A Review of The Corner of My Eye

Title: The Corner of My EyeBook cover for The Corner of My Eye by Rudolph Kohn. Image o cover shows a black square in the middle of the cover. Around the edges of you can make out a dimly lit wooden staircase in an old house.

Author:  Rudolph Kohn

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: February 14, 2023

Genres: Paranormal, Contemporary

Length: 7 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 4 Stars

Blurb:

Moving into a new house can be stressful, and it can be refreshing. But what do you do when you start to hear strange sounds and see hints of motion out of the corner of your eye? What happens to your mind when all of your efforts to get to the bottom of these strange phenomena comes up with nothing? A short Lovecraftian story about figments of your imagination, or perhaps reality.

Review:

Always ask questions if something seems too good to be true.

One of my favorite things about this tale was that almost nothing was revealed about the protagonist. The first paragraph mentioned that they had just bought a new home, but this was really the only piece of information shared about them. Everything else, including their sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, race, ethnicity, and a million other descriptive adjectives that could be used to paint a mental image of who they were as a person, was left blank. This meant that basically any reader out there could imagine themselves in this character’s shoes as they closed on their new home and gradually began to realize they weren’t the only occupant there.

I did find myself wishing that the last scene could provide a deeper explanation of what was already inhabiting the narrator’s new home, especially given the other knowledge this individual had acquired by that point. While I wouldn’t have expected to know everything by the final sentence, having even a few more sentences explaining what was going on would have encouraged me to choose a full five-star rating for this short story.

This started off as a fairly typical paranormal story but soon shifted into something a bit more frightening than is usual for this genre. I loved seeing the protagonist react to each new development as they attempted to figure out how to best handle a situation that was rapidly spiraling out of control. As much as I wanted that final scene to provide a little more guidance, it did end on a deliciously scary note and was well worth the read.

The Corner of My Eye made me shiver.

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: Books Set Near Where I Live

A laptop sitting on a wooden table. The text reads: “Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge. Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.”

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

I know I’ve done similar topics in the past. This time I’m specifically focusing on books set in Southern Ontario instead of in Toronto.

Book cover for Ghost Road And Other Forgotten Stories of Windsor by Marty Gervais. Image on cover is a black and white photo of a back country road that only has one vehicle driving on it. The grass and dry and looks dormant for the winter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1.Ghost Road And Other Forgotten Stories of Windsor by Marty Gervais

 

Book cover for Birding at Point Pelee by Henrietta T. O'Neill. Image on cover shows an aerial shot of Point Pelee. It’s covered in forests and has a beach on the left hand side of the point, too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. Birding at Point Pelee by Henrietta T. O’Neill

 

Book cover for Fifth Business by Robertson Davies. Image on cover shows the silhouette of a man’s head against a round yellow object, possibly the sun. Near him are various objects like a black fist, the tendril of a growing plant, and three solid blue lines in a row.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Fifth Business by Robertson Davies

 

Book cover for Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood. Image on cover shows a painting of a young woman with long light brown hair who is looking serenely off to the side.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

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Top Ten Tuesday: Indie Books I’ve Reviewed Here This Year

The text reads, “Top Ten Tuesday. www.thatartsyreadergirl.com.” Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Thank you to dark.shelf.of.wonders and Books Are The New Black for submitting this theme!

One of the unfortunate consequences of the rise of large language models is how they anre impacting the indie and self-published corners of the bookish community. I’m seeing more and more authors from these sectors use LLMs not only to design their book covers but also to help write or even sometimes do all of the work of writing their stories. (This is something I know because many of them actually admit to it!).

I am morally opposed to the use of LLMs in general because of how harmful they are to the environment, the widespread theft of written and visual imagery that was used to create them, and the devastating number of people who have lost their jobs as a result of these things. Therefore, the number of indie and self-published authors I review on my blog is seeing a steady and probably permanent decline. As committed as I used to be to featuring authors that needed such exposure, I can’t ethically continue to do so under current conditions.

You have the right to your own opinion on this topic, of course, but I will only be approving kind and respectful replies here.

