#the pulp and mystery shelf

[tacticiandrafts]

THE CRUCIFIXION ; Nikolai Gogol, Fyodor Dostoevsky x fem!Reader

Part one / 5.2k words

SYNOPSIS . . . Your plans to lay low as a fugitive in the magical capital of Athlyne are spoiled upon meeting Nikolai, an eccentric conman. Interested in your powers, he introduces you to Fyodor, his charming and mysterious associate. You’ve stepped into his trap before you know it.

CW/TAGS . . . Dark fantasy setting, mentions of drug dependency and a corrupt government, reader is an anxious mess

P.S. ! HELLOOO EVERYNYAN! this is part one of a series (out of ~6 or 7, tentatively). i’m experiencing nikolai fever so i’m excited to continue letting him consume my mind :)

also posted on ao3 @ tactician!

As a light breeze drifted through the window and fanned your hot neck, your eyes fluttered shut. You let the pestle slip from your hand momentarily as you leaned against the counter, shivering as the sweat cooled. From behind you, Dr. Yosano chuckled.

“Letting the heat get to you?”

“Yeah, sorry. This is the last one, though.”

She peered over your shoulder and nodded approvingly as you finished crushing a mixture of ginkgo root and dried centipede. “Looks good.” Counting the bottles neatly tucked away on the shelf above you, she let out a low whistle. “You’re really on top of things today. I thought we’d be behind on orders.”

You grinned, dragging a forearm across your damp hairline. “I’ve got an errand to run, so I thought I might take my leave a bit early.”

She nodded approvingly. “That’s fine with me. Thanks for the hard work.”

You spent a few more minutes helping her box up the orders you had just made and finally straightened your aching back with a groan. A strong arm snaked around your shoulders and you shivered as Dr. Yosano smirked, a dark glint in her eye. “Are you sore? Why don’t you let me take a look, hm?”

A shiver traveled down your spine, and you doubted it had anything to do with the remnants of magical seeds you’d just been working with. You flailed a bit as you slipped from her tightening grip, bounding toward the door to pick up the satchel and parasol you’d thrown on the hook earlier that morning. “No thanks, I should get going. I’ll see you for dinner!” Her dramatic sigh drifted out behind you as the door swung open and closed, the humidity fully enveloping you.

The afternoon sun hung high, occasionally eclipsed by passing clouds. The summer air was thick as the pulp of a blood orange; you cowered under the parasol as you made your way down the street. Even the shade that canopied the area surrounding the apothecary could do little to relieve your discomfort as a damp film coated your skin. 

Auguste Apothecary, the pride and joy of your boss, Akiko Yosano, was nestled by the side of a towering zelkova elm. The massive size of the tree made the building appear dwarfish and shoddy, but its regular customers hardly minded its outward appearance. Though the elite had their own pharmaceutical facilities closer to the palace and Auguste had a bit of a shady reputation, it was located smack dab in the middle of the largest residential district in the capital of Athlyne, so it had likely never experienced a shortage of customers from the day of its opening. 

Dr. Yosano’s pool of patrons wasn’t huge by any means, but no one would dare visit another apothecary after walking into hers. Her knowledge of natural medicine was unmatched and her ingredients, supplied by a talented farming mage, were of the highest quality. Though, you probably would have stayed by her side even if she turned out to be an incompetent fraud. She was sharp and incredibly capable, this was true, but you thought that her kindness and discretion were her finest qualities by far. For that reason, you expected that no one was more loyal to her than you were. 

You had run away from your hometown, located in a distant territory of Athlyne, at age fourteen. Fleeing to an adjacent province and finding work as an apothecary’s assistant in exchange for food and shelter, you lived with a constant knot of anxiety twisting in your stomach, wondering how many days of peace you had left until your family found you. That was, until the Meursault Post arrived on the shop’s doorstep, containing an advertisement for a position at one of the capital’s finest apothecaries with the promise of shelter and a decent salary. Athlyne’s capital was densely populated and located hundreds of miles away from your home—it was your best shot at a halfway normal life. Adrenaline running all the way to your toes, you traveled for two weeks on about half the rations you really needed for such a trip and eventually found yourself collapsed in Auguste’s entryway. In your starved and fearful state, you’d begged Dr. Yosano to take you in, listing every personal merit you could think of, and all she’d done was shrug. Sure, she said nonchalantly, come here and show me what you know. As it turned out, no one else had shown up regarding the position (she was a teenager, only a few years older than you, and everyone else had simply laughed in her face) so she would have hired you no matter what sort of impression you made. Regardless, you could feel simple appreciation and sympathetic care in her every action. After all, she never asked any questions. She had no interest in your origins, nor did she pry when she found you sprawled under the elm tree in the middle of the night, under eyes dark and knees bouncing. She helped you set up your living quarters in one of the cabins behind the building, helped you make dinner every night, and wordlessly prepared a steaming cup of jasmine tea each time you were hit with a bout of insomnia. 

Hitching a ride on the back of a supply cart headed toward the lower market, you thought you might pick up a batch of sweets or a bottle of wine for her.

Your thoughts trailed off as the cart began to head downhill, passing through the open gates into the underground sector of the capital. The air became cooler the further in you went, and you let out a little sight of relief. The streets there were sprawling, narrow, and winding. It was easy to get lost and even easier to find yourself trapped for hours searching for the exit. Though it may have felt a bit claustrophobic, the lower market was far livelier and less sterile than the markets above ground. It was rare to find Count Bram’s police force wandering around there, so the atmosphere was energetic and relaxed, with a variety of talented performers and community-oriented business owners. On top of that, the usually tight regulations on magical powers and objects were far more lenient, so there were certain things you could only see or purchase there.

Dr. Yosano never spoke of it, so you didn’t dare ask, but rumor had it that the lower market was the territory of her former teacher and the previous owner of Auguste Apothecary. Little was known of the shadowy Dr. Mori, but stories often circulated of the scandal that drove him underground. It was said that the apothecary was burned to the ground by the military after numerous reports of malpractice leading to death. It was revealed that he was an unregistered mage, but his imbued medications were so powerful that Count Bram allowed him to run free in the lower market provided that he offered his services to the palace. Left in the ashes of a terrible disgrace, a still teen-aged Dr. Yosano received funding from an anonymous benefactor and rebuilt the apothecary herself. Now, she barely broached the topic of Dr. Mori, but she was outspoken in her disdain for the medications he produced.

Incidentally, these medications were the reason for your errand. If you followed certain whispers, you’d be able to find one of Dr. Mori’s subordinates selling suppressants, pills that blocked your magical ability. You felt guilty for keeping this from Dr. Yosano, but it couldn’t be helped. At the moment, suppressants were your lifeline. Though the apothecary’s ingredients were nothing to sneeze at, you hadn’t yet succeeded in making your own solution with anything close to the same efficacy. Dr. Mori’s methods to make such a medication remained a mystery. 

Jumping off the cart, you weaved through the crowd. Cheers erupted as a man, likely a former member of the traveling Fitzgerald Circus, juggled fiery tennis balls with his bare hands. Going further downhill and turning onto several more backstreets, your eyes roved over the various shops, snoozing animals, and hollering people before arriving at the front of a small and unassuming tavern. Squeezing through the door, you passed through the low-lit hallway and ducked around the corner past the bar to find the back room. You swore under your breath as you approached the door. Low stock. Be back Monday. Sorry :). Reading the words, a deep frown crossed your face. You had run out days ago and hadn’t had the time to make the trip until today. 

Cursing Dr. Mori’s subordinate until the end of time (count your days, Ichiyou Higuchi!), you turned back, ignoring the old bartender’s piercing, monocled stare. You would’ve stopped to play a game or two of chess with him as you usually did, but you were too absorbed in your current dilemma to give him much other than an apologetic smile and a wave. This situation was a first, but you guessed that you only had a few days before your power began coming back to you. 

Suppressants were a double-edged sword. They helped unregistered mages live normal lives without having to serve in Count Bram’s court, police force, or military by erasing their abilities without a trace. Even if a tip sent the police knocking at your door, they’d find it impossible to tell whether you possessed abnormal powers or not. But dependency on suppressants was a lifelong struggle. There were no unwanted side effects, but they rendered users financially dependent on Dr. Mori’s underground trade forever. If you stopped taking them, your powers would return, for a short time more powerful and difficult to control than they had ever been. Of course Dr. Yosano didn’t approve: they were a bandaid of a solution to a larger problem that would only benefit one man in the end.

Mages were few and far between in Athlyne and its territories, but they were plentiful in the capital’s lower market due to Dr. Mori’s services. Whole families were killed serving in the military generations before you were born. Now, during Bram’s rule, mages were either from one of two families serving directly under the Count or they were the product of a mutation, the first of their kind in their family. Most members of the latter group did everything in their power to avoid being drafted, and that usually meant selling their livelihoods to afford a lasting supply of suppressants. The state of the nation at the hands of powerful figures was unforgivable, and Dr. Mori’s greed only worsened the struggles of the common people. But given your own circumstances, coexisting with your magic was unthinkable. Ridding yourself of that curse was the entire reason you started anew in the first place. So, like many others, you found yourself in an impossible dilemma.

In your restlessness, you must have made a wrong turn. When you finally broke out of your own head and took a look around, the surrounding streets were unfamiliar. You let out a slow and heavy sigh. Perhaps you’d wander and shop for a while before asking for directions.

At that moment, a hand slipped into your own. Your arm was lifted above your head with a flourish, and before you could react, you were spun around to face the man who’d grabbed you.

“Hello, my lost-looking lady!”

You blinked at him, trying to swallow down your instinctual panic. You didn’t expect to be left alone in your wandering knowing that the capital’s conmen were notoriously bothersome, but abruptly grabbing a stranger was like asking for a fist to the nose. …Gosh, though, your annoyance stuttered as your gaze traveled over his face. His radiant skin, mischievous smile, and glowing eyes almost distracted you from the scar running across his eye and the calluses littering the heel of his palm. Even these attributes were attractive, cutting through his forcibly high tone and boyish features. He was tall, with a long braid thrown over his broad shoulder�� You huffed in an attempt to shoo these thoughts out of your head. As you stared up at him, numerous passersby peeked at the bizarre scene before turning their heads down and briskly walking away. It would be best to yank your hand back and continue on as though nothing had happened, much the same as everyone else. 

“May I ask what you’re doing touching me?” And yet, you did the opposite. You couldn’t be blamed. He was very handsome.

“Allow me to explain. I couldn’t resist seeing a surprised look on a lovely face like yours! You see, I can tell you’re in need of excitement!” 

“Ah, twenty words or less, please. I’m trying to decide if I should punch you or hear you out, you see.” 

“Oh! I like you already! I have fifteen left now, right? Wait, no, I messed up! I’m running out!” He squealed as he let you go, bringing a hand up to cover his mouth. You frowned, trying to hide the amusement beginning to mask your annoyance. Instead of responding, you placed a hand on your hip and raised a brow at him. The man dropped out of the cutesy pose he had been holding and took off his hat, bringing it to his chest in a polite gesture. His voice lowering, though still not without a teasing lilt, he began to explain. “My name is Nikolai and I’m a fortune teller!” He threw his hat up and gave you a spin, catching it as he faced you again. This time, he inched closer, eyes narrowing. “I sensed quite a turbulent energy as you passed by just now. In fact, I can tell how special you are! You can see your own destiny, can’t you? How exciting! Would you spare a moment for a reading?”

You shivered, tensing. Those words, a bit too close to the truth, felt far too pointed. And that look in his eyes—did he know you? Though this was undoubtedly a part of his routine, you couldn’t help the way his words triggered your deeply rooted paranoia. Perhaps he recognized you—but he couldn’t, you were so far from home, and the photos would be outdated by now…You were falling right into such an easily avoidable trap. Even so, with the threat of your magic looming over you, your judgment became impossible to trust. Dread pulled at your shoulders and fingertips, the thought of this man knowing something chilling your blood. You’d have to indulge him, just to be sure. Even if you were only being paranoid, your life was on the line here.

(There was no need to mention the small part of your mind that was bored and frustrated and very much wanted to hang out with a funny and attractive man, so long as you kept a tight hold on your wallet.)

“A reading…?” You tilted your head, coy.

“Yes, your fortune! My shop is just down the road, so what do you say? Will you place your future in my trusty hands?” His words were laced with so much mirth and mischief that you wondered if he was even taking himself seriously.

Hesitantly, you shrugged. “Fine. My plans for today have fallen through. Lead the way.”

