Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix

Amy is living paycheck to paycheck in suburban Ohio, while working at the Ikea knockoff store Orsk. When the store manager, Basil, asks her to work an overnight shift to see who is sneaking in the store and messing with merchandise at night, she takes the opportunity to make some extra pay in cash. Amy is working retail as “just a job” but Basil fully believes in the teamwork and pride of working there. Amy is dreading her night shift, but there is no way she could predict how the night would end up. As she is working the shift with Ruth Anne, a loyal employee who treats everyone like family, they notice fellow team members Trinity and Matt have snuck in the store overnight to do some ghost hunting. They join up and at first, the mysterious things happening in the store are attributed to a homeless man named Carl, but the group finds that things are not as they seem.

The layout of such a mega store is meant to be disorienting to customers to get them stuck in a shopping loop, but several characters start to get stuck and turned around more often than not in the familiar-to-them store layout. As the creepy factor turns up, it’s hard for the employees to determine if it’s a person or a ghost. The plot thickens as we find out that Orsk is built on the site of a former prison, where the warden was convinced that he could cure criminal minds with forced labor. The amount of terrifying things happening dramatically increases as the “warden” takes control of the store and the inmate ghosts are torturing the Orsk employees. The warden strikes a psychological chord with Amy as he calls out her troubled spirit and aimless life. As the frightening night goes on, she starts to see why Basil values the teamwork of Orsk and learns leadership from him. She fights her way out, but Orsk corporate is determined to keep what happened under wraps. The book is left open for a follow up, which will no doubt be another great story

TL:DR- A quick to read, yet exciting horror book with a deep look at the retail world, purpose, teamwork, and leadership.

Publication Date: September 23, 2014                                                         Page Count: 248

ISBN: 1594745269                                                                                               Publisher: Quirk

Buffalo Lockjaw By Greg Ames

James, a somewhat uninspired son, goes back to his hometown of Buffalo, New York for Thanksgiving to see his parents. While there, he comes face to face with his mother’s dementia and possible impending death. While it is not initially painful for James to visit his hometown, it is not really a joy. He is a mostly mellow character who works for a greeting card company in NYC and is getting by. Once he is home and sees his mother, Ellen’s, current condition he starts to remember a past conversation with her in which she mentioned that if it came to it, she would want assisted suicide to be an option. As a nurse, James knows that she has thought this through. His father, Rodney, is against the idea and doesn't want to discuss it. He is a stereotypical male baby boomer, with the generational traits of a hard worker who swallows his problems and doesn’t complain. As James describes it, “talk about Buffalo lockjaw. He could teach a master class”. There is a nice foreshadowing in the writing about how James will come to find beauty in life’s cruel situations. The cast of his friends and family in this novel help him see his situation differently and add enjoyable depth to the story. Though James has trouble connecting with his father, and it is tough for him to deal with his mother’s decline, the book has a surprising and satisfying ending.

TL:DR- A thoughtful, melancholy, and yet uplifting look at the inevitable and tough choices in life.

Reviewed by Katie Holland, who is a Chicago based artist, creative mind and bookworm.

Publication Date: January 1, 2009                                                 Page Count: 304

ISBN: 1401309801                                                                              Publisher: Hachette Books

The Miles Between Me by Toni Nealie

Exploring nostalgia, loneliness, heritage, and race; Toni Nealie will make your heart ache with this collection of essays. She beautifully examines distances, both literal and metaphorical, between people and cultures. There is a big distance from her homeland of New Zealand, when she moves to the states with her family due to her husband receiving a career opportunity. This meant Nealie had to leave her job, which held a good part of her identity. Her identity was also linked to New Zealand through friendships and self purpose. Once she is living in a near Chicago suburb, she is isolated and feels “suburban neurosis” after being separated from her support network; yet she ends up learning to be resilient without her familiar structure.

