Dec 19, 2019

In the 2019 biography I Put a Spell on You: The Bizarre Life of Screamin' Jay Hawkins, journalist Steve Bergsman tracks the life of the noted shock rocker including his rise-and-fall-and-rise to fame, run-ins with the law, and rocky romantic life. Kate and Jack discuss the book as it relates to the biography as a...

Nov 24, 2019

John Norman's long-running Gor series has a reputation that precedes it. Set on a brutal counter-Earth where beautiful women long to be enslaved by the strong men who maintain nature's moral balance, it would seem that the books have all the trappings of spicy, guilty pleasure reading. Jack and Kate dive into the...

Oct 17, 2019

Fritz Leiber is probably best known to fantasy fans as the creator of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, but he was also an accomplished author across a myriad of pulp formats. In his 1943 novel Conjure Wife, he creates a world that is only modern on its surface, where behind every great academic is an equally great witch....

Oct 2, 2019

Before the anime, before the manga, there was the Hideyuki Kikuchi's Vampire Hunter D light novel series. Don't be fooled by that nomenclature, though: these books are chock full of wackiness. Part sci-fi, part weird western, part dark fantasy, and part teen romance, the Vampire Hunter D books take a kitchen sink...

Sep 16, 2019

Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre composed the 32-novel saga of Fantômas in the three years between 1911 and 1913. Over the course of the series, France's elusive master criminal commits a litany of heinous deeds that unfold at a baffling breakneck pace. The books are early examples of the crime procedural genre,...