Orson Scott Card wrote Xenocide after the original Ender’s Game, and Speaker for the Dead. Then he went back and wedged in Ender in Exile between the first two, so I guess technically this is the fourth book…but it’ll always be third in my heart! It’s also third in my list of favorites of the original quintet. “The wise are not wise because they make no mistakes. They are wise because they correct their mistakes as soon as they recognize them.” So the fleet is still on its way […]
Good Idea, So-So Execution
The Immortals consists of several linked short stories that James Gunn published in various magazines in the 1950s. The basic premise is that a man named Cartwright has blood that allows him immortality, and a blood transfusion from him every 30 days could keep another person alive indefinitely as well. The stories focus on the rich men who want to find Cartwright, the doctor who wants to synthesize his blood to mass produce, the consequences of Cartwright reproducing and the effects on his ancestors. As […]
A Strange Romance in Early 20th Century New York
Alice Hoffman’s The Museum of Extraordinary Things tells the story of Coralie, a “mermaid” girl forced to perform in her father’s freak show on Coney Island, and Eddie, who made his living for years by finding people, and has been tasked to find another young girl after a horrible disaster. Coralie and Eddie meet, and things change forever. “You are the one who taught me that love was never what we expected it to be and that it was all we needed. For that, and for a thousand […]
The BAD Nurse
Charlie Cullen, the titular “Good Nurse”, is the most prolific serial killer that New Jersey’s ever produced, and possibly the most prolific serial killer in the history of the United States. Through interviews with police officers, family members, former co-workers and Cullen himself, Charles Graeber puts together the story of this horrifying man. “Access to the vulnerable allowed him to manifest death without dying. He’d learned to kill himself by proxy.” Cullen spent 16 years of his nursing career randomly killing patients in a variety of hospitals […]