Tag: Novella

Arch-Conspirator – Veronica Roth

Antigone lives in the last city of an irradiated landscape. It’s perpetually dusty, the population is dwindling and if you have a viable uterus you’re going to reproduce, whether you like it or not. Your chances of surviving childbirth are 50-50.

When you die in this world, your ichor is extracted from you and stored in the Archives. Would-be parents wander the Archives and make their choices, the Archivist implants the combined cells (complete with edited genes) and, hey presto, designer babies.

Antigone and her siblings, Polyneikes, Eteocles and Ismene, aren’t like everyone else, having been made the old fashioned way.

We were unique among our people, pieced together from whatever random combination of genes our parents provided. Table-scrap children.

This novella is a dystopian retelling of Sophocles’ play. Because I wasn’t already familiar with the story, I found a summary to read before I started this book. While it helped in comparing the two, it also spoiled the ending for me. I could have easily followed this story, even if I hadn’t done any homework before tackling it.

If you do know anything about Antigone, you’ll know this isn’t a happy book. It’s tragedy, grief and the abuse of power.

Doomed from the start, I found myself thinking. All of us.

I sometimes find multiple perspectives distracting and that was the case here for the first few chapters. However, once I figured out who everyone was, I began to enjoy hearing from the different characters: Antigone, Polyneikes, Eurydice, Ismene, Kreon and Haemon.

I would have liked to have explored this world more. I wanted to meet the Archivist. I wanted to understand why this pocket of land was currently habitable when the rest of the planet wasn’t. I would have liked to have gotten to know the characters better. Realistically, though, achieving the level of detail I craved would have pushed this way outside of novella territory.

The themes explored here lined up well with what I’ve read about the original story. I loved Antigone’s fierce loyalty to her family and her resistance against the status quo. I’m not sure what Sophocles would have made of this book (there’s a spaceship!) but I enjoyed this read.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Titan Books for the opportunity to read this novella.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

Outside the last city on Earth, the planet is a wasteland. Without the Archive, where the genes of the dead are stored, humanity will end.

Antigone’s parents – Oedipus and Jocasta – are dead. Passing into the Archive should be cause for celebration, but with her militant uncle Kreon rising to claim her father’s vacant throne, all Antigone feels is rage.

When he welcomes her and her siblings into his mansion, Antigone sees it for what it really is: a gilded cage, where she is a captive as well as a guest.

But her uncle will soon learn that no cage is unbreakable. And neither is he.

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Terrible Worlds: Destinations #3: And Put Away Childish Things – Adrian Tchaikovsky

Mary Bodie’s Underhill children’s books were the inspiration for movies and merchandise. The characters live on in the hearts of the Underlings, who brought their love of the series with them into adulthood.

The series itself was based on stories Magda’s mother, Devaty, told her when she was a child. (Mary was Magda’s pen name.) Devaty claimed to be the “Queen of Fairyland” so she regaled her daughter with stories about Underhill from an asylum.

We catch up with what’s left of the Bodie line at the beginning of the pandemic. Felix ‘Harry’ Bodie, Magda’s grandson, is a minor celebrity with a drinking problem and a curious habit of accidentally running in circles.

“I want you to come and see a wardrobe.”

It turns out that, despite everything Harry has believed up until now, Underhill is real. Unfortunately, all is not well in not-Narnia.

Its residents, which include Timon the fawn, Wish Dog the best dog, Hulder the dryad and Gombles the clown, aren’t exactly as advertised. It’s all a bit decrepit, actually, and there’s nary a Turkish delight in sight. Although there is cosmic dandruff. And swearing, which I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t find in Narnia.

“I am…” Harry said, “not sure what’s going on.”

This is a story of family legacy. It’s about how you respond when the role that was written for you doesn’t line up with reality. It’s characters yearning to fulfil their destiny when the world they inhabit goes off script. It’s portal fiction, which so many of my favourite reads are.

I loved not-Narnia, in all of its dilapidation. I loved its inhabitants, who have been doing the best they can with what they’ve been given. I loved that this felt like one big underdog story, one that was dreary and dismal but that also provided some humour and hope.