Anyone who took such a tone with him was probably not likely to agree to follow him in the end. You could tell from his genuine look of surprise at your words, which quickly morphed into even greater mirth than before.

An infectious giggle rang through the air. He wasted no time invading your personal space again, hooking an arm around your elbow and starting to skip. You would have tripped and slammed your face into the ground if not for his surprising strength as he pulled you along. If you were anyone else, your suspicion might have eased up as you processed how ridiculous the two of you definitely looked, frolicking through the crowds like a couple of hearty drunk men. 

He didn’t take you very far, making only a few turns (hopping all the way) before leading you down a slightly quieter street. There, you found yourself pushing through the door of what looked like a small library or bookstore. Clouds of dust puffed out as you moved through the space, ducking your head to squeeze past eerily low rafters toward a sitting room in the back. This was obviously not his shop (an old man greeted you when you walked in), and he probably rented this back room out for his hustles. Still, it looked surprisingly cozy, with an old armchair positioned near the entrance and a small walnut coffee table between two stools in the back. Nikolai had finally let go to allow you to navigate there without encountering any hazards, bewildering you a bit as he bounded through with almost impossible grace given his height. You took the chance to look around, wondering if you felt impressed or put off by his design choices. The creaky wooden boards were muted by numerous rugs scattered across the floor, an eclectic collection of oil lamps bathed the room in a low but warm yellow light, and a violently red porcelain tea set glittered on the table. Taking it all in, you sat down, playing with your hands for a moment as you watched Nikolai follow behind you.

A grey cat with barely-there stripes glanced up at him, squinting sleepily on the armchair. He patted its head as he passed, chirping in feline fashion as he met its eyes. The cat simply flopped to the side, curling its paws as its soft, fat stomach spilled over the cushion beneath it. He almost mirrored it in the way he plopped himself on the stool across from you, grinning. 

Sweat began to gather at your temples. He continued staring at you without saying anything. The attention flustered you, so you averted your gaze to his hands. They were long and slender, and they had felt gentle, rough and warm in your hand—make up your mind! Are you scared or attracted to him?! “So…shall we?”

Nikolai nodded, gesturing widely to the cat. “Don’t mind my assistant, oka~y? She won’t spill your secrets, so don’t worry about a thing!”

“Yeah, sure,” you snorted. You were starting to regret everything from the moment you woke up that morning as you stared at the lounging cat, thinking you really needed to work on your impulse control, so you decided to turn your attention toward Nikolai as he shuffled a set of cards. You hadn’t seen him pull them out. 

Now that you were sitting right in front of him, your eyes moved absently over him a few times.

He wore a long white tunic with ornate black embroidery traveling past the collar and circling the buttons down the front. His white pants were similarly intricate, the patterns disappearing where the wide legs were tucked neatly into his boots and the waist was fastened to his hips by a silky black sash. Strings of pearly beads and brightly colored tassels adorned him from head to toe: they hung from his neck, draped across his black fur cap, and swayed across his pants. The maximalist patterning and embellishing of his clothes wasn’t unusual for an entertainer, especially one who operated in the lower market. Showmanship was probably what paid the bills, after all. Still, there was something more to him that you couldn’t place hidden beneath the flashy gestures and showy words. Perhaps if anyone else wore those clothes, so fit for a clown, they’d be easier to avoid altogether. But Nikolai seemed scarily calculating for the second-rate, theatrical scammer he presented himself to be. Though he disguised it well, you still couldn’t shake off the feeling that he’d approached you for a reason. His words and his gaze were just too pointed. The thought startled you, and you averted your eyes again for fear of him noticing how blatantly you were checking him out. If he noticed, he made no indication if it, immersed in his own show.

“Ah! I see!” He gasped loudly, pulling a single card out from the stack and scrutinizing it before nodding dramatically. He held the card between his index and middle finger, shutting his eyes as though he was performing some sort of ritual. Then, he spun it around and let go of it, letting it flutter down in front of you.

A stranger in the capital using cards to tell the future was utterly laughable to you. Only the scattered descendants of the Chekhov family had the innate gift of foresight. Even if these cards themselves were magical, they had to have been imbued by a Royal Sorcerer of the Camus family, and artifacts made by a Camus were just about as hard to come by as the throne itself. Nikolai was obviously not a Chekhov, and he couldn’t possibly afford an artifact if he was performing cons in the lower market.

Nevertheless, the image that stared back at you froze your pulse.

You recognized The Lovers from your own handling of cards nearly a decade ago. This particular rendition featured two birds circling each other over an abyssal, grey sea. They were seagulls, and their coloring was a striking match to the one on the Chekhov family crest: an image you were intimately familiar with.

“Oh my!” Nikolai let out a high-pitched giggle. A horrible heat rose to your neck. “Now, for a quiz! Do you know what this card is telling us?” You opened your mouth, mind racing for an excuse, for a lie, or some other explanation. You couldn’t come up with anything, nor could you bring yourself to get up and run. Though, he barely gave you time to think about it because he didn’t wait for your answer. “We were destined to meet today, darling! This could mean only one thing.”

Your heart began to pound so frantically that you almost missed his next words.

“You and I are soulmates!” He threw himself forward to look even closer at you, his mouth curling into a scandalized grin.

“Um, what?” You couldn’t mask your confusion. Your head was spinning, the shock from what you expected him to say had rendered you dumb. To make matters worse, that most certainly was not what the card meant, and somehow his shoddy grasp of tarot was so funny to you that you shook with the effort it took to force yourself to stay serious.

“As you can see, this card here called out to me. The Lovers! The name says it all.” Though you should have played along the same way you had done this entire time, you forgot to react. He continued on, waving his hands in excitement. “We’re destined to be together! Yay!” 

After a moment, you shook your head in disbelief, heaving out the breath you had been holding in. “Are you messing with me right now? You don’t even know what the cards mean.”

Even the offense he feigned held a trace of barely concealed humor. “Surely not! My assistant can sense it too!” You turned your gaze to the cat, who had rolled over to face away from Nikolai and his loud voice. 

He was ridiculous. You suppressed a smile.

“You are messing with me. This is the worst scam ever. Even though I walked into it.” You started to stand, pouting facetiously.

His hands quickly found yours and he stared at you with an exaggerated, puppy-like sadness. 

“My love!” The sadness quickly dissipated as he winked cheekily. “My services aren’t free, silly.”

The moment abruptly ruined, you recoiled. “What? …You’re serious?” He stuck his tongue out, sliding you a piece of paper (where did that come from?) across the table. You glared down at the beautifully inked, absolutely preposterous bill. A drawing of Nikolai’s face mocked you from beside the numbers. “What’s the point of this? I think you know I’ve never seen this much money in my life.” And I really thought we were flirting just now, even though I still kind of feel as though you might be plotting my downfall.

He nodded, snatching the piece of paper and crumpling it up. “Co~rrect!” He stood, pointing at you. “You’ve gotten yourself into quite the conundrum! You’re in debt because of a scam, but you’re broke as a joke! Wait! Oops, forget I said that! Oh no, what should we do?!”

Your horror, amusement, and bashfulness having now faded slightly, your head was clear enough to observe him. He had a habit of rambling on like he was telling one long inside joke, pretending to get worked up while speaking fast enough to prevent you from getting a word in unless he wanted you to say something. His behavior was beginning to confirm your suspicions—you were convinced now that your original hunch was accurate. He wasn’t at all as dense as he made himself out to be, and he wasn’t just a scammer. 

Still, you couldn’t understand him at all. Nikolai was putting on such an obvious show, one you’d seen many times in your curiosity surrounding the self-proclaimed fortune tellers of the lower market. But nothing about him was adding up. Why did he seek you out? How could his reading have exposed you so thoroughly, even though he had no knowledge of the cards’ true meanings? And if he approached you because he knew who you were, if he was trying to reel you in and sell you off to your family, what was the point of fooling around so obtusely, of making a scene outside? In the capital, your family name was synonymous with dirty money. He’d have more trouble on his hands than it was worth if he attracted too much attention.

All of that being said, he had drawn you in with alarming skill. You were curious. You wanted to run. You wanted more. Your head spun. Should you be running?

Only one thing was clear. He’d spent this time trying to confuse you because he wanted something. What could that be, though, if not the Chekhov family’s ransom money?

“A date!” Nikolai announced his wish before you had even a moment to ponder it. 

Once again, he made you feel slow. The realization made you laugh. “A date with me?”

“A date with you!” He grabbed your hand and spun you around again, this time pulling a single red rose seemingly from thin air. He slipped it behind your ear with a ghostly soft touch and tapped your nose lightly before taking a step back. 

“All of this was a ploy to…ask me out?” It wasn’t, but the joke relaxed you. You wished you could be naive, that you could trust that it was. He offered a knowing smile in return.

“Bin~go! You pass with flying colors!”

You laughed again, loudly, from deep in your stomach. “Great. You can have your date, so I’ll get going now, alright? Quit harassing me.” He took a step back, watching you from a distance now.

The smile that bloomed on his face was small enough to bewilder you again, to quiet your laughter. His eyes lost their mischievous shine as they softened, the clownish pitch disappearing from his voice when he spoke again. It was as if he was speaking to you for the first time. “Sure. Think of this as the start of another game. I’d like it if you entertained me just once more. I have a favor to ask of you, when we meet again.”

His genuine gaze was heart-stopping. It filled every inch of the distance he’d just put between the two of you. Dr. Yosano had taught you to be careful of the unpredictability of strangers in the capital, but your answer came easily.

“Alright. You can find me at Auguste Apothecary when you’re ready. I’ll pay you back. Promise.”

He said nothing, but his eyes narrowed again with his usual jovial pretense as he held the door open and watched you go. 

Continuing on your way as though nothing had happened and your heart wasn’t seizing inside your chest, you found yourself buying a few bottles of wine in a stupor.

Nikolai was nothing if not confusing. How could a man you’d just met touch at your deepest anxieties with just a few cryptic words, sending your heart plummeting to your stomach, then eclipse every inch of fear simply by amusing you with a teasing look and a sharp laugh?

The confusion followed you all the way out of the cool underground air, through the oppressive summer humidity, and to the familiar silhouette of Auguste. 

“Did you travel all that way just to get me some wine? Seriously?”

Dr. Yosano’s familiar voice unfurled your tangled thoughts. You turned to smile at her, embarrassed. “Not exactly. This was the only errand I was able to get done, though.”

She returned your smile with a bemused one of her own. “Sounds like things didn’t go your way today.” She grabbed two glasses and took your hand, wrapping your fingers around the stem of one. “There’s always tomorrow, though. Wanna drink to that?”

You huffed, silently judging her heavy-handed pour as she filled them both. “Sure. To a luckier tomorrow.”

As you took a sip, all the air left your lungs and the force of it nearly bowled you over. Everything around you seemed to disappear, your senses swept away in a vacuum. The image was clearer than any glimpse of the future you’d seen before taking suppressants: your hands, dripping red. Your nails, caked with dirt and blood. Nikolai, his expression obscured as he soaked in the shadows at the furthest corner of the room. A man you’d never met before sat in front of you, smirking. His black hair framed his pale, sullen face like a marble arch, cold to the touch. When he spoke, his words were quiet and soft. They hit you like thorns. You shook your head, angry, scared, and tearful. “It’s because I trust that both of us will be saved,” you retorted, and his smirk twisted.

When the vision ended, it was like a sheet being ripped from over your head. The back of Dr. Yosano’s hand was cooling your forehead and one of the glasses was shattered on the floor, staining everything red. Your fingers, your nails, both of your feet, her wool socks.

You leaned into her touch and thought about how to breathe again. You blinked away everything you had just seen, focusing only on the image of Nikolai, of his face, unreadable.

You were prepared this time. You repeated this like a mantra in your head, thinking of nothing else as the other woman helped you into bed, laying a cold towel over your head. 

You can find me at Auguste Apothecary when you’re ready.

You kept blinking, but the shadows never left, never revealed his eyes.

Even as you recalled all the times you, yourself, weren’t ready, each time you failed at your duties, you kept repeating it. You were prepared. The vision faded, and the words shifted in your mind as you succumbed to sleep.

I’ll find you there soon. Are you ready?

The voice was soft. You bled when you touched it. The sound sent rats scurrying away, fleeing. Everything was cold, like black marble.

By the next evening, you remembered nothing of your dream and could only recall bits and pieces of the vision. Again, you cursed Ichiyou Higuchi, who had really done nothing wrong except for being absent when you needed her. Finally feeling the weight of a bag of suppressants in your hand, you felt you could face anything.

