Neil Gaiman has the uncanny ability to take supernatural things and make them part of the day-to-day life that so many of us stumble through. With his keen insights, warmth, and wit, Gaiman shares those words – supernatural and everyday – in a manner that is delightfully hypnotic.

Anansi Boys is an off-shoot of sorts of American Gods but succeeds terrifically on its own. Anansi is the spider god, the trickster god, of certain cultures in Africa, and it only seems just that Gaiman spins his tale with a lot of sleight-of-hand twists and turns that may catch even his veteran readers off guard.

I had a blast with this book. The story and characters were solidly built and presented, but I had the additional joy of listening to the novel on audiobook in my car. The narrator, Lenny Henry, is an absolute godsend to this book (no pun intended). His voice characterizations are spot-on and every character he brings to life is unique and separate. Henry is the master of understated British inflection and Caribbean sing-song dialect, as well as male and female voices. I hung on his every word, and there are plenty of characters for Henry to showcase.

The story revolves around Fat Charlie Nancy, who didn’t know he was the son of the trickster god, Anansi. Fat Charlie had known his upbringing had always been different because his father wasn’t like anyone else he’d ever met.

The way that Gaiman starts the story drew me in immediately. It’s just the story of a guy, the kind of guy you’ve probably met over and over again throughout your life. Fat Charlie doesn’t take chances and doesn’t live a big life. He does just enough to get by, but not enough to attract success or ire.

However, on the eve of his wedding, he learns that his father – from whom he’s been estranged – has died. I liked the way that Fat Charlie didn’t know how he was supposed to react to that news. Not only that, he didn’t know how he felt. It wasn’t like he was going to miss the father that was never around.

At the funeral, weirdness steps in. One of the old women he’d known as a child hands him a shovel and tells him that he has to bury his father. I was rocked by this because I didn’t know what I would have done. Fat Charlie thinks about it a moment, then rolls his sleeves up and gets to work.

Afterwards, the old woman and Fat Charlie start talking about family. She reveals that Fat Charlie has a brother – Spider – that he apparently has forgotten. The way Gaiman works in his twists and turns is awesome. He’ll just hit you between the eyes with them, let you know they’re there, then turn whatever you were thinking on its head and surprise you again.

When Fat Charlie gets curious and calls out to his brother, Spider shows up. And that’s when things get really weird. Magic seeps into the book, and its stealthily trailed by menace. Both of those additions continue to grow until the fate of the world literally hangs in the balance.

Gaiman is an absolute master of showing interpersonal relationships that we all have. He knows the good parts and the bad, and he dishes on both. His dialogue shines, and his humor ranges from deadpan to over-the-top that left me howling out loud. Best of all, this is a book that you can share with your kids on long drives. The story is simple and the characters are unique. There’s no objectionable material, and the problems of family can be understood by kids as well as adults.

One of the best parts of the book is the integration of the Anansi legends among the story. I enjoyed listening to those tales, so much like many other folk legends I’ve heard.

Anansi Boys is a great book about family with a hint of fantasy, or maybe it’s a fantasy novel with a great message about families. Either way, it’s a delightful tale that will keep you and possibly your family entertained for hours whether on the page or in the CD player. Best of all, it’s a story that I’m planning to read or listen to again because it’s going to be a perennial favorite of mine.

 Jordan Dane hits a solid homerun with her debut novel, No One Heard Her Scream. The book is marked as romantic suspense, but the accent is on suspense, with clearly defined characters, a taut plot, and forensic and police terminology that will satisfy the armchair crime scene investigators looking for a new buzz.

The novel’s pacing is frantic, the prose pared down and swift, the love scenes torrid, and the bad guys as creepy and evil as anyone would ever want. I had a good time blazing through this book. It offers a lot of excitement and twists, as well as the San Antonio background that I’d recently visited. The scenes along the historic riverwalk really jumped out at me.

I liked Detective Rebecca “Becca” Montgomery right out of the blocks. She’s cut from the same larger-than-life cloth that a lot of action/suspense heroes are cut from, but she wears it well. I liked the fact that she was tough, independent, and good in a fight, though that isn’t what most romance heroines are noted for. However, more and more young women in our world are getting that way – including familiarity with the martial arts – and I think Becca presents a good role model in several respects.