 Her thoughts on identity also continue in the essay titled “Meditations on Brownness”. She is called names by strangers, assumed to be a nanny to her own children, or even a criminal. It can be summed up in this line by Nealie: “whiteness could see, often did see, brown as less than”. Her feelings on identity also change once in America because of unspoken social code. She wants to stand up to the person making a racist joke in conversation, but they’ll say she can’t take a joke. Not a win-win situation. She admits her New Zealand accent helps, which is another unspoken part of the code. She describes different shades of brown in the most beautiful and heavy hearted poetic way. Going over a vast array of her life experiences, Nealie’s collection of essays are all beautiful and thought provoking

 TL:DR- This collection of essays will move you and open your perspective on loss and longing. Pick this book up when you want some deep and beautifully written thoughts on distance that cannot be measured in miles

Reviewed by Katie Holland, who is a Chicago based artist, creative mind and bookworm.

Additional info on the book: 
Curbside Splendor
Toni Nealie

Publication Date: May 3, 2016                                     Page Count: 200

ISBN: 194043078X                                                           Publisher: Curbside Splendor Publishing

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

The Shining Girls is a riveting time traveling serial killer mystery, based in various years of the 20th century and set in Chicago. Harper, the killer, is inexplicably drawn to the “House” and finds in his own handwriting the names of his victims: the Shining Girls. These victims are all strong and unique women that Harper stalks through time, waiting to find the perfect moment to kill them and take trophies. He takes trophies to enjoy personally in the House and to also leave with the next victim’s body, therefore creating a circle that he feels the need to complete. We get no background on Harper and why he ended up doing what he does, but it doesn’t really matter because what is happening in the moment is everything to Harper. There is magic realism in play and a conversation about free will and the unexplainable need to do something. Harper can leave the House and go to whatever time period in the future while staying in Chicago. He uses this to stalk his victims, finding some when they are young and telling them that he will be back for them. It’s interesting to see one character, Alice, look forward to him coming back having no idea what will eventually happen to her. Another character, Catherine, can’t handle the knowledge that a stranger is following her and ends up becoming a drug addict. As an adult she makes art by tearing and painting on paper saying that “destruction is a natural instinct”. This is the only feasible explanation for why Harper does what he does as a serial killer, he has no free will to stop what he is doing.  

Harper’s one surviving victim, Kirby, eventually starts to look for him. She is drawn to do so thinking she has no other choice (again bringing up the topic of free will). She lands an internship at the Chicago Sun-Times with the reporter who originally covered her attack. She uses the paper’s resources to track down similar murders in Chicago and at first the span of time seems impossible, but Kirby keeps working on it. It’s satisfying to see Kirby work through the evidence to find what she is looking for. The way the story goes back and forth in perspective, especially from the victim's point of view is a real strong point of Beukes’ novel.

TL:DR- The Shining Girls is a compelling time travel mystery tracking a killer and his one surviving victim; both of them thinking they are doing the only thing they can because they have no other choice.  

Reviewed by Katie Holland, who is a Chicago based artist, creative mind and bookworm.

Publication Date: June 4, 2013                                            Page Count: 375

ISBN: 0316216852                                                                   Publisher: Mulholland Books

Beardo Volume Two- Brew Harder by Dan Dougherty

In Beardo Volume 2 we get a further look into author and artist Dan Dougherty’s life. We see Dan picking up shifts at the coffee shop again, continuing to make comics, and his relationship with Meg developing. Similar to the first volume, we get customer service vignettes, quips between friends and co-workers, and a clean and bright drawing style. There are some more in depth work subjects with issues pertaining to his store manager that cause him to transfer. In the end there is a realization that the part time gig may not totally be temporary and he needs to be happy where he works. There is a continuing theme of the struggle between needing the steady coffee shop job and the desire to be a freelance artist, which brings a level of honesty to this comic we don’t often see in the genre. This volume touches a bit more on the personal, with the recurring story line of Meg wondering when Dan will propose, and we finally get the satisfaction of seeing that coming to fruition right at the end.

TL:DR- Another delightful installment in the Beardo series about making art and making money. Looking forward to the next volume.

Reviewed by Katie Holland, who is a Chicago based artist, creative mind and bookworm.

Publication Date: October 6, 2014                                             Page Count: 144

ISBN: 1939888034                                                                          Publisher: Comicmix LLC