So this post is looking back at a happier time before all of that stuff started happening. Here are ten self-published books I’ve reviewed here in the recent past. To the best of my knowledge, no LLMs were used in the creation of them.

The links below will take you to my reviews of these stories!

Book cover for Homeless by Neal Shooter. Image on cover shows a black and white sketch of someone walking through a forest on a cold winter day. The ground is covered in snow, the trees are bare, and the person is so bundled up you can’t tell what they look like.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Homeless by Neil Shooter

 

Book cover for Love Bug  by Zoe Tasia. Image on cover is a drawing of three light brown envelopes that have been dropped in a snowbank and have a few red hearts floating out of them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. Love Bug by Zoe Tasia

 

Book cover for Five Miles Out Of Black Creek by Neil Shooter. Image on cover shows a dry, dusty country road that has no one travelling on it. It shoots straight ahead and, in the far distance, turns up over a hill. There are mountains even further in the distance. The trees on either side of the road and brown and leafless as it appears to be late autumn in this scene. The sky overhead is hazy and blue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Five Miles Out Of Black Creek by Neil Shooter

 

Book cover for Amina by P.B. Cannon. Image on cover is a watercolour painting of a woman with long white hair dancing in the forest. She’s wearing a light blue dress.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. Amina by P.B. Cannon

 

Book cover for Marginal Worlds by Alfred Bekker. Image on cover shows a realistic drawing of a space ship sailing past a streak of light in outer space. There are no planets or suns in the picture, so the source of the light remains mysterious.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. Marginal Worlds by Alfred Bekker

 

Book cover for Cosmophobia by George Saoulidis. Image on cover shows a computer-generated drawing of the sort of probe scientists have been sending to places like Jupiter. It’s gold-coloured, oblong shaped, and has two wings that look like they also double as solar panels.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6. Cosmophobia by George Saoulidis

 

Book cover for Mayday Mayday Mayday by Holly Schindler. Image on cover is a black and white photo of one of the engines of an antique two-engine plane.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7. Mayday Mayday Mayday by Holly Schindler

 

Book cover for Beach House on the Moon by Leigh Kimmel. Image on cover shows a young white woman with long, straight blonde hair sitting on a rock at the beach while wearing a black jacket. She’s watching the waves crash against the shore.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

8. Beach House on the Moon byLeigh Kimmel

 

Book cover for Chasing June by Holly Schindler. Image on cover shows a straw hat with a red ribbon on it. The hat is lying on top of a little bouquet of white wild flowers that is itself lying on an old leather book.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

9. Chasing June by Holly Schindler

 

Book cover for A Hundred Julys by Holly Schindler,. Image on cover shows a 1970s-style television with a faux-wood cover. It has a small white 1970s-style fan and a potted plant sitting on top of it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

10. A Hundred Julys by Holly Schindler

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A Review of The Bloody Road to Castle Dracula

Book cover for The Bloody Road to Castle Dracula - Explore the History of Vampires & the Inspiration Behind Bram Stoker's Masterpiece Author: Steven J. Rolfes. Image on cover shows a drawing of a castle on top of a hill. A full moon looms large behind the castle, and the sky is a disturbing shade of blood red. Title: The Bloody Road to Castle Dracula – Explore the History of Vampires & the Inspiration Behind Bram Stoker’s Masterpiece

Author: Steven J. Rolfes

Publisher: Llewellyn Publications

Publication Date: August 8, 2026

Genres: Folklore, Nonfiction, Historical

Length: 324 pages

Source: I borrowed it from the library.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

With the inquisitive heart of an adventurer and the rigor of a scholar, this spellbinding work leads listeners through centuries of dark folklore, lost legends, and the wild inspirations behind Bram Stoker’s immortal classic.

Volcanic cataclysms, secret aristocratic scandals, mysterious societies, and ominous landscapes all converge to cast their spell. Historian Steven J. Rolfes skillfully untangles a web of real events, eccentric creators, and uncanny myths that shaped and informed Stoker’s Dracula.