Dane grabs our attention immediately in the beginning with the short action piece, then segues smoothly into Becca’s story. Still reeling with the guilt and pain from her younger sister’s disappearance months ago, Becca is pulled off Dani’s investigation and placed on a cold case assignment. Along the way she’s hauled into an investigation involving the body of a young woman that was bricked up in a recently burned-down movie theater.

While at the theater crime scene, Becca crosses paths with Diego Galvan, who quickly proves he’s more than he seems. Diego is a strong lead that easily holds his own with Becca, and he’s a man hiding a lot of secrets.

Real life has to be squashed almost into sound bytes in a novel to keep the pacing up, and Dane masters that art easily. Her strength lies in the plotting, which has enough twists and turns to keep most readers guessing or second-guessing which path she’s going to take.

With the meteoric pacing of Becca’s investigation, the budding relationship with Diego sometimes gets overshadowed, but I found myself accepting the fact that the author would handle it. My main attention focused on Becca’s pursuit of the bad guys and who everyone really was. The headlong storyline made it almost impossible to let the relationship breathe, but I think it’ll be satisfying to romance fans.

However, the suspense, action, and detailed police knowledge should have fans of Tami Hoag and Lisa Jackson picking up Dane’s books as well.

Dane scored a great deal with her publisher. Over the next three months, three of her novels will be released. No One Left To Tell comes out next, followed by No One Lives Forever. Although they sound like a series, all of them feature different heroines and heroes.

Pick up Jordan Dane’s novels even if you don’t have time to read them now. They’re perfect beach books, though you may be more tense lying in the sun and lawn chair than you’d planned on being!

 Joe Hill switches points of view again in Locke & Key #3. This time the focus is on Kinsey, the middle child of the three Locke children. She’s fifteen years old and noticeably troubled by the savage murder of her father. That death precipitated the family’s move back to the ancestral home, Key House in Lovecraft, Massachusetts.

The story so far as been dark and eerie, and I’m totally loving the macabre nature of the events. Moreover, I’m actually enjoying waiting each month to see what’s going to happen next. Usually on a limited series, I wait to pick up the graphic novel collection, but I’ve discovered that I like playing with all the various encounters and resolutions I can come up with on my own. I love matching wits with Hill to see if I can predict which way he’s going to turn.

Fans who have followed the comic series since its inception might be troubled by the first couple pages’ of replay to introduce potential new readers to the book. However, the voice over Kinsey provides also gave me a chance to sink into her character and remember all that she’d been through. No one could go through what she survived and be unscathed. Kinsey’s carrying her scars, and Gabriel Rodriguez’s art brings all that horror to the reader.

Since her father’s murder, Kinsey has worked hard to disappear. That’s what she did while the killers hunted for the family, and that’s become her motto. I knew she was struggling with her own mortality, and Hill really pounds that in well.

After the soul-searching opening, I wasn’t quite prepared for the bloodthirsty escape in the next couple pages. Hill laid out the plans for the visuals, but Rodriguez brought the image home with scarlet-laced savagery. Furthermore, the reader gets to see exactly what Sam Lesser (one of the murderers of Rendell Locke) does with the mirror and scissors he got from the apparition at the bottom of the well in the wellhouse.

I laughed as I read and saw Kinsey’s relationship with her little brother Bode. The second issue revealed that he’s able to become a ghost when he goes through one of the house’s many doors. Unfortunately, he can’t get anyone to believe him. The author and artist’s handling of the comedic within the parameters of the chilling horror and grueling anticipation is awesome.

The reaction Kinsey has to the smell of fresh paint is great. Her father was painting their house when he was killed, so the smell was everywhere. I’d forgotten that, but Hill had it planned in. This is just another of those reasons I like the book so well. Hill has a fantastic eye for detail and how to use it. Even the heart-to-heart conversation Kinsey has with her coach, though serious, poses some comedic moments that are perfectly natural under the circumstances. I love how these characters are portrayed, and if the movie comes out, it should be a treat.

However, the bracelet Kinsey is wearing sends the coach into a search that lets us know that she knows something we don’t. The mysteries Hill has in play all the time make me re-read the book after I finish it the first time, and guarantee a later re-reading as I try to put everything together. The puzzle-lover in me feels challenged.

I’m halfway home after this issue, but I’m enjoying the trip. Even after months of waiting, I know I’m going to be sad to see this twisting jaunt into terror come to an end.

Readers familiar with Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians series are in for another fun-filled romp in The Titan’s Curse. The author has a five-book run planned for Percy and his companions, and then a return visit in a later series, which his young fans will clamor for.

