middle of it. I was even more cautious about not damaging books than I am today.

In this second read, I remembered the plot of the story reasonably well, but after 41 years, some of Jack Sawyer’s adventures were forgotten and most of my memories of it were murky at best.

I remember loving the book back in 1985. I’d read little to no fantasy up until then, so this was a fairly new genre for me at that time. But the book is not perfect. It’s very long, and sometimes it gets caught up in its own need to explain how and why things happen the way they do in the Territories. It feels like Stephen King wrote 70% of this book, but you can also feel it when the writing is turned over to Peter Straub. I didn’t notice it very much back in 1985, but after decades of reading both authors, it’s much easier to hear their voices in your head as you read.

Having since completed The Dark Tower books, I understand how Stephen King says the Territories were always Mid-World. That was the fun of this re-read. Now it’s on to Black House next month and the new one, Other Worlds Than These, tying everything together in October.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

#thetalisman #stephenking #peterstraub #otherworldsthanthese taken in Marlborough, Massachusetts by @bookstagramsteve

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8

2 months ago

My plan was to finish this book before the movie opened and then go see it. However, I’m about two weeks too late for any premieres and a little burnt out by all things Homer and Nolan. I’ll watch it eventually.

This was my second reading, coming about 38 years after my first time. I’m glad so many people recommended the Emily Wilson translation, because it was very easy to read. For those concerned about taking on an epic poem, Wilson makes it feel like you’re reading a novel in verse. I’m told that her depictions of women are more honest. And while previous translations softened the role of enslaved people to handmaids and manservants, Wilson refers to them as slaves, which is faithful to the original Greek.

The poem starts out by asking to hear about a “complicated man,” and honestly, that’s a perfect way to describe Odysseus. Sure, he’s the revered King of Ithaca, but he’s also pretty arrogant and can be really cruel. It takes him ten years just to get back home, and that entire journey is a complete mess of non-stop disasters and deadly encounters. He’s constantly fighting off famous monsters like the Cyclops and the Sirens, with my favorite part being his attempt to narrowly escape right between everyone’s favorite pair of sea beasts, Scylla and Charybdis.

Reading this had nothing to do with watching the movie, originally. Instead, I was reminded to re-read this before tackling Ulysses, since Joyce’s complex and confusing novel uses The Odyssey as its structural model. It would help if Emily Wilson could translate that beast too, but I’m just going to have to handle it solo.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

#theodyssey #emilywilson #homer #notsimpson taken in Marlborough Public Library by @bookstagramsteve

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11

3 months ago

What do you do when you’ve just finished a Stephen King novel (see previous post) and you’re still making your way through The Talisman (It’s longer than I remember)? Well, you start an audiobook called A Face in the Crowd by Stephen King and Stewart O’Nan, his baseball-themed collaborator (he co-wrote 2004’s Faithful, about the first Red Sox World Series win in 86 years. As a Red Sox fan, I love having this record of the games they watched).

This time around, King and O’Nan team up to write a fictional baseball story. An elderly widower named Dean is stunned to see people from his past attending Tampa Bay Rays games on his TV.

This is a quick read. I’m not even sure I would call it a novella. I think the correct term is novelette, which sounds longer than a novella, but it’s shorter. The audiobook was only about an hour. It features themes of grief and loneliness and how the past is inescapable.

it was a nice listen. Narrated by actor Craig Wasson. In terms of King stories, it was solid, but nothing special.

⭐️⭐️⭐️

#stephenking #stewartonan #afaceinthecrowd #novelette taken in Marlborough, Massachusetts by @bookstagramsteve

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0

3 months ago

Thought I’d sneak in a re-read of The Long Walk before streaming the movie. I’ve heard there are some changes which might be difficult for me to accept because I’ve known this story since I first read it sometime around 1986. I think this is my fourth or fifth time.

Anyway, this is one of the OG last-man-standing survival stories. Writing under his pen name, Richard Bachman, Stephen King gives us a raw psychological thriller with no supernatural elements.

The story is brutal but straightforward: 100 teenage boys start walking. The rule is to keep a 4 mph pace. Fall below it four times, and you’re shot dead by orders of the Major, who represents a totalitarian military dictatorship. King used The Major to symbolize the older generation of politicians and military leaders who drafted and sent young American men to Vietnam for a senseless war, from which many never returned.

The story focuses on Ray Garraty as he walks alongside competitors who quickly become like brothers. You feel every blister, cramp and mental breakdown as they bond, knowing only one person will walk away alive. Everything else is a spoiler so I’ll stop here.

Of the seven novels written as Richard Bachman, The Long Walk is King’s best. Now let’s hope the movie version doesn’t screw up the characters from the book too much.