All you needed to do was wait for him to show up.

[amazing-spider-man-book-club]

Amazing Fantasy #15 (1962)

Published: August 1962

Containing: "Spider-Man!", "There are Martians Among Us!", "Man in The Mummy Case!", "The Bell-Ringer!"

Introducing: Peter Parker/Spider-Man, Ben Parker, May Parker, Flash Thompson, Liz Allen (unnamed), Mr. Warren (unnamed), Crusher Hogan, Sally Avril (unnamed), Seymour O'Reilly (unnamed), Maxie Shiffman (unnamed), The Burgler, Officer Baxter Bigelow (unnamed)

Synopsis: Peter Parker, social outcast, becomes vindictive and egotistical following being bitten by a radioactive spider and gaining spider-like abilities. After a brief stint in show business, his Uncle Ben is murdered by a burgler that Peter did nothing to stop earlier.

Read alongside us here:

@frankendykes-monster : One thing I don't want to do with this blog is discuss the in's and out's of how we got here because I feel like that'd be boring to most people beyond some anecdotals, but as we continue farther along the "behind the scenes" of The Amazing Spider-Man will become harder to ignore. That said:

Amazing Fantasy #15 is the only comic named "Amazing Fantasy". The series started out as Amazing Adventures, and was a typical Marvel horror/science fiction series being headlined by a Jack Kirby story followed by multiple stories by any number of freelancers (Dick Ayers, Don Heck, Larry Lieber, Joe Sinnott, etc.). With #7 the series is renamed as Amazing Adult Fantasy and becomes a 100% Steve Ditko showcase, but Spider-Man marks an intended shift towards replacing the line with superheroes; August 1962 is also the month where Ant-Man becomes the main feature in Tales to Astonish and Thor is introduced in Journey into Mystery. Truly, the "Marvel Age" of comics was upon us.

As a two-part story that only takes up 12 pages, "Spider-Man!" gets an incredible amount of work done. It's arguably the most superfluous issue of the entire Ditko/Lee run to return to if only because unlike so many other superheroes, Spider-Man's origin is a very "don't fix what isn't broken". Fans of Spider-Man (2002) or Spectacular Spider-Man especially will notice that's there not much here that they aren't already aware of, though most of the characters introduced here play no important role for the duration of the run, and will only be retroactively made more important by future creative talent down the line.

One thing that will become apparent throughout the run, however, is that this "source text" incarnation of Peter is a vindictive jackass starting out. In this issue we see proclamations that the rest of the world can walk off a cliff, and his disinterest in stopping the burgler is nothing more than an expression of that attitude. Being nice costs nothing, but being rude and egotistical doesn't either (or does it...considering your family member might be murdered later on...)

Stan Lee's narration seems prophetic in retrospect given that his aggrandizing prose makes it out that Spider-Man is nothing more than completely destined to become one of the biggest characters in pop culture. The juxtaposition of it with the slouching demurred pose of Peter on the title page and the context which it finds itself at the story's end just highlights that something big is on the way.

Amazing Fantasy #15, despite the text note that Lee provides at the end of the issue, would be the final one published as it was cancelled to make room in Marvel's distribution line up for a revival of Two-Gun Kid three months later. Several Spider-Man stories that were already done would end up on the shelf until The Amazing Spider-Man #1 is published. It heightens the tragedy of this story in a way that makes it compliment the twist-ending pulp horror that Ditko's output entirely consisted of. In this issue alone, Peter's fame going to his head and it biting him in the ass isn't out of place compared to anything that would have happened in Tales From The Crypt a decade earlier.

I have to wonder how much of this issue is a rush job because the early Spider-Man stories we will be discussing over the next several weeks are not the highlight of Ditko's career to out it nicely. There's not a lot of room for large panels that have a nice balance of negative space like what one would expect from Ditko in the early 1960's. Spider-Man's original costume was meant to be black (blue serving as a highlight) and the spider symbol on his back being blue. Didn't stick. For contrast take a look at the title page for two of the other stories in this issue.

@duel1971 : A good amount of ground ground gets covered in this relatively short origin story. We see Peter as a wallflower, a masked wrestler, an inventor, and most importantly as a loving son. These are all facets of the gem that is Peter Parker. He comes across as a relatable everyman because the details of his civilian life are filled in with care. Our first look at peter at home establishes there is a core of love in his home life, that he feels safe there away from the world that doesn’t fully understand him. Peter doesn’t quite transform into a superhero in Amazing Fantasy #15, but we learn the things that drive him: love for his family, and anger that it has been broken.

[videosloth]

Definitely agree that Who Goes There?'s cover rules.

This point still applies to covers with less symbolic meaning and books of less... literary importance, too. For example, a cover that left quite an impression on me as a kid was Richard Stark's The Hunter.

Harry Bennett was the artist for a ton of books, mostly thrillers and mysteries. Some big names like Agatha Christie and Dashiell Hammett; a lot of forgettable schlock. All due respect to him as an artist, most of his covers seem pretty uninspired, I think. A lot of femmes fatale standing around, a lot of scantily-clad waifs in peril. Technically proficient but often stiff and lifeless and collaged together inelegantly. Cheap work for cheap pay for cheap books. Not really all that different from today's boring stock photo photoshop jobs.

This one is different. It's grim and grotesque in a way that Bennett's more photorealistic covers, even the ones with corpses, never were. It instantly tells you what this book is: lowbrow pulp about a dead-eyed sociopath killing a bunch of sleazy mafia goons with his big scary hands. The hands ("molded of brown clay by a sculptor who thought big and liked veins") are what really take the cover from 'kinda creepy' to 'leave this book face down when you're not reading it, because if you turn your back, the Frankenstein-looking motherfucker on the front might step out and strangle you,' in my opinion.

That is the cover I would like to have. This is the one I actually have:

Look at how they massacred my boy! Even if the movie was good (it wasn't) and I respected Gibson as a person or an actor (lol. lmao.) it's still a dogshit cover. What the hell is that font. A blurry movie still on a black background? Why? (The title change is the least of my complaints.) This isn't an airport bookstore run-and-gun action adventure and Parker isn't a cool antihero. He's a monster. Even if, by some miracle, you don't immediately put this book back on the shelf and move on, you're not going to get the kind of story you're expecting.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk on why I hate movie adaptation covers with my fuckening life.

“don’t judge a book by its cover” Wrong. Absolutely judge a book by its cover art.

Take a look at this cover of a repress of “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell. A decent cover, yes? You’d see this on the shelf, think it looks okay, and then never think about it again.

Now look at THIS.

The first pressing cover of the novel from 1948 by illustrator Hannes Bok. Look at how fucking hard it goes. Look how it combines surrealist, almost gothic imagery with the main themes of the novel (humanity, paranoia, etc.). Look at the fucking FACE. Instantly more memorable and will definitely leave an impact on whichever library-goer sees it first.

To some, first impressions are extremely important when it comes to a piece of text or media. If you can judge an album or a game by its art, then surely you can judge a book by one.

SEE ALSO:

The Great Gatsby, with its amazing first press cover, painted by Francis Cugat

A Clockwork Orange has many great ones, but the one copy I have has a boring Penguin template one

[mysteryshelf]

FALL INTO MYSTERY BLOG TOUR - K Street Killing

  Welcome to the “Fall Into Mystery Event” happening Sepetember 10th to 21th, 2018, at SHANNON MUIR’S THE PULP AND MYSTERY SHELF!

DISCLAIMER: This content has been provided to SHANNON MUIR’S THE PULP AND MYSTERY SHELF arranged by Great Escapes Book Tours. No compensation was received. This information required by the Federal Trade Commission.

K Street Killing (Washington Whodunit) by Colleen Shogan

About the Book

K Street Killing (Washington Whodunit) Cozy Mystery 4th in Series Camel Press (July 15, 2018) Paperback: 242 pages ISBN-10: 1603816135 ISBN-13: 978-1603816137

It’s the height of campaign season, and instead of relishing newlywed bliss with her husband Doug Hollingsworth, Capitol Hill staffer Kit Marshall is busy with a tough reelection fight for her boss, member of Congress Maeve Dixon. Before Maeve and her staff–Kit included–leave Washington, D.C. to campaign full time in North Carolina, they have one last fundraising engagement.

On the iconic rooftop of a restaurant overlooking the Capitol and the Washington monument, Kit and her best pal Meg do their best to woo wealthy lobbyists for sizable campaign donations. Everyone’s enjoying the evening soiree until a powerful K Street tycoon mysteriously tumbles off the rooftop. Even with claims the fall must be suicide, Detective Maggie Glass and Kit aren’t so easily convinced foul play isn’t at work. While balancing Doug’s mid-life career crisis, Kit must spring into action to discover who killed the notorious Van Parker before Dixon’s candidacy sputters, even if it means investigating Meg’s handsome new beau, the victim’s conniving widow, and a bicycle advocate hell-bent on settling a long-standing grudge. When threatening note is left on Kit’s car, warning her to back off the investigation, she knows she’s closing in on the true story of what happened.

Interview with the Author

What initially got you interested in writing?

I’d written a great deal as a former professor and congressional staffer but had never tried writing fiction before I published “Stabbing in the Senate.” I’d read many mysteries over the years and I came up with the plot for “Stabbing” one day when taking a walk in my suburban Washington, D.C. neighborhood. I suppose the story found me, and then I learned how to write it.

  What genres do you write in? 

I write both non-fiction and fiction (mystery). Most of my non-fiction writing is about American politics, Congress, and leadership. Writing fiction is a welcome creative release.

  What drew you to writing these specific genres? 

I’m a political scientist by training so it makes sense that both my fiction and non-fiction writing is tied together by telling interesting, unusual stories about American politics.

  How did you break into the field? 

In my fiction writing, I wrote a draft of my first book, “Stabbing in the Senate.”  Then I worked with a peer review group through Sisters in Crime to improve it. I also consulted a professional editor, who really helped correct novice mistakes. Friends also read the manuscript and provided feedback. When I thought the manuscript was the best I could write, I queried agents. Luckily, I was able to secure representation, which led to a three-book contract for the Washington Whodunit series.

  What do you want readers to take away from reading your works?

First and foremost, I want them to enjoy the mystery. When readers buy a mystery, they want a credible whodunit that keeps them guessing until the end. Second, I hope to provide information about what makes Washington, D.C. tick. It’s understandable that many Americans have disdain for American politics these days. I want to present the other side of the story and let readers know there’s also many well-intentioned, conscientious people who work in our nation’s capital.

  What do you find most rewarding about writing? 

It’s gratifying when a reader emails me out of the blue and tells me she’s finished one of my books and liked it. I also appreciate constructive feedback about my characters, plots, and locations!

  What do you find most challenging about writing? 

It’s hard to find the time to write when working a full-time, demanding job. I work at the Library of Congress, so I am lucky that my colleagues are very supportive of my writing. It’s a welcoming place for creative people.

  What advice would you give to people wanting to enter the field? 

Keep writing and rewriting. Also, it’s important to learn the business of writing, which is distinct, but as important, as the craft of writing. It pays to be informed about how the publishing industry operates.

  What type of books do you enjoy reading? 

Of course, I read mysteries. But I also like reading biographies and memoirs. I’m story-driven more than anything, so it doesn’t matter if it’s fiction or non-fiction. I prefer compelling stories in which the characters or people evolve and change.

  Is there anything else besides writing you think people would find interesting about you? 

I’m a dog lover and feature my real-life dog, Conan, in my books. His name in the series is Clarence. Many of the stories about Clarence I write in the novels are based upon the actual antics of Conan. He’s pictured on the front cover of all my books!

  What are the best ways to connect with you, or find out more about your work?

  Website:  http://www.colleenshogan.com

  Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/washingtonwhodunit/

  Twitter:  https://twitter.com/cshogan276

  Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1269678.Colleen_J_Shogan

    About the Author

Colleen J. Shogan has been reading mysteries since the age of six. She conceived of the plot of her first mystery one morning while taking a walk in her suburban Washington, D.C. neighborhood. A political scientist, she previously worked on Capitol Hill as a legislative staffer in the United States Senate and as the Deputy Director of the Congressional Research Service. She is currently a senior executive at the Library of Congress who works on great initiatives such as the National Book Festival. Colleen lives in Arlington, Virginia with her husband Rob and their beagle mutt Conan. She is the recipient of the Next Generation Indie Prize for Best Mystery.