Of course, I thought of Narnia frequently and, even when I wasn’t, the book made comparisons for me. The discovery that a fictional world isn’t as fictional as you’d been led to believe reminded me of Lev Grossman’s The Magicians.

I felt a slightly confusing nostalgia about characters I hadn’t grown up with when I read Josh Winning’s The Shadow Glass that I also felt here. I probably spent too much time trying to figure out where on Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children Compass (Nonsense, Logic, Wickedness, and Virtue) this novella would fit.

This is my first Adrian Tchaikovsky read and it’s safe to say that I’m hooked. I’ve been eyeing off this book for months and it was even better than I’d hoped. The world was literally falling apart, the characters were damaged and I loved every minute of it.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Solaris, an imprint of Rebellion Publishing, for the opportunity to read this novella.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

All roads lead to Underhill, where it’s always winter, and never nice.

Harry Bodie has a famous grandmother, who wrote beloved children’s books set in the delightful world of Underhill. Harry himself is a failing kids’ TV presenter whose every attempt to advance his career ends in self-sabotage. His family history seems to be nothing but an impediment.

An impediment… or worse. What if Underhill is real?What if it has been waiting decades for a promised child to visit? What if it isn’t delightful at all? And what if its denizens have run out of patience and are taking matters into their own hands?

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Wayward Children #8: Lost in the Moment and Found – Seanan McGuire

Illustrations – Rovina Cai

Every Heart a Doorway remains my favourite book of all time and I can’t imagine a day when Wayward Children won’t be my favourite series. I look forward to January every year so I can renew the search for my own door.

But … a little piece of my heart breaks every time I’m introduced to a wayward child. I can never forget that childhood trauma connects every wayward. After all, if everything in their lives was unicorns and rainbows, they wouldn’t need a door.

“Some children need to escape from places that will only hurt them, or grind them away until they’re nothing. And some children need to go somewhere else if they’re ever going to grow into the people they were meant to be. The Doors choose carefully.”

It’s safe to say that I hurt for every wayward but Antsy’s story broke me in a way that no other has.

That was the fourth thing she lost: the belief that if something made her unhappy or uncomfortable, she could tell an adult who loved her and they would make everything better.

I didn’t run soon enough. I don’t have words to explain how relieved I am that Antsy did. Not that there wasn’t a cost.

Doors always comes with a cost. Maybe you age out of the world where you belong or you accidentally break a rule and it kicks you out. Antsy’s experience with doors is unlike any we’ve been granted access to before and the cost is similarly unique.

When you consider the reason Antsy found her door in the first place, you’ll realise how appropriate the cost is. People who have experienced trauma that’s a similar shape to Antsy’s will likely have seen this cost play out in their own lives. Maybe not as visibly as in Antsy’s story but it’s still recognisable on the inside.

I doubt we’ll ever walk through Seanan’s door and I don’t think we should ever ask that of her because doors and the worlds that lie behind them are personal. However, between the dedication and the existence of cat-people, I’m pretty sure we’ve never been closer to it.

I would never expect anything different from Rovina Cai but I need to say that the illustrations in this book were practically perfect in every way.

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I was absolutely delighted to discover that a couple of my favourite Door-touched people had cameos in this book.

Favourite quote:

“If an adult hurt you, that’s on them, not on you. Being bruised doesn’t make you bad, unless you’re a peach, and even a bruised peach is good for making jam.”

I’m thinking of starting a petition to name every month January so I don’t have to wait so long to go on my next not a quest with a wayward.

Content warnings include emotional abuse, gaslighting, grief, grooming and physical abuse.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

Welcome to the Shop Where the Lost Things Go.

If you ever lost a sock, you’ll find it here.
If you ever wondered about favourite toy from childhood… it’s probably sitting on a shelf in the back.
And the headphones that you swore that this time you’d keep safe? You guessed it…

Antoinette has lost her father. Metaphorically. He’s not in the shop, and she’ll never see him again. But when Antsy finds herself lost (literally, this time), she finds that however many doors open for her, leaving the Shop for good might not be as simple as it sounds.

And stepping through those doors exacts a price.

Lost in the Moment and Found tells us that childhood and innocence, once lost, can never be found.

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The Two Doctors Górski – Isaac Fellman

When Annae moves to England to complete her PhD, she meets Dr Górski, both of them. Having experienced academic abuse by her former supervisor, Annae is wary, using her ability to read people to feel safe.