Edit: Saw the movie on HBO Max. It was good and definitely a little different from the novel. I did like seeing it on the screen after having it in my head all of these decades. I’d still recommend it, but I didn’t love how it veered from the novel in the third act. It’s a different take, and I can see how it would work well for the movies.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

#stephenking #richardbachman #thelongwalk #thebachmanbooks taken in Marlborough, Massachusetts by @bookstagramsteve

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7

3 months ago

Wow. This is a deeply unsettling horror novel that functions as much as a tragic historical record as it does a supernatural thriller.

Set in Toronto’s gay village across several decades, it follows the disappearances of queer men who vanish without a trace. As the police and media allow the crisis to continue with little attention, an ancient, shape-shifting entity hunts in the shadows.

I have to say that the best part of this book is how Demchuk addresses the reader directly with his own accounts by breaking the fourth wall. It’s a little jarring and really impressive. Red X mirrors the real-world grief of the AIDS pandemic and the terror and pain inflicted by real-life Canadian serial killer, Bruce McArthur. The book is dedicated to the victims.

I really wanted to like this book more than I did. It’s an ambitious effort and I appreciated that. But the pacing was uneven, and the timeline was just too choppy to follow smoothly. Too many side characters were abandoned as the book went in new directions.

Still, I think I’ll remember the good stuff over the flaws more and more as time goes on. Recommended if you prefer a compelling story over perfect construction.

A+ for the concept; B- for execution.

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

#redx #basedonatruestory taken in Marlborough, Massachusetts by @bookstagramsteve

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1

3 months ago

I’ve been reading Curtis Ippolito’s work for a few years now and it’s been fun to watch him hone his craft. In his second novel, he gives us a high-stakes crime novel set in his adopted city of San Diego.

Waves of Burden is about Drew Jones, a former foster kid who is now a contractor, building a life with his wife and a baby on the way. That security is shattered when his foster brother, Jake, rolls back into town and steals $100,000 from a ruthless local criminal. When armed bad guys threaten Drew’s home, he is compelled to navigate a dangerous underworld to track down his brother and protect his family.

Drew is a relatable protagonist. He’s driven by a fierce protective instinct that forces him into some wildly dangerous situations. I really appreciated the time spent on developing these characters and the strong familial bonds forged by two men who are not related by blood but by shared traumatic life events. Waves of Burden is a great read, especially for fans of hard-boiled crime fiction and anyone who loves steady, intense pacing and stories about family loyalty.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

#wavesofburden #curtisippolito #beachnoir #crimenovel taken in Marlborough, Massachusetts by @bookstagramsteve

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3

3 months ago

Fresh off his 2026 Pulitzer Prize win, Daniel Kraus gives us a wild lesson in sci-fi body horror with The Sixth Nik. The story follows nine-year-old Sisilla, who has six nickel-sized discs implanted in her brain to maximize her intelligence for interstellar missions. This comes at the cost of her own lifespan.

Kraus populates his novel with nightmarish (and just plain gross) imagery. For example, Sisilla travels aboard a starship made from organic material, with purple boils and retractable ramps that resemble cancerous tongues. Mmmmmm!

While the pacing occasionally slows down due to all the dense worldbuilding, The Sixth Nik gets a big recommendation from me for the creativity and body horror.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

#thesixthnik #danielkraus #scifi #bodyhorror taken in Marlborough, Massachusetts by @bookstagramsteve

44

2

3 months ago

If you’re wondering why it’s taken me so long to read this book for the first time, I have no real excuse. I did buy it sometime in the ‘90s where it sat on my shelf until I lent it to a friend and then never saw it again. I did think about replacing it, but I picked it up at a recent library visit.

First published in 1963 (and under her own name in 1971), The Bell Jar is Sylvia Plath’s only novel. She was a poet primarily and her skill is deftly applied to her prose. Although this is a work of fiction, it’s also a semi-autobiographical look at a young woman’s spiral into clinical depression.

The “bell jar” is a perfect metaphor for the terrifying feeling of being trapped under thick, distorting glass. Separated from the world and everyone in it.

Sylvia Plath took her own life just a month after the book’s UK publication. It gives the story a real-world heft that I learned (after a Wikipedia deep dive that led to more articles) completely changed how literature handles mental health.

Two observations:
1. The book is surprisingly funny in parts. Plath gives her protagonist some sharp, witty lines and comebacks that offset her depressive state.

2. It does include specific sentences and descriptions that are explicitly racist and xenophobic by today’s standards. These casual, period-typical biases can be really jarring to come across, even for someone my age.

The Bell Jar is a masterpiece that took an emotional toll on me. Highly recommended.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

#thebelljar #sylviaplath #mentalhealth #depression taken in Marlborough Public Library by @bookstagramsteve

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12

4 months ago