Reading Desperation and The Regulators back to back is a fun experience, and once again ties in with Dark Tower/Talisman ideas of echoes, twinners and the like. Ka, man, it’s all Ka. Of the two books, The Regulators is the darker and more violent of the two, which is saying something because both books lean…
Category: The Book Shelf
Star Trek: New Earth – Wagon Train to the Stars (2000) – Diane Carey
I’ve been circling starting this novel for a couple of decades now. I love how the Enterprise looks on the cover; I love the idea that the story takes place between The Motion Picture and The Wrath of Khan. I’m not going to lie, I was hoping they would be in the TMP uniforms for…
Other Worlds Than These (2026) – Stephen King, and Peter Straub
Like many Constant Readers, I knew what the title of Stephen King’s and the late Peter Straub’s third Talisman book signified. It was going to do things we always suspected and hoped for. It was going to tie itself in directly to King’s epic Dark Tower series, a story that serves to unite almost all…
Desperation (1996) – Stephen King
God is cruel. That’s what this book tells me. I remember buying this book, and its companion piece, The Regulators when they came out. I also know I read them, but some twenty years later, I have no memory of what happened in either of them. So it seemed like a great time for a…
Come Closer (2003) – Sara Gran
So good. So unnerving, and truly horrifying. Sara Gran’s novella does not overstay its welcome, but boy, does it get under you skin. This ended up being an exemplary horror story that wa over too quick, but damn if it didn’t unnerve me throughout. Told from the first person narrative, we are in Amanda’s mind…
Inside of a Dog (Revised Ed. 2025) – Alexandra Horowitz
I have always loved dogs. I feel I have an affinity for them, and they me. In a room filled with people, I’m going to look for a dog to hang out with. And though we anthropomorphize our furry companions, they aren’t human. They see and know the world in a different way than we…
From a Buick 8 (2002) – Stephen King
For some reason this Stephen King novel seems to keep slipping off my list, and I don’t know why. I stopped it sliding off this time, and dug into a creepy and fun novel that feels like it’s on the edge of other King stories without throwing you right in the middle of one. It’s…
The Exorcist’s House (2022) – Nick Roberts
Nick Roberts’ The Exorcist’s House is a fun idea, and it’s filled with little nods to the genre and the tropes, particularly William Peter Blatty’s original novel The Exorcist. But for all that, it seems to be a popcorn horror book. It’s fun, though some of it feels like it goes a little too far…
Hurricane Gold (2007)- Charlie Higson
It’s been awhile since I checked in with James Bond, and his early days as chronicled by Charlie Higson. Set in the 1930s, the young Bond finds himself on an adventure that takes him on a dangerous journey through the Mexican jungles, and a dangerous rat-run on a hidden Caribbean island. That island is a…
Lonesome Dove (1985) – Larry McMurtry
According to USA Today, if I only read one western in my life, it should be Lonesome Dove. I’ve enjoyed western films, and now thanks to the spreading Taylor Sheridan universe, I thought I may dip into it. Clocking in at 858 pages, the 40th anniversary edition is introduced by Sheridan, and I saddled up…