Annae was the subject of fascination when she was an undergraduate, using magic to remove fear in rats.

“But with magic like this, it would theoretically be possible to edit our response to trauma, to cure mental illness of all kinds – just a little change in the way we feel and that makes all the difference.”

While the premise fascinated me, the intersection of magic with mental illness and trauma, and the exploration of consent didn’t captivate me like I’d hoped. I somehow managed to hover on the surface of the story, feeling disconnected from the characters.

I wanted Annae’s science themed knitting patterns to endear her to me. I wanted to know more about the two Górski’s and the process of making a homunculus. I’m still not entirely sure why I couldn’t connect with any of them.

It’s become a habit for me to send test emails to any email addresses mentioned in fiction I read. There were two in this story; neither currently exist.

Content warnings include academic abuse, mental health, self harm and suicidal ideation.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Tor for the opportunity to read this novella.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

Annae, a brilliant graduate student in psychiatric magic and survivor of academic abuse, can’t stop reading people’s minds. This is how she protects herself, by using her abilities to give her colleagues what they each want out of their relationship with her.

When Annae moves to the UK to rebuild her life and finds herself studying under the infamous, misanthropic magician Marec Górski, she sees inside his head a dangerous path to her redemption. Annae now faces two choices – follow in Dr. Górski’s lead, or break free of a lifetime of conditioning to follow her own path.

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Ghostwritten – Ronald Malfi

In the beginning of The Neverending Story movie, the bookseller tells Bastian that the books he reads are safe. The books you’ll encounter in the four novellas that comprise Ghostwritten are most certainly not safe.

The Skin of Her Teeth

Gloria’s client, Davis McElroy, has been adapting a bestseller into a screenplay. He’s usually reliable but he’s missed his deadline and it’s up to Gloria to salvage the deal. This book doesn’t like change.

“The simplest thing,” Finter said, “is to give it what it wants.”

The Dark Brothers’ Last Ride

Danny and Tommy Drake have been hired to deliver a package. There are specific rules they need to follow:

  • Don’t open the briefcase.
  • Don’t touch the contents of the briefcase.
  • Follow the route that has been mapped out by the client to get to the drop off location.
  • Ignore anyone who asks to see the book.

The rules are very important. This book is out of this world.

“How can a book be dangerous?”

“Because they contain all the powers of the universe.”

This Book Belongs to Olo

Olo is having a birthday. He will be ten years old. At his party there will be cake, games, prizes and surprises. This book has no words.

“Well, everybody knows how to play hide and seek, I think,” said the girl. “It’s just that, it’s kind of a baby game.”

“Not the way I play,” he said, then tugged the clown mask back down over his face.

The Story

Grady is determined to figure out what story Taryn was working on when she died. This book is Choose Your Own Adventure.

You have been approved to read the Story.

The four novellas have common themes but there are other connections to be found between them. Your attention to detail will be rewarded and I expect a reread will help me discover crossovers I missed the first time around.

It’s difficult for me to choose a favourite story but I definitely had a favourite character, chronically lonely but ever enthusiastic Olo. I’m always a sucker for books about books and here I was treated to four compelling reads. This may only be my second read by this author but Ghostwritten has confirmed my suspicions that I’ve been missing out on something special. I have lots of catching up to do.

Content warnings include death by suicide.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Titan Books for the opportunity to read this book.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

From the bestselling author of Come with Me, four standalone horror novellas set in a shared universe!

In The Skin of Her Teeth, a cursed novel drives people to their deaths. 

A delivery job turns deadly in The Dark Brothers’ Last Ride. 

This Book Belongs to Olo sees a child wielding dangerous control over an unusual pop-up book. 

A choose your own adventure game spirals into an uncanny reality in The Story. 

Full of creepy, page-turning suspense, these collected novellas are all about books, stories, and manuscripts. The written word has never had sharper teeth…

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Three Days in the Pink Tower – E.V. Knight

Tomorrow. Everything will be different tomorrow.

As far as I’m concerned, any book that includes sexual assault could easily be shelved as horror, but this one truly earns that classification. This novella recounts the author’s experience of being kidnapped and raped by two men when she was seventeen. To say that this was a difficult read is the understatement of the year.