Author Links

Webpage – www.colleenshogan.com

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/washingtonwhodunit

Twitter – www.twitter.com/cshogan276

GoodReads – https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1269678.Colleen_J_Shogan

Purchase Links

Amazon B&N

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tour Participants

September 3 – Varietats – REVIEW

September 3 – 3 Partners in Shopping, Nana, Mommy, & Sissy, Too! – SPOTLIGHT

September 4 – The Power of Words – REVIEW

September 4 – The Avid Reader – REVIEW

September 4 – Babs Book Bistro – SPOTLIGHT

September 5 – Mallory Heart’s Cozies – REVIEW

September 5 – Socrates’ Book Reviews – REVIEW

September 6 – A Blue Million Books – CHARACTER INTERVIEW

September 6 – Jane Reads – GUEST POST

September 7 – Teresa Trent Author Blog – REVIEW

September 7 – MJB Reviewers – AUTHOR INTERVIEW

September 8 – My Reading Journeys – REVIEW, CHARACTER INTERVIEW

September 8 – StoreyBook Reviews – SPOTLIGHT

September 9 – Bibliophile Reviews – REVIEW, GUEST POST

September 9 – Brooke Blogs – SPOTLIGHT

September 10 – Celticlady’s Reviews – SPOTLIGHT

September 10 – The Pulp and Mystery Shelf – AUTHOR INTERVIEW

September 11 – Cassidy’s Bookshelves – REVIEW

September 11 – Island Confidential – SPOTLIGHT

September 11 – Escape With Dollycas Into A Good Book – REVIEW

September 12 – Mysteries with Character – REVIEW

September 12 – Ruff Drafts – SPOTLIGHT

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FALL INTO MYSTERY BLOG TOUR – K Street Killing was originally published on the Wordpress version of Shannon Muir's The Pulp and Mystery Shelf

[wayhavven]

Love’s Philosophy

Gift fic for @mewsly as a part of @loveinwayhaven

Pairing: Adam Du Mortain x Detective Orianna Moreau

Rating: All

Word Count: 2712

Notes: Ah! I’m so nervous to post this! I really hope I did your detective justice, she seems amazing 🥺 I went for sort of mid-romance vibes... this is also the first time I’ve written Adam, or anything TWC actually, so I have been a little worried about how he comes across as well. I really hope you enjoy😅

Summary: Adam spends some time in the library.

Adam grunts as his large fingers slip over the leather bound books on the shelf. He’s tucked away right at the back of the library in the bunker, looking for absolutely nothing in particular. If each title that flicks in his peripheral is decidedly not something else, then, well, he wouldn’t notice. And he certainly doesn’t notice the mug ring on the coffee table at the end of the row. Still wet. He can say with ninety-nine point nine percent accuracy that this is a result of a sickeningly sweet, creamer-laced coffee, probably left half full and forgotten momentarily because it’s owner had been perusing the shelves for something else about the supernatural.

And then it catches him, an old—perhaps very early edition if he remembers right—edition of Pride and Prejudice. She doesn’t know it’s here, because he’s sure she would’ve said.

But when he reaches for it, his hand stops by itself. It drags across the direction toward the dark corners, moving at speed until—plod. Something leather-bound with a worn bookmark partway through. As he gently slides it out, Adam notes the gold type font on the front: a poetry anthology. Shelley, to be specific. He knows a lot of these by heart, three-hundred odd years of people raving about the rakes and romantics will do that to a guy. All the same, he’s sure to thumb carefully to the bookmarked part. The spine squeaks as it opens, a quiet yawn where Adam is waking it from a nap. A little dust flies up and is highlighted in the strips of dim lamplight from above. He looks up briefly, checking his surroundings. Not that the detective would be able to come anywhere near him without his pheromones going off. Even if he wasn’t a vampire, he’s sure he’d recognise the sound of her footfall underwater. Because he has to know to protect her properly, of course.

The page the book has squeaked open to has one poem on it: ‘Love’s Philosophy.’

Adam, not particularly taken with poetry for the most part, doesn’t know this one. Only the very famous ones when it comes to Percy Bysshe Shelley: ‘Ozymandias,’ ‘To a Skylark,’ ‘Stanzas Written in…’

Reading for enjoyment as a rule isn’t his thing. But the little he does recall never really lit anything in him. He has never felt how he was told poetry should be making him feel. Maybe he is too worn from years spent focusing on most things aside from feeling. Absentmindedly grazing his thumb over the page, feeling each grain of the pulp on his finger tips, Adam finds his eyes wandering back to the wet mug ring on the coffee table to his right. Drying now, the sheen dulling to match the light wood. It’s nice wood, light, fresh, slightly enthusiastically holding the weight of forgotten books. Adam’s a little lost in the colour. Because it echoes in his mind a similar colour that has been the focus of many an accidental daydream.

Suddenly, he’s seeing pretty light brown eyes; caramelly, iridescent when they’re in that one chair in the office where the sun has a chance to shine on them. Lighting up when she learns new things, particularly those of his world; the supernatural world. Creasing a little in the corners when she makes the odd sarcastic quip. Dilating every so often when he’s talking to her, for reasons he isn’t sure.

One of the books on the table is leather-bound in a deep red, and Adam finds himself imprinting the image of coils of long hair that exact shade into the space he stares at. Adam actively does not enjoy that his brain wanders like this. That it seems to veer off task for silly reasons.

He shakes his head. If only he had a use for sleep. He doesn’t often find himself wishing that, but these days… perhaps more often. Perhaps he wonders what he might dream of.

But he doesn’t want to lose the control of consciousness. It keeps him in check. It keeps him able to protect the detective.

And he doesn’t want to lose control full stop. Doesn’t let himself think too deeply about any of it for fears he may push himself past retrieval.

Adam finds, as he stands there almost frozen, that his mind wanders to a day not so dissimilar to this one. When he had been reading late, against his wishes, for some information Rebecca requested.

—-

With each line he reads, Adam can feel his biceps twitching to get some combat under his belt. This is more Nate’s expertise; he’d far rather be out trying to get one up on Morgan. But, alas, he has been given other responsibilities. And he always fulfills his responsibilities. He finds himself sighing each time he turns the page, increasingly frustrated that he actually seems to be learning less.

Like a saving grace, the library door creaks open and he looks up from where he stands by the window. One hand in his pocket, one under the old book. Detective Orianna Moreau enters, a candle highlighting the high points of her soft, deep brown skin, shining in the light-hued eyes which find him almost immediately. Her silhouette casts subtle grey shadows on the wall behind her as she nears him.

He’d known she was coming, of course. He always does. But it’s always a different thing actually seeing her. Like he’s never completely convinced she’s really there.

She smiles gently at him, nearing with the candle in her grip melting down itself, flickering.

“You’re up late,” she says, placing the candle down by him on a ledge. “I thought you might need a bit of light.”

Light. Like her. Her charming, friendly, easygoing nature always lights up the room. Adam reveres it sometimes. Sometimes he doesn’t.

It makes him a little nervous, actually. And he hates feeling nervous. Hates losing himself in the light when he has to focus on work and tasks.

“Thank you.”

He doesn’t say anything else, but is acutely aware as he remains standing in his spot, that the detective goes to sit on a nearby sofa. She’s supposed to be researching too, so it’s not too odd, but humans do have to sleep, after all.

“Should you not be asleep?” He turns just enough so that he can see her from the side of his face.

“I have to learn this, and want to. There are far worse ways to be spending an evening.” She smirks at him, suggestive and amused. “Come and sit with me.”

At first, Adam was going to outright point-blank say no. So he’s not completely sure why his legs carry him over to the sofa and lower him down beside her. But far enough away that there’s significant space between them. She laughs and rolls her eyes, scooting over next to him. The small amount of her body which presses up against him sends a shock of ice up his veins. She’s warm, so warm, that he feels like his ice is melting a little. It’s almost terrifying, but Adam doesn’t move. Doesn’t show outwardly how he’s feeling. Lets his thigh burn quietly as though he’s already extinguished the flames.

The book in his hand drops to his lap, his other hand twitching on his thigh. She gives him that smile again and his heart almost stops. Settling back into the cushions, Orianna picks up the book from his hands and starts to dig into it.

“I was reading that.”

“I know, but you weren’t enjoying it.”

That she seems to know this about him, though, isn’t lost on Adam. He believes himself to be stoic and mysterious perhaps, but maybe Orianna can see past that. Through it. The way Nate always does.

She holds the book in her left hand, her right sitting on her thigh somewhat restlessly. Just inches from his own. Ensuring that she’s pouring all of her attention into the book, which she seems to be, Adam drops his eyes subtly to her hand. Unsure why, but seemingly doing things of his own accord, Adam’s impulse is to make contact with her. His pinky falters, reaching out a little by itself, quivering in a way he isn’t used to. A way he isn’t sure he likes. Nonetheless, he uses its movement to bolster the moving of the rest of his hand. Slowly, millimetre by millimetre, Adam lets his hand move away from his body. Slip across to the detective’s. He places his down on top of hers gently, encompassing it, letting his fingers and thumb curl around its shape. He doesn’t dare look at her, but he can’t miss in his peripheral the smug beaming grin which takes over her expression.

They sit like that a long while, Adam still, holding her hand. He should be frustrated that he’s not getting anything productive done, but he can’t be. Something about her hand in his means he cannot be anything other than content and a touch conflicted. The detective’s expression never falters as she reads, doesn’t worry when she has a hard time turning the page with the use of only one hand. Seems quite amused by it, actually. Adam chuckles himself a little internally, unable to stop the smile which spreads over his face. With his free hand, he reaches over and turns the page for her.

“Thanks.”

“It is my pleasure.”

When the detective repositions their hands, winding hers around and up, so that their hands are completely joined, Adam can’t help but finally look at her fully. She squeezes his hand, and looks up at him too. Their eyes bore into each other, melting.

It had all been going so well until Farah bounded in like a puppy with a new toy. Quickly, rushedly, Adam pulls his hand from the detective’s.

—-

He thinks about that day a lot. Wishes he didn’t. Wishes he didn’t think about a lot of things pertaining to the detective.

As though on cue, the fine hairs on his arm stand to attention, and his ears zone in on the sound of smart shoes on the linoleum. She’s coming back.

Forcing his eyes back down to the page, Adam has completely forgotten what he had even been looking at. ‘Love’s Philosophy,’ that’s it. Shelley.

She’s entering, though, and he can’t focus himself enough on what he’s holding to seem entirely nonchalant. Doesn’t give himself enough time to consider that it probably isn’t in his best interests for Detective Moreau to see what he’s holding. She’s bold, flirty. She’d pick up on something and make a remark that would have his cheeks hot and his jaw tightening in a way he doesn’t want it to.

Through the gap in the shelf he can just about see a fitted pencil skirt, shirt tucked in, emerging into the library. She’s holding another book, something supernatural focused that smells a little of blood and Adam isn’t sure where exactly came from.

Next thing he knows, she’s rounded the corner.

“Oh.” He hears her from the side, always debating how the next words will come from his mouth. She just seems a little surprised he’s there, is all. “Hi.”

He can hear the smile in her voice, senses how she places her book down on the coffee table he’d been so fixated on before. The title looks to be written in Haitian Creole.

“Hello. You have been busy.” He nods to the table. She grins. There’s always a sparkle in her eyes when she’s learning new things; especially new things about the world which only opened up to her not so long ago.

“Always have to know more, you know me.”

He does. Knows her scent, the exact amount of time which passes between each step she takes, how she shines like the sun whenever something otherworldly occurs. Knows she would be interested to know about the early edition of Jane Austen he completely accidentally came across. Knows that a large part of him wishes he didn’t know these things.

“What are you reading?” she asks, the tone of her voice something Adam hadn’t even realised he’d been yearning to hear.

“I am not. I picked it up. I will be putting it back now,” he nods, hesitating at the sight of the page. His eyes drag over the words subconsciously: heaven, sweet emotion, sunlight, moonbeams, kiss.

Things which are meant to be pretty and emotive and only seem to be making him think of the one thing he doesn’t really want to think of.

How maybe he doesn’t believe in heaven, but that it might be something close to her eyes when she smiles. Or how sweet emotion is something that Adam doesn’t feel like he can achieve, but if he were to, maybe it would be because of her. The sunlight which shines on her in her office, which highlights her features and matches her personality. Moonbeams… electric, softly-glowing, other-wordly. Kiss… well, he tries not to focus on that one.