If you haven’t read either of the two previous books, I’d warn you to stay away from this review because you’re going to find out things that are better discovered through your own reading.

In The Lightning Thief, twelve year old Percy Jackson found out he was the son of Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea. My son and I read YA books together all the time, and these are his favorites. What draws him in the most – and I mean hours at a time, till my voice gives out on me – are Percy’s cool water powers and the immense tapestry of Greek mythology that Riordan weaves in so well.

My son doesn’t know it, but he’s basically getting a classical education reading these novels with me. He finds the stories of the gods and goddesses, all their petty problems and efforts to get revenge on each other, wonderfully fascinating. He was so enthralled by the first book that I had to buy him a book on Greek mythology, which he read on his own just to get more background on the mythical characters in the pages.

You don’t have to brush up on your Greek mythology, or even tell all the stories to your kids. Riordan does a masterful job of making those ancient tales of gods and goddesses come alive in his stories, and giving you all the background material you need. But don’t be surprised if your child starts prowling the library shelves in search of more information.

The Titan’s Curse starts off with an almost 007 feel that I really liked. Riordan usually plunks Percy down in the middle of action, but the search for two new half-bloods (sons and daughters of gods who don’t know they are such) captivated my son and me immediately. And things, of course, go really badly for Percy and his friends.

Still, despite all the close calls, my son and I were laughing out loud at Percy’s adventures. Grover, the young satyr that’s his friends, ended up getting some of the best parts, but the chapter where Percy ends up riding the mythical pig was an absolute hoot.

Blackjack, Percy’s Pegasus buddy, puts in an appearance in this book as well, and absolutely steals the show for a while. “God alert,” Blackjack warns. “It’s the wine dude!” Of course, he’s referring to Dionysus, the Greek god that’s currently serving punishment as head of Camp Half-Blood. In fact, Mr. D actually steps into the thick of things more forcefully in this volume. But the line, typical pre-teen terminology, had my son and I cracking each other up for days as we kept repeating it.

In every book in the series, there’s always a quest. In the first book, Percy had to find the thief that took Zeus’s mystical lightning bolt. In the second, Percy had to save Grover. But in the third book, Percy has to save his best bud, Annabeth, with whom he’s becoming even more enamored. This quest sends Percy and his friends zooming across the United States again, and reveals even more Greek mythological geography that’s been relocated to this continent.

Athena is back on hand, as well as Artemis and Apollo. Luke’s efforts to resurrect Kronos as still in play, and it looks bad for our heroes. There’s a prophecy (told by the Oracle in a way that is extremely humorous) that foretells the death of one of the heroes on the quest.

Riordan’s pacing is fabulous. There’s never a dull moment in one of these books. Things – and threats – just keep happening at a mile-a-minute. This book truly felt like trying to stay on top of an avalanche as we hurtled to the ending. And it only left us hungry for Book Four: The Battle of the Labyrinth.
 

When you read Hidden Letters, the book is going to leave a mark. It’s going to hurt down deep and leave you thinking about things long after you’ve finished the book. After receiving the book, I admit to approaching the book warily. The subject matter is brutal, and it’s devastating to anyone who’s a parent.

First, a little history on the book. The letters that comprise the human narrative within the pages were discovered in Amsterdam in 1997. They were written by an eighteen year old Dutch Jew named Philip “Flip” Slier. He was sent to a Dutch labor camp in 1942. When first sent there, Slier believed he was going to be treated humanely, though restricted. He didn’t know the horror that awaited him, or that he would soon be dead.

At the time Slier first went to the work camps, letters shipped regularly between the families and the restricted men. As I read the letters, I was stunned by the naïve manner that Slier exhibited. He honestly thought he was only going to be there for a short time, and that his experiences there would be nothing more than what he would endure during some summer camp.

As a father of five, I know how innocent kids can be. They think they know so much, but they’re blind to so many things. They often don’t know they’re in over their heads until it’s much too late.

And that’s what happened with Slier.

I felt somewhat guilty while reading his letters, almost voyeuristic into a world of pain and innocence. The letters are inane and even cheerful. At times Slier obviously felt he was on some grand adventure. At other times I could see that he was putting on a front for his parents, acting brave while he was scared to death, or at least mightily confused by what was going on around him.