Much of the dialogue between Josey and the men come directly from the author’s statement to the police; this added a whole other layer of reality to something that was already painfully real.

If you have experienced sexual assault, you need to know that the sexual assaults described in this novella are brutal. Please take good care of yourself while reading by upping your self care, taking breaks when you need them and ensuring you utilise any supports you have available to you.

I want women to read this and know that no one can take your story from you. It is yours, and you can do whatever you want with it.

Rescripting can be such a helpful tool for sexual assault survivors, particularly in managing flashbacks. Here, the author incorporates tarot and symbolism into her story to rewrite the ending.

“You choose the cards from this point on.”

Content warnings include domestic abuse, gun violence, kidnapping and sexual assault.

Thank you so much to Creature Publishing for the opportunity to read this novella.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

Josey Claypool begins the summer before her senior year at a carnival, where a fortune teller with milky-white eyes gives her a foreboding tarot reading. She’s spooked, but nothing could prepare her for the following day when two strange men show up at her front door.

Josey is kidnapped at gunpoint and brought to a pink cabin in the woods where she is held prisoner. In her darkest moment, the fortune teller appears and gives her a deck of tarot cards, which she must cast and interpret in a fight for her life.

In this work of speculative autofiction, award-winning author EV Knight reclaims the narrative of her own past in an exploration of trauma, agency, and survival.

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Fractured Fables #1: A Spindle Splintered – Alix E. Harrow

Once upon a time, Lady Zinnia of Ohio met Princess Primrose of Perceforest and together they fucked with the fairytale.

Zinnia has spent her entire life living with the fact that she’s dying. On the night of her twenty-first birthday, which statistically will be her last, Zinnia finally finds a use for her impractical degree after accidentally multiversing her way into Princess Primrose’s story. Together these Sleeping Beauties plan to bend the arcs of their narratives.

I don’t know about the moral arc of the universe, but our arcs sure as hell don’t bend toward justice.

Unless we change them. Unless we grab our narratives by the ear and drag them kicking and screaming toward better endings. Maybe the universe doesn’t naturally bend toward justice either; maybe it’s only the weight of hands and hearts pulling it true, inch by stubborn inch.

I fell in love with this Spider-Verse Sleeping Beauty the first time I read it but my own once upon a time rudely interrupted me before I could wrangle my thoughts into sentences. I almost always plan to reread books when the release of their sequel is imminent and this time I actually followed through!

Rereading this novella today has only deepened my love for it. It was a timely reminder that no matter what your once upon a time looks like, your choices have the power to shape your ever after.

“I chose a different story for myself, a better one.”

I’m still convinced that Charm, Zinnia’s best friend, needs to be in charge of every PowerPoint presentation until the end of time.

No matter what’s going on in my life when I begin reading something Alix has written, I know I’ll feel better afterwards. What that better looks like might change slightly with each new read but invariably there’ll be hope and renewed determination to bend my own arc. And if my swear to non-swear ratio runs a tad higher in the days following the read, then all the better.

I think: oh, shit. I say, “Oh, shit.”

My preorder of A Mirror Mended arrived while I was finishing this reread and I can’t decide how to feel about starting it. I’ve waited for so long to see how this duology ends but therein lies the rub. Duology means both yay, there’s another one! and dammit, there won’t be another one after that.

While I ponder whether to power through the next one as quickly as possible to get my fix or drag it out to make it last, I’ll leave you with some fairytale wishes:

May fortune gift you a forever friend like Charm.

May you have the courage to love and be loved.

May help always come swiftly when you ask.

May your ever after outshine your once upon a time.

May you always have cause to speak in exclamation points!

Content warnings include mention of sexual assault.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

It’s Zinnia Gray’s twenty-first birthday, which is extra-special because it’s the last birthday she’ll ever have. When she was young, an industrial accident left Zinnia with a rare condition. Not much is known about her illness, just that no one has lived past twenty-one.

Her best friend Charm is intent on making Zinnia’s last birthday special with a full sleeping beauty experience, complete with a tower and a spinning wheel. But when Zinnia pricks her finger, something strange and unexpected happens, and she finds herself falling through worlds, with another sleeping beauty, just as desperate to escape her fate.