But he also thinks sometimes he thinks too much and of too absurd topics. That he shouldn’t allow himself to think these things. He has responsibilities. Duties.

He might have closed the book and placed it back when he hears her start to near, but he feels a little too frozen on the spot.

“Shelly,” she smiles again, pulling down on the corner of the book so that she can see the contents of the page. “A love poem! Romantic,” she teases, in the way that only Orianna knows how.

“I was just interested in the bookmark.”

“Oh, that might have been me, I like this one.”

He nods, moving to close it, but his hand is caught by Orianna instead. He stiffens, the brush from her climbing up the brim in his arm right the way to his heart. Reminding him of when he’d held her hand before.

“Let me read it again.” She smiles, letting her eyes drift back over the page. She’s stubborn, so there’s no point arguing. Not that he’d have much reason to, anyway. Adam finds his curious eyes slipping over the page, too, and he reads the words in front of him.

The fountains mingle with the river

And the rivers with the ocean,

The winds of heaven mix for ever

With a sweet emotion;

Nothing in the world is single;

All things by a law divine

In one spirit meet and mingle.

Why not I with thine?—

See the mountains kiss high heaven

And the waves clasp one another;

No sister-flower would be forgiven

If it disdained its brother;

And the sunlight clasps the earth

And the moonbeams kiss the sea:

What is all this sweet work worth

If thou kiss not me?

When he pulls his eyes from the page, he looks to the woman beside him. She’s mouthing the last line, subtle warmth on her face, and it’s impossible to not focus on the movements of her lips as she rolls through the vowels and consonants.

“Yes, it’s lovely. Just as I remember.”

“I suppose it is not awful.”

She lets out a little snort. “You hate reading for pleasure.”

The smile he returns is ever so miniscule. She’s absolutely right, but seeing her find joy in it makes it not so bad.

He’s drawn in by the pull of her eyes again, struggling to find the right words. Creasing his brow a little, he watches her edge a little closer. Finds himself willing down the impulse to hold her hand once more.

She smiles at him, in a way that tells him she knows the look on his face. It’s frozen, unsure, repressing. So she just leans in, and places a gentle, soft kiss just below his ear. Her lips on his skin sear simultaneously hot and cold, soft. She lingers a little, hand ghosting at his jaw. A little cold touch from the jewellery she wears.

That spot feels incredibly warm even as she moves away again. Even as she pulls the book from his hands, closes it, places it back on the shelf.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, Adam.”

Adam starts, not even remembering what the date was. Perhaps he’d been a little too distracted.

“I—well, yes. Happy Valentine’s Day, I suppose.”

[raptorific]

Also, I can't stress this enough, the only quality that differentiates Kids' Books from Adults' Books is the level at which they expect you to already know how to read. Whatever it is you like about Kids' Books, there's a thousand adult books that share those qualities in a package that's designed to be enjoyable to you, person in their 20s. As far as I can figure, the people who are still in their "why would I watch adult shows when Steven Universe and Avatar The Last Airbender cover all that ground without risking that I get scared or confused?" phase are people who'd be stepping well out of their comfort zones by watching Abbott Elementary, so I feel like I have to hold people's hand on this one like...

If you aren't even above the level of the fifth graders in my class who were reading Lord Of The Rings, maybe go pick up one of the books that was on your 11th grade summer reading list that you didn't read and read it before you start talking like an expert on literary merit. Hell, maybe pick up a beach read even. A nice mystery novel, a pulp romance, a spy thriller, a mass market fantasy or scifi novel that you didn't find on the shelf next to "middle grades." If you're being put to shame by guys who think Tom Clancy and John Grisham are the best writers of our time, you are the last person who should be weighing in on which books are good

What I can't wrap my head around is how so many people who claim to be former Gifted Kids are so eager to admit that their honest and genuine literary assessment is that Percy Jackson & The Olympians is the best book they've ever read. Like, no disrespect to Mssrs. Riordan and Jackson but. Either you guys haven't read very many books or your school was flat-out wrong to identify you as gifted

[svankmajerbaby]

An Appreciation of the Chucky Series’ Set Design

PART 3: Kim and Devon’s House

we don’t see a lot of devon’s house, really, beyond his bedroom. the only other peek of the place is the hall leading to his room (which feels like it’s in the basement? if it really is so, funny that he’s living in the basement while jake’s currently moved into an attic)

just realized, i feel like there’s no set in this series that has white walls. if there’s any, the lighting makes sure to change that. also, it isn’t super clear from this angle.... but that cute little seventies-style wall hanging there is from a sunflower bouquet :^)

ok so devon’s room is maybe my favorite. not only is it ridiculously spacious in a way that, if it really is the basement, i could believe... but it’s so clear he decorated it with exactly the stuff he wanted to. that huge ass painting behind his little, otherwise normal looking bed. there’s that little telescope that feels like a “Rear Window” reference, if only the windows were a bit lower... and another extremely funky looking lamp (i wonder what the lamp budget of the series was). and then there are The Amazing, Huge Pulp Thriller Posters. i’ve counted six of them, but there’s a whole wall i cannot see, so there may be more just out of sight!

he also has that very comfy looking sofa chair and lamp, perfect to read while pondering which crimes to cover and investigate next.... there’s that column there that actually feels quite realistic, especially since this room is so big. there’s also a ceiling beam in one shot that similarly gives this place that feeling of both being somewhat believable and still really unusual and quirky, especially for a fourteen-year-old.

and of course what every gumshoe in training needs, a huge corkboard to pin theories and clues. i love that apart from the comfy sofa chair by the lamp on the other wall he has a whole little couch for himself to sit and go over his newspaper cuttings. devon takes his sleuthing very seriously.

finally, i just want to address the fact that his podcast-recording setup is not, like most desks, set against the wall: it’s set with his back against the wall, maybe so the light falls onto it (though why he would care about natural light when he has that whole ringlight is quite a mystery), but it’s probably just so we can have a cleaner shot-reverse shot in his dialogue with his mother. regardless, it’s an amazingly professional-looking setup (i have no idea if it’s what actual podcast-recording people would use), and i feel like it does communicate on some level that his mother really does support his interest and his passion for doing this. all that equipment can’t come cheap, you know.

last thing: it’s just barely framed by the microphone, but you can see a little electric guitar in a shelf, along with a skull. i don’t know what that means (we know that devon plays piano, so he might have a guitar as well, lying somewhere?) but it’s a nice little detail i appreciate. it was probably done to fill an empty space, but i still like it. just a confirmation of just how spooky of a boy devon is, if his fascination for gruesome crimes wasn’t enough.

PART 1   PART 2

[blairwitchbaby]

Favorite movies?

I'm looking at all of my movies on my shelf for reference lol. these aren't in order or anything:

Kill Bill: Vol. 1, Monster (2003), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Alien, Aliens, A Clockwork Orange, House of 1000 Corpses, The Thing (1982), Prozac Nation, Election, Girl Interrupted, Natural Born Killers, Shallow Grave, Mysterious Skin, literally all the Harry Potter movies, Billy Elliot, Full Metal Jacket, Mystic River, Midsommar, Good Will Hunting, Freeway, The Kids Are Alright, The Virgin Suicides, August: Osage County, Heavenly Creatures, Lady Bird, Ghost World, We Need to Talk About Kevin, Little Children, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, Doubt, Psycho, Being John Malkovich, What's Eating Gilbert Grape, Titanic (sue me), E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, Little Miss Sunshine, The Help, Donnie Darko, No Country for Old Men, Fargo (def my favorite Coen bros. movie), Room, Jurassic Park, Requiem for a Dream, American Beauty, Fight Club, Pulp Fiction, The Sixth Sense, The Voices, The Silence of the Lambs, The Shining, The Hills Have Eyes (2006), The Exorcist, The Devil's Rejects, Se7en, Saw, Rosemary's Baby, Poltergeist, Panic Room, One Hour Photo, Misery, Let the Right One In, Jaws, Hard Candy, Halloween (1978), Ginger Snaps, Funny Games (1997), Carrie (1976), Blue Velvet, The Blair Witch Project, Mean Creek, Precious, Bound, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand Black Christmas (1974)

[jlf23tumble]

Top 10 Niche Interests

Fixations? Obsessions? This is incredibly hard because I have wayyyy too many niche interests, so instead of stressing about it, I tried to channel the 10 things that immediately speak to me and maybe aren't so obvious from what I post here, like how much I'm obsessed with wigs, doll furniture, incredibly specific blogs, all forms of clothing with pockets, swimming pools, whimsical bus stops, over-the-top bathrooms, etc. etc Instead, I opted for some specifics that feel a little more evergreen and long tailed, like, so LIFE-long tailed that it's tough to nail down when or how they became part of the national psyche. I thank @alienfuckeronmain​ for the initial tag, and I'm tagging her AGAIN for round two because I know she has a billion additional niche things, and she'll post them, and I'll scream because it'll trigger five other things I neglected to post here, and I'll probably post my own round two, arggggh, insert aggressive sighing. Anyway, I tag ANYONE who wants to do it, just tag me so I can see! 

1. Indoor Trees

I have no idea why this concept PULLS so hard because houseplants are kind of meh to me, but you want to plant an entire-ass TREE indoors, in the place where you live? Me, too, and I'd add a conversation pit plus a combo gold/red bathroom, among other things, and, bam, we're in my imaginary dream home, which I have literally, constantly ALWAYS mentally constructed from the time I was about six or so. (If you're curious, it has multiple themed rooms, and the closest I've seen to it recently is the outstanding Dita von Teese AD feature, but Amy Sedaris’s apartment comes close, too). There are two (2) 1960s houses in Long Beach with magnificent indoor trees, but I can't find them online, so have this modern interpretation and cry with me about how I can't visit the multi-story fake tree inside Clifton's Cafeteria for a good long while:

2. Conventions of Fans of Any Kind

One thing that I don't think I'll ever lose is how much I *love* people who are fans of SOMETHING, people who have a passion and create something about it or cosplay it or simply gather to celebrate it and connect to other people through it. The Internet provides in all kinds of ways, but I'm talking specifically about IRL conventions and the way my heart pitter pats when I first walk in those doors, SWOON! And it doesn’t matter how big the convention is or how random, I've been to smaller events like CatCon and the My Little Pony convention all the way up to biggies like WonderCon and Comic Con, and I have yet to be disappointed. I might know jack shit about what I'm walking into, but I want to see the merch, hear about the panels, and check out the people who are fucking PUMPED to be there. Sadly, I think it's gonna be a lonnnnng time until these come back, but I can live vicariously through my old photos, sigh:

3. Dutch Wax Fabrics and African Fashion

I'm not the snazziest of dressers, but textiles, colors, and patterns have been an obsession that has soothed my visual soul for as long as I can literally remember. Wax fabric marries all three of those touchpoints, plus throws in a healthy dose of style, and I count myself lucky to have seen two big exhibits on the subject (this was one of them), oh, how I wish there were more! For sure, there's a fucked up underlying colonial/imperialist history here, but there's also humor and color and vibrancy, a reclamation of sorts, and multiple levels of fashion that take my breath away. I cannot do the different patterns justice at all, but the fan motif is one of my faves:

4. Hearst Castle vs. Madonna inn

These two fall into my #home tag because they're where I'm from, and they speak to me as equally sublime and ridiculous, camp and kitsch writ large and small, different (yet similar!) versions of Xanadu that two rich white men built as shrines to their own personal "taste." And the irony is that a lot of people shit on Alex Madonna for being tacky (the Madonna Inn is...uh, something else), yet praise WR Hearst for all the high-class art and architecture, most of which is fully lifted from desperate churches between and after world and yet they're both more or less the same concept (lodging for weary travelers, self-aggrandizement, questionable taste-mixing). Hearst Castle edges out slightly for me because it's bigger and has spectacular scenery and history, plus it gives me doses of LA noir thanks to the way Hearst killed a guy in a jealous Charlie Chaplin-related rage and Hedda Hopper covered it up, all kinds of old Hollywood shenanigans happened up there, etc. But I'm low-key an expert on both houses of the holy, I'm OBSESSED with both, and we can leave it at that. I mean, come on:

5. Snow Globes

I had to cull my personal collection slightly just to fit it all on the dedicated shelf in my bathroom, and I seriously need to refill all the water lines, but nothing beats a snow globe in terms of memorable souvenir, especially when you put it in a bathroom. The majesty!!! The jewel of my collection is the one from Sherwood Forest because WHY NOT celebrate a historic place and moment in the basic way?? He robbed from the rich to give to the poor, and the gift shop about 100 feet from the tree he hid in does the same! The circle of life! The irony of all the watermarks on this blessed image...protect:

