THE ARCHITECT
Of the handful of books I’ve read by Brendan Connell this fast moving novella is the most accessible. Unfortunately it’s also the most problematic.
APPLE OF MY EYE
This snappy paperback short story collection is a good sampling of author Amy Grech’s talents.
APOCALYPSE
An early novel by the popular fantasist Nancy Springer that reads like a more fanciful WITCHES OF EASTWICK. It’s pretty good, too, with many pleasingly imaginative touches and an enjoyable feminist-minded narrative packed with a goodly amount of death, destruction and scary monsters.
APELAND
Another enjoyably depraved relic from the anything-goes seventies.
THE ANUBIS GATES
As with all the Tim Powers novels I’ve read, THE ANUBIS GATES is a difficult book to summarize. At its simplest it’s about Brendan Doyle, an American professor thrust back in time to England of 1810.
ANTHONY SHRIEK
Anyone wondering why Dell’s fabled Abyss horror line, which promised “Horror unlike anything you’ve ever read before,” didn’t last beyond the early nineties need only read this, one of Abyss’ signature entries. ANTHONY SHRIEK isn’t a bad novel, just a severely bloated and self-indulgent one.
ANNIHILATION
The first volume of Jeff Vandermeer’s “Southern Reach” trilogy, and very likely the best of the three
ANGELWALK
This novel, written by a veteran science fiction anthologist, is a wallow in lunatic fringe Christianity that far outdoes more recent Christian lit (like the LEFT BEHIND series) in fire-and-brimstone sermonizing.
AND NOW THE NIGHTMARE BEGINS: THE HORROR ZINE
The latest volume from the irrepressible Jeani Rector (of AFTER DARK, OPEN GRAVE and AROUND A DARK CORNER fame) was this anthology culled from her self-created Horror Zine (www.thehorrorzine.com).
AN EXCHANGE OF SOULS
A novel that’s best known today as an alleged inspiration on H.P. Lovecraft’s “Thing on the Doorstep,” AN EXCHANGE OF SOULS also anticipates Michael Blumlein’s horrific gender-swap classic X,Y in its account of a mad doctor who becomes trapped in his fiancée’s body after a soul-switching experiment goes wrong.