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Wayward Children #7: Where the Drowned Girls Go – Seanan McGuire

Illustrations – Rovina Cai

That strange noise you’re hearing? That’s what a contented sigh mixed with an undercurrent of panic sounds like. It’s January so that means I’ve been able to hang out with some Wayward Children, some I already knew and others I’ve just met. Also, it’s January so I now have to wait until the calendar winds its way through all of the other months and says ‘January’ again before I’m allowed to go on my next quest. Yeah, I know. 

No solicitation. No visitors.
No quests. 

In this not-a-quest, we follow Cora, who we already know and love. Cora, who travelled to the Trenches and has quite possibly the best hair ever as a result, broke my heart all over again in this novella. Haunted by her time in the Moors, Cora comes to the very logical but devastating conclusion that if she can only find a way to forget, she will be safe from the Drowned Gods. 

And everyone knew that things from the other side of the door could absolutely leak through into this reality. 

Cora’s decision takes her away from my beloved Eleanor to the Whitethorn Institute, a place where care is weaponised. There we meet more Waywards, their experience of reentry into this world nothing like those we’ve seen so far. I spent much of this book feeling sad and angry and powerless, but I know Waywards and they’re a plucky bunch so hope is never too far away, even when the circumstances look, sound and, dare I say, taste dire.

I love every world I’ve visited so far and every one I’ve heard about in passing. There’s always a part of me, though, that hopes this will be the story of my door, that when I read it I’ll recognise its shape and it will finally open to me. I already know I’m sure, even if my world eventually spits me back out into this one. I’m going to keep believing and it will find me. 

The closest I’ve come to finding my door came in this book, explored in only four sentences. The never ending Halloween of Emily’s world sounded right up my alley and I’m hoping to get to explore it further in a future book.

As always, I’m obsessed with Rovina Cai’s illustrations. I’m including two of the ones from this novella here so you can drool over them as well and anticipate the awesomeness of this read if you haven’t been there, done that yet. 

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While I’m still patiently waiting for the time when Seanan is sure enough to share Kade’s story with us, I’m also still hoping to visit Eleanor’s world, as well as those of the nameless girl and one of the matrons. 

“The doors never completely leave us.” 

Content warnings include bullying, domestic abuse, fat shaming and a suicide attempt.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

Welcome to the Whitethorn Institute. The first step is always admitting you need help, and you’ve already taken that step by requesting a transfer into our company.

There is another school for children who fall through doors and fall back out again.

It isn’t as friendly as Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children.

And it isn’t as safe.

When Eleanor West decided to open her school, her sanctuary, her Home for Wayward Children, she knew from the beginning that there would be children she couldn’t save; when Cora decides she needs a different direction, a different fate, a different prophecy, Miss West reluctantly agrees to transfer her to the other school, where things are run very differently by Whitethorn, the Headmaster.

She will soon discover that not all doors are welcoming …

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Square3 – Mira Grant

One moment, nature had laws and generally followed them, unenforced and unpoliced. One moment, everything was normal. The next, physics and mathematics were negotiable things, and the supposed laws that had always governed biology were shattered beyond all repair.

Seventeen year old Katharine and her fourteen year old sister, Susan, are almost close enough to one another when the incursion happens. Almost.

Now an adult, Susan works in “rift physics”, the world she knew as a child changed in ways her and other scientists are still trying to come to grips with. Katharine, meanwhile, is on the other side of the rift. Susan doesn’t even know if her sister is still alive. That side of the rift is where the monsters came from, after all.

“Sometimes you have to be inside a thing to understand it”

I preordered this book in May 2021 and may have accidentally burned the cover image into my brain since then. It had me expecting more monsters per page than I actually encountered but the monsters I met were well worth the anticipation. 

I loved Katharine and Susan and the ways they looked after one another as kids. I loved the science and how easily I believed all of this was not only possible but potentially imminent. 

Just in case this novella winds up in the non fiction section, it’s been really nice knowing you. No matter which side of the rift I end up on, it’s practically a certainty that I’m a goner. Maybe I’ll be too mesmerised by the impossible colours to notice the monsters. Maybe I’ll be too curious about the possibilities of the other side of the rift. Maybe I’ll irritate the wrong kid. 