6. Highly Specific Museums

Look, we can all agree that the more venerated museums in the world are a form of garbage in terms of what they represent, what they've done, and who runs them, but I'm here for the museums that collect and celebrate things that tend to get overlooked. There are too many to list that I love that are still thriving, so I'm going to say goodbye to four recently departed faves. RIP to the Pez museum, I'm so glad I saw you and purchased your stale candy souvenirs. RIP to the museum of terrible food, you were a pop up when Phoenix and I saw you, and I will forever think about the worker describing people literally vomiting during their visits. RIP to the currywurst museum in Berlin, I've had currywurst exactly once and it was not for me, but I respect the Journey you took me on, including obscure east German TV shows that helped make you so popular (??). Finally, RIP to the velvet painting museum, there's no way to mince words, the person who owned you was crazy AS FUCK and had zero clue how to run a business, but I'm so glad I saw you multiple times and purchased my own velvet treasure (not this exact one, but remarkably similar):

7. Liminal Spaces: Grocery Store Edition

Confession time for those who don't know me all that well, I'm a big time voyeur, and nothing fills my heart with joy like a walk at 7 or 8 pm, the witching hour when people haven't pulled the curtains, and I can scope out their decorations/furnishings without it being "weird." Another confession is how much I unabashedly adore grocery stores in other countries and will spend at least an hour wandering aisle by aisle, falling in love with how much everything is different yet completely the same:

8. Agatha Christie Novels:

As a child, I was a fairly compliant reader--I had to read something for school? Okay! For my mom? Sounds good! But the books that sparked the initial fire for me to read something purely for myself were second-hand (probably fourth- or fifth-hand, judging by cover art) Agatha Christie short story anthologies, which were the gateway drug to full Agatha Christie novels, then other mystery novels, and so on. But getting back to Agatha, I obviously loved all the stories, but every decade spawned incredibly good cover art (like, exceptionally good), and this particular artist's are right up near the top for me (I go back and forth on a lot of the '50s and '60s ones):

9. Scopitones

I link my obsession with scopitones both to my love of music videos in general and a shop in Austin, TX, that sold DVD compilations of them in particular, but either way, they're underappreciated and kitschy all in one! Francoise Hardy and the rest of the ye-ye's are my forever girls for this medium, but seemingly every country cranked them out, both actual set videos and "live" performances? If you don't know what they are, scopitones were machines that played music videos in French cafes in the '60s (??), so it was sort of your proto-MTV way to see your faves sing and dance. Oh, Francoise...so moderne!!

10. Cover Songs

I have so much patience and love for cover songs of any stripe, the more genre-bending and/or surprising, the better! My only minor beef is the trend in slooooooooowing down songs to make a point, but even those ones have a special place in my heart if they're effective. Live Lounge feeds my hunger the best, but my meta fave for representing this concept is Pulp's Bad Cover Version, which was already lyrically INSPIRED, a song about bad cover versions in terms of relationships, but then they did a video that was a visual "bad" cover version, with actors lip synching over an audio "bad" cover version, and all of it just worked? The cover for the single is someone in the band as a boy, making his own bad cover version of a Bowie album cover, it's meta meta meta, and I love love love, here's the video, if you're curious. In the more sublime cover category, I'm absolutely addicted to all of Orville Peck's covers, I truly hope he officially releases them sometime soon, but I wholeheartedly support any artist who does it:

[fics-not-tragedies]

Read a book (or two)

@writeawaymrwick’s amazement by the fact that I work in a bookstore made me write it. All of the books’ titles I mentioned in it are real ones and I can absolutely recommend all of them.

SUMMARY: You work in a bookstore and one time a handsome stranger stops by it to look for new read. Words:  1465; Warnings: none;

Readers tag list:

@spookier-than-u; @sparrowsparrow; @oreofenyloetyloamina; @mikaneonox; @derangedcupcake; @geostarr; @catsmieow; @wickedlangdon; @bodhi-black; @bugalouie; @onebatch--twobatch; @fandom-lover-4; @drunkonyellow; @semtempoirmaoo; @spadesandaces2342; @harrisongslimited; @a–1–1–3; @hhighkey; @lunilate; @i-cant-remember-my-old-login; @sgt-morgan; @coloursunlimited; @childrenofthegun; @weminiaturestrawberry; @silverlambcaptain;

It was late in the afternoon, you shift was finally coming to an end. You were absolutely tired now, the only thing on your mind was to go home and have a relaxing bath. You've already swept the floors, fixed the books on their shelves and now you were sitting in front of your computer, checking out few titled from the upcoming books category. Hands on the clock hung on the opposite wall were moving too slowly. You really wanted to go home already, but there was still an hour left.

Then out of sudden the small bell that was hang above the door jingled and you turned your head to look who just entered the bookstore.

His dark hair was flowing in every direction, which was caused by the wind howling outside. There was some scruff on his handsome face along with few bruises that looked fresh and it felt like he got them on his way here.

The doors closed behind him and he took few steps inside then stopped to fix his messy hair smoothing it out with his hands.

“Good afternoon” he said politely with a small smile on his face, bowing in your direction. You said hi and sent him one of your cutest smile you had reserved for the customers who put the effort to say anything when they entered the place. He held his gaze on you for few more seconds more, then moved further inside.

There was something dark, yet quite mysterious about him. He was much taller than you, the fitted suit was accenting his broad shoulders and you couldn’t help but stare at him browsing the books.

He was circling the store for a good half an hour, so you swallowed the lump that has formed in your throat and slowly walked over to him, “Hello, I’m sorry for interrupting, but you look like you need some help” you smiled a little and stood next to him. He turned to you, putting the book he was holding back to its place on the shelf. You curiously looked at its title, only to find out that it was one of the novels Bukowski’s wrote, “Ah yes, I am a fan of Bukowski” he raised his eyebrow a little, so you decided to continue, “He was an alcoholic, but he had a gift. At least in my opinion” you added quickly before reaching to the shelf and taking one book from it, “His love poems are excellent.”

He scanned your figure with his eyes before taking the book out of your hand and flicked through few pages, reading the small black letter printed on the white paper, “If you’re not a fan of poems his fiction ones are great as well,” you handed him another one, “‘Pulp’ is bizarre, but it won my heart.”

“Is there anything else you could recommend me?” he finally spoke, holding those two books in his hands. His gaze was glued to your face and it seemed like he was really listening to everything you said about those two first books from Bukowski.

“Yes sure, follow me!” you really wanted to show him the world of great authors. He walked after you obediently, following every step you take, “I feel... you like things that aren’t obvious, so how about ‘Memories of my melancholy whores’? Gabriel García Márquez is just ahhh… can’t really find the right words to say how I am amazed by his writing skills. I know how the title sounds,” you handed him the slim book with purple cover and he looked at it, opening it at some random page, reading few words from the inside, “but it’s not what it seems.”

You flinched a little before handing him another title, “I love reading true stories as well, so for you I have this one. It’s ‘Gomorra’ a non-fiction one about Italian mob.”

“Oh, I feel like I had enough of it” he tiny giggle left his throat and you put the book back into its spot.

Then you moved to another shelf and handed him a white book, with the word ‘Terror’ sprawled across the front cover, “It’s a drama and yes, I know how people feel about drama these days, but it’s a one with modern ethical dilemma. Its author is a lawyer, a real specialists when it comes to crime cases.”

He was carefully listening to every word you've said, nodding from time to time. The books were really your world and you could talk about them for hours. He was really into your monologue, you could say that by the look he had into his eyes. They were as lit up as yours are whenever you talk about your beloved authors. You left him with all of the titles you've handed him, so he could pick the one he wanted to read and you moved away to your computer.

Staring at him from the distance you saw how he carefully handled the books, flicking through them, reading a few pages and putting them away. You smiled like a fool to your own self thinking how it would be nice if he’d ever come back here needing your help to choose something new to read.

“I think I’ll take them all” he walked over to your counter placing all of the books you handed him onto it.

“Really hard choice, isn't it?” he laughed a little, “Well I wouldn't recommend you anything I haven’t fell in love with, so don’t worry. They all are great, really” you smiled at him and he held your gaze. The corners of his mouth slowly curled and he returned your gesture. The man was really handsome with his bruised face and hair slicked back, so you couldn't help but stare at him a little more than you should.

He cleared his throat awkwardly and you looked back to your computer’s screen. Without saying anything you scanned the bar-codes from his new readings and looked at him again, saying the amount he had to pay.

“So little money for so many books?” he asked you, before reaching inside of his jacket and taking the wallet out of his pocket.

“I gave you a discount” you smiled a little, trying to hide the fact that your cheeks were burning and your palms got sweaty.

“A discount, but why?” handing you the money he brushed his hand over yours and you shivered a little. He smiled again, taking the books packed into a paper bag from your hands along with the change.

“I thought you were worth the discount since you took everything I recommended you…”

“I loved listening to you describing everything with such a passion… I even got the ‘Gomorra’ one” he reached inside the bag and got out the book showing it to you with a smile on his face.

You laughed, hiding your face in your hands, knowing you were much redder now.

“Um... I-I know how it sounds...” he started, grabbing the bag with his hand, hiding the wallet inside his jacket, “But perhaps you’d say ‘yes’ to some coffee and cake after your shift ends?” he was blushing too, his cheeks colored like a ripe tomato, “I would like to listen to you talking about more books… and other things as well a little more, if you don’t mind of course” you giggled and he looked at you slightly confused, his eyebrows raised, eyes big.

“I finished my shift almost an hour ago. And I haven’t told you that I’m closing, because I didn't wanted you to leave empty handed. Give me five minutes, I need to grab my things and I’m really loving the idea of having a coffee and a cake with you” he smiled widely.

“Even though you don’t know my name?”

“And you don’t know mine either” you turned your computer off and walked from behind the counter. He gently grabbed your hand and leaned in to kiss it.

“Jonathan” he said softly, “Or just… John” he added quickly, gently grazing the skin on your hand with his lips again. You told him your name and his eyes lit up, smile never leaving his face, “I’ll wait for you outside. Be sure to lock everything properly,” you laughed a little watching him leave the bookstore, closing the doors, then giving you a small wave looking at you through the window. You waved back then disappeared in the back office, where you grabbed your purse, turned the lights off and headed to the exit just like he did.

He was waiting for you patiently, his eyes glued to you as you were closing the doors, turning the keys in the locks.

The evening was about to start fantastic, with a tall, dark and handsome man right by your side.

[elucubrare]

Ooh can you recommend some great (and by great I mean trashy) pulp sci-fi novels to use that bingo card with? 💗

Okay, so, the problem is at least twofold: 

1. the sort of thing I like them in is the really early stuff, pre-1950, and 1a) it's very bad on all sorts of technical levels -- I find the bad prose and simplistic but somehow still incoherent plots very charming, in the right mood, but you definitely have to turn a lot of your brain off & 1b) there is so much casual sexism (more than racism, but mostly because other races just don't exist). I can get over it, but it's a high bar & I don't want to ask other people to, at least not unwarned. 

2. it's honestly better in stories. 

That said, my a-fine-aged-sff shelf on goodreads goes to about the '80s, but has a bunch of stuff that absolutely fits into these tropes.

Leigh Brackett is actually good;

C.L. Moore is...well, less good, but Jirel of Joiry is a fun heroic fantasy heroine;

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, starting with Swords and Deviltry, is a good series, but stop as soon as you get bored -- there's definitely a pattern; 

I -- to show you how little you should trust my taste -- like Elric a lot, but as above, stop when you're tired of the pattern (and note: Elric, as a sickly wizard-king who draws his strength from his magic soul-eating sword, is actually a subversion of early heroic fantasy tropes, but has become so iconic that he's his own trope);

Lin Carter is actively bad, but Kellory the Warlock is bad in a fun way, for me at least -- Kellory is the Last Of His Tribe; his name literally means "vengeance," which I hope gives the flavor of it; 

I really and legitimately enjoyed Edmond Hamilton's Starwolf, which is better than anything called Starwolf has a right to be;

H. Beam Piper's Paratime is completely ridiculous -- it's about time cops  protecting the One True Timeline, so of course half of it is quasi-medieval; 

and Helen S. Wright's A Matter of Oaths is from 1990, but it absolutely uses these tropes and is delightful, if not entirely successful. 

