3.5 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

I don’t mind insects, they have an essential purpose in the world, whether it is pollinating, feeding vast numbers of other species or even clearing all the crap that everything leaves behind. I generally don’t find bugs creepy, but some people do, and this is the inspiration behind all these authors’ stories.

This is the list of stories included:

The Sphinx • Edgar Allan Poe • (1846)
The Blue Beetle: A Confession • A. G. Gray, Jun. • (1857)
The Mummy’s Soul • Anonymous
After Three Thousand Years • Jane G. Austin • (1868)
A Dream of Wild Bees• Olive Schreiner • (1888)
The Moth • H. G. Wells • (1895)
The Captivity of the Professor • A. Lincoln Green • (1901)
The Dream of Akinosuke • Lafcadio Hearn • (2007)
Butterflies • Lafcadio Hearn • (1904)
Caterpillars • E. F. Benson • (1912)
An Egyptian Hornet • Algernon Blackwood • (1915)
The Wicked Flea • J. U. Giesy • (1925)
The Miracle of the Lily • Clare Winger Harris • (1928)
Warning Wings • Arlton Eadie • (1929)
Beyond the Star Curtain • Garth Bentley • (1931)
Leiningen Versus the Ants • Carl Stephenson • (1938)

None of these stories terrified me, I am glad to say, but there was the odd one that made me shudder, in particular Caterpillars. I thought some were better than others, with my favourite being Beyond the Star Curtain, with The Captivity of the Professor coming a close second.

It is a great little collection that these editors have uncovered from the vaults of the British Library. I liked the intro for each of the authors and a potted history of each story, and even better, it was just before the story, so no flipping backwards and forwards. The stores are as diverse as the insects portrayed. Not all of the stories portray the insects as enemies of us, but those stories are in there if you fancy being creeped out a bit.

4.5 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

What we are doing to the planet has been well documented elsewhere by numerous scientists and authors. They and others are battling against vast corporations and sympathetic governments who have a vested interest in keeping us using fossil fuels. Sadly, the disinformation campaign is working, in that the urgency to do something about the problem is diluted. As the erratic weather starts to impact more and more people’s lives, then tougher questions are starting to be asked of our politicians.

One of the effects of climate change is rising sea levels. A lot of it will come from melting glaciers, but water when it is warmer will expand adding to the issue. These changes will affect millions of people around the planet. Rees wants to visit some of the places where populations are most at risk from the rising waters and also to discover the locations of past flood myths and see for himself the now sunken landscapes.

It is a journey that will take him to New Orleans to witness for himself the wreckage that Hurricane Katrina left behind. He visits Italy to scuba dive over a live caldera (!!!) and to view the Roman remains. But he doesn’t also visit real places, this is a symbolic journey, so Atlantis is visited through the mythological landscapes too.

To remind us that this is not a problem that is going to affect sun-drenched islands in the Pacific, he heads to Dungeness close to where he lives to see the stumps of fossilised trees that were submerged 3500 years ago. It is called Noah’s Wood as people once thought that it was inundated in the biblical flood.

It is a stark reminder that we are an island nation and that we will be affected by these changes too.

I haven’t read many of Rees’ books, though I do have all of them. One of them, Unofficial Britain, was my book of the year in 2020. This is an equally engaging travelogue. He has researched his subjects well and he has a keen eye for detail, something no doubt from his psychogeography experiences, where the tiny details do matter.

But this is a book about the future; a future that is rising sea levels, extreme weather events and land lost to erosion and storm surges. It is a future that worries Rees and to be perfectly frank, worries me to. Well worth reading and I can highly recommend it.

4 out of 5 stars

The author provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

Fiona Stocker had already moved halfway around the world from the UK to Australia. However, the life they had made there in the city of Brisbane, was becoming a little jaded and they felt that owed their daughter a chance at a slower pace of life.

They had heard good things about Tasmania and a trip out there reinforced those messages. It didn’t take long to find a property that they liked the look of and as a bonus, it came with five acres of land. They made the decision there and then, and set in motion the move to Tasmania.

Soon after they moved in, her husband acquired some alpacas, an animal that he had always fancied keeping, but as he was developing his new cabinet-making company, it fell to Fiona to look after them along with a toddler and a fast-growing bump, would soon be their second child. It did take a while, but slowly they began to settle into their new home and community.

I thought that this was a very enjoyable book, she writes with a bone-dry wit about the life they are having there. It did seem strange to be reading about a family life set in this part of the world having read so many travel books of people beginning a new life in Europe, it is a very different finding that the garden has wallabies, venomous snakes and huntsmen spiders. Not sure I am keen on the latter two…

If there was one flaw, I think each chapter has been adapted from her blog, they reflect the piece written at that time and it didn’t feel like there was a cohesive narrative at certain points in the book. That said, these snapshots of family life and the way that they settled into their new life is an engaging read.

4 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

The police when investigating a crime follow the process of finding the evidence, interviewing witnesses and finding the perpetrators. But sometimes it isn’t that simple, there are crimes that happen that not even the police can explain.

Well, not all the police, there are records of crimes that have been kept by a police officer in the West Midlands that defy any rational explanation. Drunks that had been going missing from Digbeth and no one had a clue where they had gone. There was then a robbery at an off licence and the trail of clues led the police an unexpected resolution.