“Should I be alarmed?”

”It won’t change anything if you are, so I wouldn’t bother wasting the time if I were you.”

Bonus points for the delightfully appropriate chapter numbering and Susan’s Project title. 

Now, if someone would please commission a companion novella written from Katharine’s point of view or a sequel, I’d be a really happy soon to be squished, melted or otherwise mangled rift casualty. And if that could happen some time in the next, oh, 130 days, that’d be awesome.

Heads up: the incursion happens on 16 May 2022. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

“This is a safety light!”

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

We think we understand the laws of physics. We think reality is an immutable monolith, consistent from one end of the universe to the next. We think the square/cube law has actual relevance.

We think a lot of things. It was perhaps inevitable that some of them would turn out to be wrong. 

When the great incursion occurred, no one was prepared.  How could they have been?  Of all the things physicists had predicted, “the fabric of reality might rip open and giant monsters could come pouring through” had not made the list. But somehow, on a fine morning in May, that was precisely what happened.

For sisters Susan and Katharine Black, the day of the incursion was the day they lost everything. Their home, their parents, their sense of normalcy … and each other, because when the rift opened, Susan was on one side and Katharine was on the other, and each sister was stranded in a separate form of reality. For Susan, it was science and study and the struggle to solve the mystery of the altered physics inside the zones transformed by the incursion. For Katharine, it was monsters and mayhem and the fight to stay alive in a world unlike the world of her birth.

The world has changed. The laws of physics have changed. The girls have changed. And the one universal truth of all states of changed matter is that nothing can be completely restored to what it was originally, no matter how much you might wish it could be.

Nothing goes back.

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1922 – Stephen King

I believe that there is another man inside of every man, a stranger, a Conniving Man. 

Wilfred James’ Conniving Man causes him and those around him all sorts of trouble in this novella. Determined to live out his days on the family farm, Wilf does everything in his power to convince his wife not to sell her 100 acres of land to the Farrington Company.

Wifey has other ideas and, as a result, she’s about to have a very bad day. Then there’s the whole chain reaction of all things not very nice that follow, because this story originated in the horror show that is Stephen King’s mind. 

A tale of greed and people determined to get what they want when they want it, this quick read reminded me that even when we think we’ve gotten what we want, life can serve up some pretty nasty plot twists. If you’re as fond of rats as Indiana Jones’ dear ol’ dad is, you might want to avoid this one. 

In true King fashion, there were some notable quotables in this novella. The standouts for me were memorable for very different reasons, though.

This little beauty added to my arsenal of excuses to swear (you can never have enough): 

‘The truth is never cussing, Son.’ 

Then there was the one that made my blood boil. The Sheriff reminded me why fee-males should hope to never be mad, bad or sad enough to be written into the King-dom: 

‘Sometimes a fee-male needs talking to by hand, if you take my meaning, and after that they’re all right. A good whacking has a way of sweetening some gals up.’ 

Every time the rats made an appearance, I couldn’t help thinking of the beating of Poe’s tell-tale heart. I kept involuntarily seeing the rat scene from The Bone Collector movie. Naturally, I heard Indiana Jones telling his father ‘There were rats, Dad’ on numerous occasions.

Readers who haven’t reached their quota of rats with appetites after finishing this novella may want to get their swattin’ pole ready to meet Hunter Shea’s Rattus New Yorkus. 

Do you like how things have turned out, Wilf? Was it worth it? 

Content warnings include mention of abortion, death by suicide, death of animals and racial slurs. Readers will emetophobia may have trouble with this read.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Once Upon a Blurb

The chilling novella featured in Stephen King’s New York Times bestselling collection Full Dark, No Stars, 1922 is about a man who succumbs to the violence within – setting in motion a grisly train of murder and madness.

Wilfred James owns eighty acres of farmland in Nebraska that have been in his family for generations. His wife, Arlette, owns an adjoining one hundred acres. She wants to sell her land but if she does, Wilfred will be forced to sell as well. James will do anything to hold onto his farm, and he’ll get his son to go along.

Betrayal, murder, madness, rats, 1922 is a breathtaking exploration into the dark side of human nature from the great American storyteller Stephen King.

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