That human element, and that innocence, is what is going to haunt me about the book. Slier also took a camera with him. He took several pictures and sent them back home to his parents and friends, and those people managed to hang onto them throughout the blackest days of World War II. I saw his face, and I saw how much of a kid he still was. He aged decades in months, and he finally got killed.

That’s one side of the story, but the authors added a tremendous amount of history materials to further the reader’s understanding of what was going on in this area at this time. More pictures and maps fill the book. On one hand, Hidden Letters is a short journal of tumultuous times in a young man’s life, but on the other hand the book is a great historical record. I love history, and I equate it with the story of people rather than names and dates. But Philip Slier’s story truly brings home the fact that history is made up of people more than dates or events.

Hidden Letters is going to satisfy the armchair historian’s perusal of the time period, and will give some sense of people and what was going on to genealogists that have discovered they’ve got family members that were in this camps at the same time. For either of those groups, I’m sure the book would be a beneficial addition.

The parents saved those letters all those years. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to pull them out every so often and read the last words of their lost son.

Joe Hill kicked off his comic-writing career with IDW Publishing with an imaginative and compelling story. Locke & Key flew off the shelves in comics stories, required another printing, and was snapped up almost immediately by movie production companies.

For those who don’t know yet, Joe Hill is one of Stephen King’s sons. Joe wanted to become known as a horror writer in his own right rather than hanging onto his famous dad’s coattails, and Joe has succeeded in a lot of ways. His first novel, Heart-Shaped Box garnered a lot of literary attention as well as readers. His collection, 20th Century Ghosts, became well-known in short order.

Locke & Key is going to be at least a six-issue comic series, though Joe promises he’s got plots that would take the series out to nearly 70 issues if he gets to write them. The story’s focus is on the Locke family, which went through the horrible tragedy of losing there father, Rendell Locke, to psychotic students he once taught.

Issue #2 picks up the family’s story after they’ve moved to Lovecraft, Massachusetts. And doesn’t that name summon all kinds of wicked demons immediately to mind? As it turns out, Keyhouse, where the family moved, has got all kinds of dangerous secrets lurking within it.

I love Joe’s easy storytelling ability. He makes everything look simple as he tells the story through dialogue between the characters as well as Bode’s first-person narration. Bode Locke is in grade school and Joe portrays his voice convincingly throughout. Joe maintains the eye and focus of a child almost effortlessly, filled with excitement, the need to be the center of attention, and the disappointment and irritability that he displays when that doesn’t happen.

Joe also writes Bode intelligently, showing how he’s smarter than the monster he discovers in the wellhouse. But he also has fun with Bode, showing how Bode carries on while he’s bored, such as putting the mop bucket on his head while talking to the woman in the bottom of the well. Of course, the inherent danger of walking on the edge of the well that seems to miss Bode screams in the face of the reader. I found myself tensing up, waiting for Bode to inevitably fall into the well and meet his doom.

Gabriel Rodriguiz’s artwork is stupendous this time around again. His energy and understanding of the characters is on every page, and he works hard to play with different angles so readers aren’t looking at the same kind of picture or view each time. The environment is interesting, spooky, and foreboding all at once, and I love it. You can actually see how the movie should look in these pages.

Joe’s first page of the new comic is a riot. It’s a page taken from Bode’s homework, and it retells everything the family has been through up to this point. His mom believes the part about him becoming a ghost when he goes through one of the house’s doors is just a fabrication. We know better because we saw this happen to Bode in the last issue. In case you forgot, we see Bode in ghost-form watching his mom and his uncle talking about him while they’re sitting out on the veranda.

I love how Joe is slowly parsing out the information and background of the house. I don’t want to know everything all at once, and he’s not a storyteller that dumps everything on you and doesn’t keep surprises or twists to himself. Things are wild and weird in this series, and I’ve gotten totally wrapped up in the world and the characters.

The monster at the bottom of the wellhouse is going to mean a lot of trouble. I really enjoyed the subtle way Joe and Gabriel revealed her evil nature to the reader through the mirror sequence. That was a grabber once I saw it, and it doesn’t hit you between the eyes. If you’re not paying attention you’ll miss it.

I also like the way that Sam Lesser, one of the teens that killed Rendell, remains a threat to the family. Especially when the monstrous lady at the bottom of the well speaks to him and offers him a key to get out of the sanitarium where he’s being held.

With everything going on, I can’t wait till the next issue. I’m just glad it’s only a month away. If you haven’t picked up this great series, you’re missing out on some groundbreaking horror.