Also, a lot of the early pulp magazines are online -- mysteriously, no one ever renewed the copyright on the masterpieces in Amazing Stories, so they're on Project Gutenberg. 

[missmeikakuna]

Vocaloid fanfic- The Librarian and the Maybe-Bisexual Bookworm Ch. 3

This is a fanfic I wrote for Vocaloid Amino for a previous Pride Month and thought I’d post it here. Rated: T Fandom: Vocaloid Relationship: Yukari x IA Relationship Type: F/F Description: Yukari is a hardworking student who manages to balance her studies with her relationship with a boy. Things start to change when she meets her high school’s young, beautiful new librarian IA. Yukari asks her to help her find a lesbian-themed novel like one she’s read and all goes well until she realises she might be more like the characters in those novels than she thought.

Chapter Three: Confessing to someone is like telling them about a book that’s your guilty pleasure

IA let go abruptly. “I’m sorry. That was inappropriate of me.”

Yukari croaked, “It’s okay.” She felt as if her skin was on fire. She took a few deep breaths and wiped her tears away.

IA tapped her fingers rapidly against the steering wheel. She looked down at her lap with drooping eyes and sighed.

“Are you okay?” Yukari asked.

IA’s eyes grew and she lifted her head, putting on a smile.

“Of course I am. You’re here, aren’t you?”

This comment sent the warmth from Yukari’s skin to her heart. She smiled and turned her head, covering her mouth.

IA started the car and continued driving as if nothing had happened. Yukari had gotten used to the speed at which she drove by now, but she remained on the lookout for speed limit signs and reminded IA of them whenever they passed one. IA slowed down a bit.

“Please don’t be upset when I ask this, but why do you drive so quickly?” Yukari asked.

IA chuckled. “I don’t know. I’m just always so excited to get to a different place that it kind of takes over me. If you weren’t here to bring me back to my senses, I don’t know what I’d do.”

Yukari’s smile grew bigger.

At the apartment, IA wiggled her fingers for a while before taking a book off her shelf.

She immediately returned it to the shelf. Then she took it out again.

“Okay, this one’s… Don’t judge me.”

She handed it to Yukari while turning her head with her closed eyes scrunched up.

Yukari gulped. It was a pulp novel that appeared to be translated into Japanese. The cover had two women in lingerie, one brunette lying on a bed and the other, blonde, sitting behind her with a mischievous expression. In the corner of the room they were in was a table with a coat and a magnifying glass on it.

IA’s cheeks turned red. “Don’t get the wrong idea! It’s more than just love scenes. I wouldn’t show it to you if it was just that since, you know, that would be kind of weird. It’s a really intriguing mystery and has an interesting romance between the detective…” She pointed to the brunette. “... and the femme fatale she suspects is the murderer.” She moved her finger to the blonde. “It’s surprisingly good for a pulp novel, but the cover makes it a bit of a guilty pleasure. It has some more mature scenes but they’re not that often.”

Yukari’s chest began to hurt from her heart pounding too hard. She nodded and held the book against her chest.

“I’ll give it a go. I’m eighteen, so I think I can handle it.”

“Good.” IA’s eyebrows were furrowed as if she felt guilty about something. “If you feel uncomfortable reading it, you’re not obligated to read the rest. You can just return it to me and we can forget I ever lent it to you.”

“I said it’s fine.”

The two fell silent, just standing there and looking away from each other. 

IA gulped loudly. “Okay. I hope you enjoy reading it.”

Yukari nodded and bowed before leaving the apartment. 

As she headed home she passed Roro’s house and frowned. Her own eyebrows furrowed with guilt, but she continued walking.

When she finally made it home, she had dinner with her family. After that, she put her pyjamas on, lied down in bed and stared at her ceiling. One question tugged at her mind.

‘Would it be wrong for her to date me?’

There was no age issue, at least in terms of the law, as IA was twenty-two and she was eighteen, but Yukari was still a student at the school IA worked at. Then again, it wasn’t like IA was her teacher or anything like that. 

She remembered what IA said.

“That was inappropriate of me.”

Yukari sighed as Roro’s face popped into her head. Was that breakup all for nothing? 

She shook her head. He wouldn’t deserve to be led on like that. 

She opened the book and began reading it. Some parts of the novel were awkwardly worded, possibly as a result of a bad translation, but the mystery was as engaging as IA said it would be. 

When Yukari made it to the first love scene, her entire body went hot. Clunky wording aside, the scene was undeniably attractive to her, and she pictured IA as the blonde girl on the cover as she read the scene. Eventually, she dropped the book and fantasised on her own, the scenario in her mind getting more and more explicit.

When she was done fantasising, she continued reading until Roro’s frightened face entered her mind, convincing her to do homework. After that, she read a bit more until she went to sleep, which was around 11 or 12. It took around half an hour for her to fully fall asleep as the mystery of the novel consumed her mind.

As soon as she woke up, she read some more before her mother yelled at her to have breakfast and go to school.

She shoved the book in her school bag and did as her mother said. During class she kept getting distracted, trying to piece together the clues presented in the novel. She stared at Roro in the seat next to her. He looked back at her and frowned before turning his head and murmuring something she couldn’t hear. She felt her heart sink. 

When lunch started, she took her food with her to the library, saw the ‘no food’ sign and ran outside. She sat under a bridge from the classrooms to the club rooms and opened the book. 

She managed to get near the end. She was so close, and the answer to the mystery was only a few pages away-

And then a teacher walked up to her. He was tall and had eyebrows so thick it felt as if he could crush someone with them. She hid the book behind her back and the teacher scowled at her.

“Show me what you’ve got.”

Yukari groaned but complied, her hands shaking as she held the book up. The teacher raised an eyebrow. 

“Come with me to the Principal’s office.”

“I-It’s not what you think! It’s a mystery novel!”

“Nice try.”

Yukari stood up, trying her best not to cry. She followed him to the Principal’s office, which was inhabited by a short man with a toupee. The teacher handed him the book and the Principal’s eyebrows jumped through the roof. Yukari lowered her head and bit her lip.

“This is… I’ve never seen a girl bring this sort of material to school before. I’m going to have to call your parents.”

Yukari cried, “They don’t know! Please don’t tell them!”

The Principal shook his head. “This is very concerning. Now, where did you get this book?”

“That’s…” IA’s pearly white smile jumped into her mind. “I bought it.”

“And you brought this book here because…”

Yukari turned her head and scrunched up her eyes. 

“I wanted to get answers to the mystery in the book. It’s a murder mystery. Look at the magnifying glass on the cover.”

The Principal stared at the cover, trying to keep himself from smiling.

“I’ll have to confiscate this.”

“For how long?”

“I don’t think a girl like you should be reading something like this.”

“But… please…. I’m really sorry. I won’t bring it in again.”

“Well, since this is your first offence, I guess I can give it back at the end of the week.” He ran his thumb against the cover. “Yes, a week should do. You’ll have learnt your lesson by then. I’m still going to have to call your parents. Come here after school for a meeting. And if you try to leave school before then, I think this book will look nice on my shelf.”

Yukari bowed and left. She headed to the library, finishing her food on the way.

“IA, can I talk to you about the book?” 

IA nodded, leading her to the librarian’s office. Yukari took a deep breath and bowed again.

“I’m really sorry.” She explained what happened.

IA’s eyebrows were furrowed as she rubbed the back of her neck.

“I… I see. The one who should really be sorry is me. Giving you that book… how inappropriate of me. Should I… stop giving you these books? I went too far. I knew this was a bad idea.” Yukari noticed that there were bags under IA’s eyes. 

Yukari raised a trembling hand up to IA’s cheek.

“It’s okay. I… I don’t want to end the time we’ve spent together. I do have something to tell you, though. Hopefully it won’t end… whatever it is we have.”

IA turned away and took a book off the shelf, her breaths ragged. 

“I know what you’re going to say.” She and Yukari spoke at the same time. “You’re straight and feel weirded out by me giving you these books.”

“I like you. Could we maybe, I don’t know, go out for coffee sometime?”

IA dropped the book and whipped her head around.

“Could you… repeat that?”

Yukari’s cheeks went pink. “Well, I like you. You know that breakup with Roro? It was because I liked you more. You kind of made realise that I’m bisexual. I was thinking… maybe we could go out somewhere. I get it if you don’t want to! You probably want to keep your job. But we could keep it a secret if you want. But, you know, if you don’t want to… that’s cool… I’ll act cool as a cucumber. Cool as ice. Cool as… What am I saying?”

IA grinned and giggled, her eyes welling up with tears. She wrapped her arms around Yukari and started to cry on her shoulder.

“Thank you. Thank you so much!”

Yukari patted her head before stroking her hair.

“I-Is that a yes?”

“It has to be secret, though. Are you sure you want to worry about keeping secrets?”

Yukari chuckled. “So long as I don’t do anything as stupid as bringing a dirty book to school, I’ll be fine. By the way, please don’t spoil the ending. I didn’t get to finish it.” She released a short gasp. “Wait, can I tell Roro if he starts talking to me again? He already knows I like you and I know he won’t tell anyone.”

IA frowned and let go. “I… I guess. No one else, though. Not even your parents.”

Yukari eyes widened. “Oh god, my parents. Well, I’ll see you tomorrow since my parents are probably going to drag me home after this meeting. Thanks for reminding me.” Both her body and her voice shuddered as she shook her head like a dog trying to rid its fur of water after a bath.

IA took several books off the shelf and made a pile of them, giving them to Yukari, who stared at her with one eyebrow higher than the other.

IA winked. “We have to keep this a secret, right? Don’t want to arouse suspicion around me taking you to my office.”

Yukari nodded with a smile. She turned towards the door and breathed slowly. She took a few moments to appreciate the moment she shared with IA before having to deal with her parents. For a few more seconds it was just her and the ghostlike librarian who became her girlfriend.

[xhxhxhx]

I removed some books today.

I think of myself as a minimalist, but that doesn’t happen to be true. I have acquired more books than I will ever read. They still sit, stacked and unreachable, in piles by the walls, two dozen books tall and sometimes two books deep.

I don’t think I know where they all came from. I think more came from online than from any physical store. I bought them from Abebooks, the sales search platform that Amazon owns now. Abebooks tell you the names of the sellers, but they seem unconnected to any real place.

From Better World Books. From Thrift Books and Bookbarn. From Silver Arch Books, Motor City Books, Free State Books, Sierra Nevada Books, Yankee Clipper Books, and the Atlanta Book Company. From Green Earth Books and Housing Works Books. From Goldstone Books and Powell’s Books and Kennys Bookshop and Art Galleries. From Satellite Books and the Orchard Bookshop. From Blue Cloud Books and Hippo Books and Wonder Book.

They’re from all over, from places you’ve never been, places you’ll never be. They’re names on a box. But then there are the books from more intimate places, intimately connected

From library’s old bookstore, which sold paperbacks for fifty cents, hardcovers for a dollar. From the basement of the old independent bookstore down on Front Street, where they sold remaindered and overstocked books marked down with red-orange tape. From the thrift store across the street, which charged too much.

From the Chapters at the mall in your hometown, or the Chapters and Indigo in the places you’ve been to, from the shelves of marked-down items where you looked for bargains, for the books you knew you should read, and all the books you never would. Places where you could drink sweet cream and coffee and pretend to read.

From the Borders in Syracuse, where you idled while the family went to the fair, where they always said they were going to build the largest mall in America, but never did. There was another Borders in South Florida, where they were stripping fixtures from the walls because the books had not sold, and so the Borders had to be. They still have bookstores. I’m not sure what they sell now. Postcards, I think.

The books still in my room had postcards from people I will never know, dedications to people I will never see, business cards from people who have moved on to other work. But their spines are unbroken, their pages unmarked. I guess I wanted them that way. I bought them like that.

I sometimes worried they would break through the floor. I would wake up to the collapse of everything I have ever owned as I plummeted a few short feet to my death. I guess it would probably take longer than that. I would have to wait for them to crush me. That mass of books would fall on me, blotting out the light. Crushed beneath nearly everything I have ever owned.

That’s what happened to the clerk Toshiko Sasaki in John Hershey’s Hiroshima, who was seated at her desk on August 6, 1945, in front of a couple of bookcases from the factor library:

Everything fell, and Miss Sasaki lost consciousness. The ceiling dropped suddenly and the wooden floor above collapsed in splinters and the people up there came down and the roof above them gave way; but principally and first of all, the bookcases right behind her swooped forward and the contents threw her down, with her left leg horribly twisted and breaking underneath her. There, in the tin factory, in the first moment of the atomic age, a human being was crushed by books.