Rolfes’s writing is lively, immersive, and unfailingly engaging, inviting listeners to make sense of what is fact, what is fable, and how the two entwine to birth the world’s ultimate vampire. For those compelled by the timeless mystery of the undead, this book is both an exploration and an adventure, reviving forgotten tales and reimagining the legendary Count for a new generation.

Content Warning: Death, of course. References to epidemics like cholera and tuberculosis. Dead bodies being dug up and mutilated for religious purposes in cultures who believe the recently dead can become vampires.

Review:

Stories can be the gateway to the past.

One of the things I enjoy most about reading about vampires and vampire-like creatures is imagining the real-life events that might have inspired people living in the distant past to come up with such folklore and legends to explain  how the world must work when they encountered things they didn’t yet have the technology or medical expertise to understand in other ways. This book did an excellent job of explaining the many possible origins for vampires from a wide variety of cultures, beginning with hunter-gatherers in Africa tens of thousands of years ago and moving forward through time from there as various aspects of these legends gradually coalesced into what we now know as Dracula.

I did find myself wishing that this book had been given another round or two of editing. The author went on many tangents, some of whose connections to Dracula and legends about vampires in general were sparse at best. It would have been a far more compelling read for me had it been about 20o pages instead of well over 400 as there simply wasn’t enough material here to justify such a long read in my opinion. This is something I’m saying as someone who was extremely interested in the premise and who thought I’d be giving this one a much higher rating.

It was interesting to read the connections the author made to similar supernatural creatures like golem and Frankenstein that shared some similarities with Dracula. These sections were among the best in the entire book, and I would have liked to read about even more creatures from other cultures that exist in that liminal space between life and death. There’s definitely something to be said for collecting these tales and comparing them, especially from historical and public health perspectives.

The Bloody Road to Castle Dracula could be a good pick for the most hardcore fans of this subject.

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: One Sci-Fi Item or Ability I Wish Really Existed

A laptop sitting on a wooden table. The text reads: “Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge. Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.”

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

In previous posts on this topic, I’ve talked about my desire for replicators and for top-notch Star Trek medical care to be real due to all of the wonderful things they’d do for us.

I’m sticking with the Star Trek theme yet again this time because that universe was filled with some excellent ideas.

A computer-generated sketch of what warp drive might look like as a spacecraft suddenly zipped away. Hundreds of white lines are jutting out from a centralized space in the middle of the image, illuminating outer space for a moment as the spacecraft leaves. I wish we lived in a world where Warp Drives really existed as well so we could travel faster than the speed of light and see more of the universe. Right now we are only capable of traveling to the moon which, while still a noteworthy place to explore, doesn’t have any life on it.

Imagine a time when we could travel to distant stars and see if the moons or planets orbiting them had anything interesting living there.

Are there plants growing in those distant places that might cure diseases like cancer?

Are there friendly aliens living there with whom we could trade scientific knowledge and resources?

Could humans live there if necessary? Could aliens live on Earth?

The possibilities are endless, and I wish we could have answers to all of our questions.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books With Nationalities In The Title

The text reads, “Top Ten Tuesday. www.thatartsyreadergirl.com.”
Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

I’m going to try to not repeat any nationalities in this list!

As I haven’t read any of these titles yet, the only thing I can vouch for is that they fit the requirements for today’s theme.

Book cover for Cuban Sun (Sofia Koury, #1) by Ann Bauer. Image on cover shows a Cuban woman’s face superimposed over what appears to be the hull of a modern ship. The sun is setting over the ocean in the distance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Cuban Sun (Sofia Koury, #1) by Ann Bauer

 

Book cover for Anna of Byzantium by Tracy Barrett. Image on cover shows a painting of a young Byzantium girl dress in light gold robes. She has dark curly hair and is quite pretty.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2. Anna of Byzantium by Tracy Barrett

 

Book cover for Stefi and the Spanish Prince by Donna Freitas. Image on cover shows a white woman and a Spanish man embracing underneath a gigantic gold and pink crown outside on a sunny day. The crown is covering their heads and some of the torsos because of how large it is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. Stefi and the Spanish Prince by Donna Freitas

 

