Book Review

The Last Green Valley

Casey

It’s remarkable how many stories from World War II still slip under the radar—stories about human resilience and resolve that deserve to be told. The Last Green Valley by Mark Sullivan feels like one of those stories. I’ve always been drawn to WWII narratives, particularly those set on the European front, but many focus primarily on the Holocaust and people fleeing Nazi persecution. While this novel does reference those atrocities, it tells a story I had never encountered before: a family attempting to find salvation with the Allied forces while fleeing Stalin’s army through Nazi-occupied Europe.

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Book Review

All the Pretty Horses

Casey

I really had to sit with this book after I finished it before I knew what I wanted to say—or even what I thought about it. As many readers know, Cormac McCarthy doesn’t use quotation marks (and sometimes even neglects apostrophes), which can make following dialogue a challenge. At times, I found myself expending more energy just reading the text than fully understanding what was happening on the page.

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Book Review

Night Shift

Casey

Night Shift was Stephen King’s first published collection of short stories. As someone who only relatively recently became a King fan, I was especially curious to explore his short fiction — often cited as where he truly shines. The collection contains twenty stories in total: sixteen previously published in magazines and four original to this volume.

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Book Review

Green River, Running Red

Casey

Green River, Running Red was written by Ann Rule, one of the most prolific and respected true crime authors of her time. She originally intended to write this book in the mid- to late 1980s, when it was widely believed that the infamous Green River Killer would soon be caught and prosecuted. Instead, the case dragged on for decades. It wasn’t until 2001 that law enforcement finally identified the killer — and not until late 2023 that he was definitively put away for the rest of his life.

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Book Review

Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret

Casey

Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret feels less like a full third installment in Benjamin Stevenson’s Ernest Cunningham series and more like a holiday special — something Stevenson and Ernest both lean into openly. It’s noticeably shorter than the first two books, and Ernest even frames it as a kind of “Book 2.5.” That framing works surprisingly well, especially since this entry feels more original than Everyone on This Train is a Suspect, which leaned a little too hard into Murder on the Orient Express territory for my taste.

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Book Review

Identity Theft (Star Trek: The Original Series)

Casey

Identity Theft is an excellent premise for a Star Trek: The Original Series novel, and Greg Cox executes it with confidence, strong pacing, and a deep understanding of the characters. Set almost entirely in the narrow window between Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, the story moves quickly — and it has to — thanks to a metaphorical ticking clock that keeps the tension high throughout.

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Book Review

How to Read a Book

Casey

Let’s start with the title, because it’s always struck me as a little ironic. How to Read a Book. If you’re holding this book in your hands (or listening to it, or reading it on a screen), you obviously already know how to read a book. But that’s not really what Adler and Van Doren mean. What they’re actually offering is a guide to reading with the intention of understanding and mastering a subject, particularly nonfiction. Once I reframed the book that way, everything about it made a lot more sense.

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Book Review

Batman: Revolution

Casey

John Jackson Miller has done it again. Batman: Revolution drops readers right back into the shadow-soaked, gothic grit of Tim Burton’s Gotham — set between Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992) — and immediately feels like home for anyone who loves that era of the Dark Knight. This is a direct continuation of Miller’s earlier tie-in novel, Batman: Resurrection, and once again, he absolutely nails the tone, atmosphere, and character voices of Burton’s world.

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