Miss Sasaki made out alright, although not so well as to not ask the question “If your God is so good and kind, how can he let people suffer like this?” But then, I have more books than she did.

I removed some books today. I still have more I want to remove. I just don’t have the boxes for them. I took the boxes I did have in the back of my car to a mass-market thrift store, where they will end up on the shelves by the leather jackets. 

Perhaps they will end on some other shelf, like a postcard from somewhere unknown, in someone else’s memory. But I don’t think they will. I don’t think they’ll sell. There aren’t enough people here who spend money pretending to read.

I don’t know what will happen to them. I suppose they will pulp them. Or perhaps they will end in a landfill, crushed beneath their own weight, suffocating beneath the earth we have made for them until life reclaims them.

I wrote out a partial list of the books I threw out. I don’t know what it says about me. There’s a double significance here: These are books I bought, for some amount of money, but these are also books I am throwing away, because I asked the question the woman told me to ask, which was whether they sparked joy, and I answered no.

Those books in the photo are the books that have not yet been thrown away. Here, below the fold, are the books that have:

Judith Fitzgerald’s Sarah McLachlan: Building a Mystery

Mordecai Richler’s Oh Canada! Oh Quebec!

Jonathan Coe’s The Rotter’s Club

Misha Glenny’s McMafia

Joinville and Villehardouin’s Chronicles of the Crusades

Michael Ignatieff’s The Lesser Evil

Russell Dalton’s Citizen Politics in Western Democracies: Public Opinion and Political Parties in the United States, Great Britain, West Germany, and France

Richard Finn’s Winners in Peace: MacArthur, Yoshida, and Postwar Japan

Ramachandra Guha’s India After Gandhi

Fox Butterfield’s China: Alive in the Bitter Sea

Anthony Sampson’s The Changing Anatomy of Britain

Masanori Hashimoto’s The Japanese Labor Market in a Comparative Perspective with the United States

Donald Keene’s Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature of the Modern Era: Poetry, Drama, Criticism

Andrei Shleifer’s Without a Map: Political Tactics and Economic Reform in Russia

Peter Newman’s The Secret Mulroney Tapes

Nicholas Negroponte’s Being Digital

Lesley Downer’s The Brothers: The Hidden World of Japan’s Richest Family

Harold Vogel’s Entertainment Industry Economics

Stephen Goldsmith and William D. Eggers’s Governing by Network: The New Shape of the Public Sector

Donald Harman Akenson, Saint Saul: A Skeleton Key to the Historical Jesus

Philip Ziegler’s King Edward VIII

David Wessel’s In FED We Trust

Robert Dallek’s Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961--1973

David Halberstam’s The Reckoning

David Bell’s The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It

Kevin Phillips’s The Cousins’ Wars

Yirmiyahu Yovel, Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Adventures of Immanence

Michael Oren’s Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East

Lawrence McDonald’s A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers

Richard Posner’s The Crisis of Capitalist Democracy

William Chester Jordan’s Europe in the High Middle Ages

William Cohan’s House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street

Bryan Burrough and John Helyar’s Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco

Linda Lear’s Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature

Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals

Allan Brandt’s The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America

Garry Wills’s Head and Heart: American Christianities

Sarah Bradford’s Elizabeth: A Biography of Britain’s Queen

Andrew Gordon’s The Evolution of Labor Relations in Japan: Heavy Industry, 1853--1955

John Ardagh’s France in the New Century: Portrait of a Changing Society

Bob Woodward’s The Agenda: Inside the Clinton White House

John Julius Norwich’s Byzantium: The Early Centuries

Taylor Branch’s Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963--65

Michael Lewis’s Liar’s Poker

Tim Blanning’s The Pursuit of Glory: Europe, 1648--1815

Robert Fagles’s translation of Virgil’s The Aeneid

Karl Popper’s The Poverty of Historicism

P. D. Smith’s Doomsday Men: The Real Dr. Strangelove and the Dream of the Superweapon

Richard Rhodes’s Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race

Margaret Thatcher’s Downing Street Years

Alistair Horne’s Harold Macmillan, 1957--1986

Taylor Branch’s The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President

Ian Kershaw’s Hitler, 1936--1945: Nemesis

David Grossman’s To the End of the Land

Sean Wilentz’s The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln

Philipp Blom’s The Vertigo Years: Europe, 1900--1914

Jacob M. Schlesinger’s Shadow Shoguns: The Rise and Fall of Japan’s Postwar Political Machine

Peter Jenkins’s Mrs. Thatcher’s Revolution: The Ending of the Socialist Era

Martin Lawrence’s Iron Man: The Defiant Reign of Jean Chrétien

Marin Lawrence’s Chrétien: The Will to Win

Alastair Campbell’s The Blair Years

Tony Blair’s A Journey

David Kennedy’s Don’t Shoot: One Man, a Street Fellowship, and the End of Violence in Inner-City America

Joshua Ferris’s Then We Came to the End

Kate McCafferty’s Testimony of an Irish Slave Girl

Martin Wolf’s Why Globalization Works

Charles Fishman’s The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World’s Most Powerful Company Really Works -- and How It’s Transforming the American Economy

William Easterly’s The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good

Karel van Wolferen’s The Enigma of Japanese Power: People and Politics in a Stateless Nation

Jeffrey Sachs’s The End of Poverty: How We Can Make It Happen in Our Lifetime

[brightisthemalice-blog]

HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT (2015)

I really started going nuts about film in '94. It was mostly three things: PULP FICTION, which I saw seven times in the theater; a cinema appreciation class at my community college, which introduced me to world cinema; & the HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT book.

I had a gas guzzling 1971 Chevy pickup and it was a good 30-40 minute drive to the Green River Community College campus. And since I didn't really date or have a social life (this is how you end up a writer), I'd spend any free time I had between classes in the college library. This was before I really got obsessed with poetry, so I spent most of my library time just sorta mowing my way down the cinema shelf. Orson Welles was my hero at this time, so I'd read anything I could find on him. I tried reading Eisenstein's writings on montage. But I mostly read and reread HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT. So it was a blast to watch Kent Jones' documentary on the book and the odd couple pairing behind it. What I really dug was how much the doc -- and talking heads like Wes Anderson -- fetishized the book itself. Me too, Wes! I reread parts of HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT probably every year. Not as some kind of self-assigned ritual. More likely, as I get deeper into my writing career and begin slouching my way into middle age, I think I can't help wanting to re-access that initial spark. The doc does a pretty fantastic job of condensing the magic of the book and the auteurist conversations within. It also presents wonderfully restored clips from both men's fims, where Hitchcock's majestic use of color and composition really comes blaring through. But what's also incredibly fascinating is seeing the various assembled directors and seeing how they relate to Hitchcock's work. Peter Bogdanovich is his familiar, oddly lovable namedropping self ("As Hitch once told me..."). Wes Anderson is a bit alien, but modest & insightful. For me, though, the really interesting thing about the doc is implicit debate between David Fincher and Martin Scorsese on how to regard Hitchcock. I come to this debate prejudiced: I straight-up idolize Scorsese, while I'm much colder on Fincher than most people are. So I couldn't help but be amused to see Fincher in his sort of smirky, self-satisfied manner discuss Hitchcock mostly as a collection of techniques and perversions. And for him to be seemingly bemused by the idea that anyone would search for something deeper. And then to see Scorsese, in his weary bardic elder openness, sort of sigh and say "yeah, people talk about the sexual obsessions, and that's obvious and easy, but what makes Hitchcock interesting as an artist is how he handles loss." And in the distance between the reactions, I think you can see why Scorsese (like Hitchcock) is a great, immortal artist whose body of work contains mysteries while Fincher is an ace technician who occasionally makes a killer movie when the script is right.

[hayira]

2-1-20

I fought my codependency and hurtfulness and rage and I spat on it and kicked it into the corner. I spent the next few weeks living a very sober and mostly mild version of diluted bliss, but occasionally I would visit the chewed up remains of my own evil and I'd laugh at it and lean down and go I'm so better than you. 
 
I started to fear it. I would sit at home in my own bed and in my own mind and I would cower in the corner because I knew it was standing on the other side of my door. I tried to get in my car and drive away from it, far away. I started to dread so incessantly the day that it would get back up and find me and beat me into a pulp for ever having abandoned it. I was so preoccupied with this, I didn't even notice that my hand had opened the door for it to come back into me. 
 
I think I liked that it had no mystery. I think I like that it tells me flatly what it's going to do with me, and it does, and neither of us are ever surprised. I think I like that when it fills and surrounds me that it is so big there is no room for uncertainty. 
 
Initially, I thought it was haunting me. I thought my habits were stalking me and watching me through my dirty boarded up windows but I now know this was wrong. 
 
I beat up what I thought were the worst parts of myself and compacted them into a container and left them in a jar on the shelf and that's exactly where they stayed. They were not chasing me. I was not chasing me. No, I was returning to them. In the night, half asleep, I'd go back and I'd rattle the jar and open the lid and smell it. 

[mysteryshelf]

SUMMER OF MYSTERY BLOG TOUR - A Pilgrimage to Death

Welcome to the “Summer of Mystery Reads” happening July 9th to August 17, 2018, at THE PULP AND MYSTERY SHELF!

DISCLAIMER: This content has been provided to THE PULP AND MYSTERY SHELF by Xspresso Book Tours. No compensation was received. This information required by the Federal Trade Commission.

A Pilgrimage to Death Alexa Padgett Publication date: August 14th 2018 Genres: Adult, Mystery, Thriller

They murdered her sister. They threatened her church. But their day of reckoning will cost her everything…

When Cici Gurule finds the dead body of a parishioner in the nearby Santa Fe National Forest, she’s horrified to realize the victim bears the same stab wounds that ended her twin sister’s life one year earlier.

Now, as a freewheeling, progressive reverend who’ll stop at nothing to protect her flock, she’ll need to join forces with her detective friend and loyal pair of Great Pyrenees to hunt down the killer before she’s forced to officiate another funeral.

Soon, however, Cici discovers her sister was on the trail of a deep-rooted criminal operation, and her death was no random act of violence. With the criminals out for Cici’s blood, she needs to catch the wolf by the tail…before it goes in for the kill.

Fans of Gillian Flynn, Paula Hawkins, and Stacy Claflin will love Alexa’s Padgett’s new edge-of-your-seat novel! Scroll up and click to start this fast-paced, high-octane mystery thriller!

Goodreads / Amazon / Barnes & Noble / iBooks / Kobo

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Are you a book bloggers? Request a review copy here!

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EXCERPT:

Sam brought his chair down with a soft thump as it hit the patio paver but he didn’t say anything for another long moment.

“Anna Carmen was my best friend. She helped me through a hard time—she helped me see what I couldn’t then.”

Cici’s lip trembled as she lifted her teacup. “I miss her, too. So much. Yesterday . . . it all came bubbling back up.”

Sam’s hand settled on Cici’s shoulder in that gesture of comfort she’d come to depend on.

“I know you do. And, yeah, I figured it would.”

Jaycee sidled up to their table and settled Sam’s large glass of iced tea on the table. Condensation formed on the glass, dripping down to wet the white napkin beneath it.

“I thought of something,” the girl said.

Both Cici and Sam turned their faces up to the teenager.

“Mr. Johnson told me one time he was meeting someone about a case.” Her brow wrinkled for a moment before she shrugged. “Does that help?”

Sam tugged at his short ponytail. “Maybe. Thanks, Jaycee.”

“Sure.” The girl skittered off to greet some new patrons.

“You think you know what the case is, don’t you?” Cici asked, pouring more tea into her cup.

Author Bio:

With a degree in international marketing and a varied career path that includes content management for a web firm, marketing direction for a high-profile sports agency, and a two-year stint with a renowned literary agency, award-winning author Alexa Padgett has returned to her first love: writing fiction.

Alexa spent a good part of her youth traveling. From Budapest to Belize, Calgary to Coober Pedy, she soaked in the myriad smells, sounds, and feels of these gorgeous places, wishing she could live in them all—at least for a while. And she does in her books.

She lives in New Mexico with her husband, children, and Great Pyrenees pup, Ash. When not writing, schlepping, or volunteering, she can be found in her tiny kitchen, channeling her inner Barefoot Contessa.

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SUMMER OF MYSTERY BLOG TOUR – A Pilgrimage to Death was originally published on the Wordpress version of The Pulp and Mystery Shelf with Shannon Muir