Book cover for Number One Chinese Restaurant by Lillian Li. Image on cover shows a white goose hanging upside down with its feet wrapped up in a gold cord. It’s honking and looks distressed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. Number One Chinese Restaurant by Lillian Li

 

Book cover for Indian Dust by Rumer Godden. Image on cover shows a drawing of a leafy plant growing next to a pond.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. Indian Dust by Rumer Godden

 

Book cover for 1916: A Novel of the Irish Rebellion by Morgan Llywelyn. Image on cover shows a photo of a child from the 1910s who is wearing a loose dress and standing in the street.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6. 1916: A Novel of the Irish Rebellion by Morgan Llywelyn

 

Book cover for Jamaican Me Crazy: A Christmas Escape by Debbie Digiovanni. Image on cover shows a pair of pale-skinned feet with red painted nails. They are wearing yellow flip-flops.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7. Jamaican Me Crazy: A Christmas Escape by Debbie Digiovanni

 

Book cover for I Survived the Japanese Tsunami, 2011 by Lauren Tarshis. Image on cover shows a painting of a young Japanese boy running away from a tsunami.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

8. I Survived the Japanese Tsunami, 2011 by Lauren Tarshis

 

Book cover for Mexican WhiteBoy by Matt de la Peña. Image on cover shows a drawing of a young biracial boy who is gearing up to throw a baseball.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

9. Mexican WhiteBoy by Matt de la Peña

 

Book cover for Scottish Ghosts by Lily Seafield. Image on cover shows a ghost wearing red lipstick and a white, transparent shawl. They’re looking up at something, and the effect is eerie due to how pale they are and how red their lipstick is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

10. Scottish Ghosts by Lily Seafield

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A Review of Science and Magic and Lions, OH MY!

Book cover for Magic, Science, & Lions, OH MY! by JD Bennett. Image on cover simply shows the title and author written in a gold cursive font against a light yellow background. Title: Science and Magic and  Lions, OH MY!

Author: JD Bennett

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: October 31, 2025

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery, Horror

Length: About 45 pages.

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

***Intended for adult readers*****

Magic, Science, & Lions, OH MY! is a collection of short stories that include horrifying tales of a rapist eating monster, the staging of a war between fairy tale and folklore characters, and, of course, aliens.

Content Warning: Poisoning, politics, domestic violence, and murder.  I skipped over the story about the rapist eating monster and so will not be including it in my review. (Yes, I read the rest of them!)

Review:

Some fairy tales have sharp teeth.

”The (Attempted) Murder of a Pot Head” showed what happened after the protagonist was poisoned at a family reunion and had to try to figure out who might have been the culprit and what their motivation was. There was a plot twist involved in the investigation of this crime that I don’t want to reveal in my review for spoilers reasons, but it was as clever as it was attention grabbing and showed off Ms. Bennett’s writing abilities nicely.

Anyone who reads the title of “The Confession” can almost certainly make an educated guess about what it is about. What surprised me about this piece was the complete lack of any fantasy, science fiction, or other speculative fiction elements to it. While I thought it included some interesting ideas and had a satisfying ending, it felt out of place in this collection due to that.

By far my favorite story was “Lion in the Mirror” due to how it blended real-life events like the repeal of Roe vs. Wade in the United States to some heavy fantasy elements of a storyline featuring a likeable and intelligent main character. This is the sort of storytelling that grabs my attention and doesn’t let go, and I loved coming up with various theories about how the fantasy themes could be reinterpreted as metaphors for various experiences that many women encounter in their lives, particularly for those of us who are part of one or more other minority groups as well.

Magic, Science, & Lions, OH MY! kept me on my toes. 

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Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge: A Weird Fact I Learned from Reading Fiction

A laptop sitting on a wooden table. The text reads: “Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge. Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.”

Hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Click here to read everyone else’s replies to this week’s question and here to see the full list of topics for the year.

I love this topic but struggled to come up with an answer for it because I don’t read many fiction books that share weird facts in them.