A suicide in a hostel seems a regular enquiry with a relatively straightforward conclusion. That is until there is another suicide at the same place. It doesn’t seem to be a coincidence, rather there is something malevolent in the place, but he really doesn’t know what it is…

An investigation into why children were behaving badly and stealing small things leads him to a derelict railwayman’s cottage and it is here where he confronts the thing that is causing the crime wave. The body of a prostitute is discovered behind a bin. They discover her street name is Tanya, but nobody knows who she really is. Following the one lead up, will take him right to the ragged edge of his sanity.

My favourite story is Wake Up In Moloch, a story questioning whether machines are capable of being evil. A death is caused by a sculpture and they follow up the leads. Nothing cam be found though until a second death demands a full bomb squad response and then he has some leads that will take him to a factory where he hopes to get an answer.

I must admit I rarely read horror, I am too much of a scaredy cat. But reading this didn’t really feel like horror. Even though it isn’t hugely scary, there are some unpleasant bits and some quite unnerving moments. I would say that every story gave me a sense of unease with its folk horror elements and post-industrial landscapes. There is quite a lot of psychogeography in here which is great and it felt like a mashup between Edgelands by Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts and London Incognita by Gary Budden. It had a Rivers Of London vibe too, a policeman who can see things that others can’t, but this is but much much darker. If you like your fiction with a darker grimmer edge, then this would be right up your street. You might not want to look behind though…

4 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

This is a fascinating account of a working-class Scottish woman. Like others of that time, she had a really tough life. She was born in 1833 and had began work at the age of nine in domestic service. She became a fishwife, and after a tragedy at sea, she lost a number of male members of her family. It was to rob her of her sanity and she ended up in the Cornhill Asylum. She was encouraged to write her memoirs in pencil and that bundle of papers became this book.

She was a strong woman and didn’t have any tolerance for the airs and graces of the aristocracy, often calling them out on certain matters. She was frequently told that she was speaking above her station, but thankfully that didn’t stop her at all. She held similar opinions of those with a lot of religious power too, most of these people were more concerned with how the were perceived in the eyes of others and had no intention of actually putting their Christian teaching into practice.

She details how the feudal system still worked at that time. The lairds would take a portion of every catch, just because they could. The whole of society was heavily in favour of the aristocracy but as that faded in importance, their lives were then ruled by capitalists, who only cared about profits and little else. Because of the heavy skewing of the system, she and may others spent a lot of time in debt and poverty.

The loss of her family members was too much to cope with and she ended up in asylum. It was here where she learnt who her true friends were and those who now shunned her because of where she had ended up. It made her already tough life, just that little bit harder. She was allowed out after a while, but was readmitted again having been declared insane. And yet it seemed to suit her, the pressures of outside life had gone, but she worried about the children and grandchildren that she had left behind.

I would say this is essential reading for anyone interested in the social history of this country and in particular Scotland. What is quite terrifying is that even though was have come on over a century or more, some of the same restrictions that hold the working class and poor in that position, are still in place today. The great and the good (ha) still have more power and wealth at the expense of wider society. I thought that the editing of the notes was really good. Fraser steers us in understanding about the time that these were written and the wider historical context, whilst letting her voice come through clearly.

4 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

I have always had a thing about Yew trees. They are such a long-lived tree and the places that they are located often show that they have had some significance to people over the past two millennia or maybe even longer. They are a strange tree too, evergreen, but not conifers, almost every part of them is poisonous to mammals, and yet they can save lives.

This book all about them is a mix of science, folklore and cultural history of this unique species of tree. Each chapter covers one element of the tree and the subjects vary from Ancient Yew to Political Yew, Metaphysical Yew to Social Yew. It is crammed full of facts about these trees and pretty much all of them are fascinating.

I thought that this was engrossing and really well-written. Hageneder has researched the subject thoroughly and more importantly, has got the right balance between imparting knowledge and the narrative story of the Yew. If you have even the slightest interest in this species then I can highly recommend it.

3.5 out of 5 stars

The publisher provided a copy of this, free of charge, in return for an honest review.

Writing sounds like an ideal job. Indoors, no heavy lifting, you can set your own hours, and you can tie it in with a bit of surfing the web for research… But it turns out that it isn’t that easy, and yet people still do it.

Being a writer is a very peculiar sort of a job: it’s always you versus a blank sheet of paper (or a blank screen) and quite often the blank piece of paper wins.- Neil Gaiman

If you do manage to turn that blank space into your best work yet, you then have to satisfy the whims of an editor who is highly likely to reject it. Who’d be a writer?

It is a cruel way of baring your soul to the wider world, but yet people still do it. Reading through the short essays in the book I was struck by how a number of authors suffered from mental health problems, perhaps the words need to be forged in the inner pain. And in all that suffering, we, the readers, have some insight into the mind of another person. A different perspective of someone you have never met.

This is how you do it: you sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until it’s done. It’s that easy, and that hard. – Neil Gaiman

I did like this, but I thought that this was brutal at times, Marche does not hold back in his thoughts on the struggles of writers, but in that bleak outlook is a dark humour that really appeals to my sense of humour. I had wanted to be a writer many years ago and even signed up for a course, but now I don’t think that I could, the fear of rejection is too much, just writing reviews on a blog is enough for me. I did think that there wasn’t a wide enough spectrum of authors in here.

I kind of want to pass this to an author that I know, but don’t know how it will affect them; though I suspect they would agree wholeheartedly with it.