Finally, I thought of a response. When I was a teenager, one of my English teachers assigned “The Landlady” by  Roald Dahl to us. I’m afraid I must spoil the ending of this horror mystery tale in order to write my post, so do go read it first if you’re not already familiar with what happens. It’s a short read.

A white teacup filled with plain tea. Beside it is a white tea maker. Now that you’ve all had a chance to read it for yourselves,  this tale was about a young man who was meeting up with a landlady who happened to have a room available to rent to him. She was a rather strange woman who seemed to be obsessed with taxidermy. The story ends with the young man drinking a cup of tea she offered him that tasted faintly of bitter almonds.

We were all confused about that detail until our teacher told us that cyanide tastes like bitter almonds.

Yes, she poisoned him. After he died, she was planning to taxidermy him just like she had with her previous two boarders.

We were all a little horrified by how this story ended, but it was a memorable one for sure!

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Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Places I Want to Visit

The text reads, “Top Ten Tuesday. www.thatartsyreadergirl.com.” Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

Apologies to Susan @Bloggin’ ’bout Books, but I haven’t visited many exciting bookish places. My books generally come from the public library, and I simply do not have the budget to travel to other countries.

Sand sculpted into the image of an old man sitting at a desk and leaning over to read a book. He looks a little concerned with what he is reading. Unless you want to hear stories about me reading encyclopedias from the 1960s at my grandmother’s house when I was a child, I’ll have to tweak this topic a little in order to participate. 

Therefore, here are ten bookish places I’d like to visit that are either the settings for famous works or have beautiful libraries or festivals there:

1. The W.E.B. Du Bois Center Library in Ghana

2. The Library of Alexandria in Egypt (If it still existed, of course).

3. Prince Edward Island, Canada

4. The Jane Eyre trail, Peak District

5. The Ake Arts and Book Festival in Nigeria

6. Amsterdam

7. Kyoto

8. Cartagena

9. Buenos Aires

10. Chimurenga Library in South Africa

 

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A Review of All the Little Hedgehogs

Book cover for All the Little Hedgehogs by Leigh Kimmel. Image on cover shows a blue double helix strand of DNA against a laboratory background. Title: All the Little Hedgehogs

Author: Leigh Kimmel

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: April 29, 2023

Genres: Science Fiction, Horror, Alternate History

Length: About 20 pages.

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 3 Stars

Blurb:

In Soviet Union, genetic engineering does you. Yona wondered why everyone kept steering him toward a military career, until one of his teachers noticed his aptitude for genetics. Now he’s the personal student of Academician Voronsky, working in a secret genetic engineering facility in a closed town. However, Yona keeps having to spend as much time babysitting the Academician’s adopted son Kolya as actually doing genetics. When this extra assignment becomes a frustration, Yona learns just how quickly privileges can be retracted. And then he starts learning just how deep the secrets of the Soviet human genetics program really goes. A story from the Grissom timeline (Gus on the Moon universe). Caution: Contains intense material that may be disturbing to some audiences. Reader caution advised

Content Warning: Pregnancy, birth, cloning, and brief references to infanticide.

Review:

DNA only tells part of the story.

Genetic engineering is one of those topics I often like to see covered in the Science Fiction genre because of how many different ways it can be approached. While I don’t want to go into too much detail about what exactly what happening  in this facility, I thought the narrator asked some interesting questions about how important genetics are to how someone turns out that might be of special interest to any readers out there who might be related to people who are incredibly different from them in crucial ways. That is to say, you can be a blood relative of someone and share very little in common with them.

I struggled with the violent content in this short story due to how unnecessary it felt for plot development. Horror is a genre I’ve been moving away from, so this made be of greater interest to readers who still like to read that sort of stuff.  Still, there was one particular scene I thought was egregious and could have easily been cut out without ruining the effect of the chilling world Yona knew in general.

The descriptions of the medical facilities were my favourite part of this short story. They were given so much attention that I could easily imagine what it would be like to visit or work there. One bright moment that stood out to me the most involved how the fetuses interacted with each other before birth. I could have read many more pages about them if such a thing were possible due to the funny things they did to each other.

All the Little Hedgehogs made me shudder. 

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