Book Review: Aliens Warp Reality

A Hole in the Sky, by Daniel H. Wilson (Doubleday)

A Hole in the Sky by Daniel H. Wilson combines elements of thriller, horror, and first-contact science fiction. Something’s out there…it’s made contact with Voyager 1, out in the heliopause, the boundary where the interstellar medium and solar wind pressures balance each other…and a mysterious, infallible US intelligence predictive device issues a warning: “First contact imminent.” These are not cute, friendly aliens, nor are they hostile killers (a la Predator). The incoming object is able to warp time, space, and reality itself. Meanwhile, in the heartland of America, a Cherokee single father and his teen daughter rediscover ancient legends of powers protecting their people and the planet.

This book was a quintessential page-turner, a tale that kept me up way too late. While I don’t appreciate shock and gore for their own sake, I found these elements so well integrated into the story that the book would have seemed pallid without them. I enjoyed the characters, especially Jim Hardgray, the Cherokee whose viewpoint—from his indigenous beliefs to his position outside the super-secret military intelligence apparatus—enriches the story beyond its otherwise claustrophobic paranoia. For most of the book, I loved astrophysicist Dr. Mikayla Johnson, an autistic genius whose noise-canceling communication headphones morph from enabling her to manage sensory overload to melding with her brain. My only quibble with the book is her descent into delusions and then outright insanity. I appreciate seeing a character with autism portrayed as strong and competent, but it seemed too easy to show how her different perceptions transformed her into an extension and, hence, a pawn of the weird extra-terrestrial entity.

All in all, this fast-paced book engaged me with characters I cared about and an unrelenting buildup of Things Going Wrong. The author is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, as well as a former threat forecaster for the US Air Force.

 

Three Book Reviews from 2012

I found this in my Draft folder from 2012.  These books are still well worth reading. And if they qualify as "escapism," who among us does not need a bit of that these days?

Ice Cold by Tess Gerritsen. Gerritsen is one of my favorite thriller writers, along with Kathy Reichs. I loved studying anatomy, loved human dissection, and so all the forensic blood'n'guts adds to the fascination. Usually, the books are predictable in the sense of I know ahead of time what kind of reading experience I'll have -- police procedural, forensic pathology, a murder mystery with consistent suspense and smart, savvy female protagonists. Every once in a while, a book will rise about the usual, and this is one. The core is the friendship between cop Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles, their belief in one another, their honesty and care. When Maura disappears after a medical conference and a badly burned body with her characteristics is discovered in a wrecked car, everyone concludes she's dead. Except Jane, who knows the body cannot possibly be Maura's because it wasn't wearing a seat belt. Noticing this kind of detail, and putting it together with Maura's obsessive safety habits is what makes Jane such a tenacious detective. It's a good thing, too, because Maura has stumbled into Nightmare-in-Jonestown. Woven in with the theme of friendship is that of loss -- of family, of a love affair, of hope, of safety. The ending was a surprise -- fair play but not at all what I expected -- but more than that, the resonant layers and fine touches stayed with me after I'd finished.


Due Date by Nancy Wood. This is a first published novel from a talented writer who received very poor editorial support from her publisher. The premise -- a down-on-her-luck student undertakes to become a surrogate mother, only to discover that the parents are baby brokers -- is interesting and refreshing, and the prose is smooth. (I also think it's a hoot that for the past few days, my Spam Box has been full of ads for surrogate mothers.) The characters are strongly drawn, with solid dialog. Yet although the overall story arc has a decent shape, the book feels flabby. The tension takes too long to escalate (for example, it isn't until very late in the book that we learn why selling babies is a horrific thing instead of an illegal way of giving them to loving parents who don't qualify for traditional adoption), too many details and incidents are unconnected or connected in the wrong way, and the protagonist appears either inappropriately suspicious or equally inappropriately gullible. I don't see these as faults of the author, but of a failure of editing. Even seasoned writers need that second pair of eyes, that professional perspective on how to pull it all together, to make every piece pull its weight at the right time in the right way. All the elements of a really good suspense novel are present, and as it is, Due Date offers an entertaining story with many strengths, worth reading. It could have been much more, and I'm hoping that future novels from Nancy Wood will do justice to her considerable potential.

The Glass Butterfly by Louise Marley. There's a special delight in picking up a new Louise Marley novel, akin to expecting the unexpected. Who else could write about Mozart's musical genius transmitted by a vampire's bite, or time travel to discover the mystery of Clara Schumann's passionate romance with Brahms? Music, as the jaded, time-worn vampires in Mozart's Blood know all too well, is the one joy that transcends the years, perhaps because it cannot exist outside of time.

Music, particularly the glorious operas of Puccini, is an abiding love of Victoria Lake, and the one thing she must renounce if her identity is to remain hidden as she goes on the run from a psychopathic killer. But music cannot be extricated from the soul, and Puccini's own life -- as seen through a servant girl -- soon begins unfolding in Victoria's dreams. It's never entirely clear whether this is a purely psychological phenomenon or whether there is some fantastical element, some bond or message across time. Are the lives of the two women parallel in the deadly risks they each face? Does music have the magical power to cross time as well as space? Or is this all happening in the highly-stressed mind of a woman who has already survived one attempted murder? It doesn't matter, because the metaphors and images and emotional responses are real, no matter how them come to us. Bottom line: an extraordinary book by a master storyteller. If you don't already love Puccini's operas, you will.

Book Review: A YA Stumbles

 Abeni's Song, by P. Djèlí Clark (Tor)

I requested an ARC of this book from NetGalley because I loved the author’s previous work. RING SHOUT and THE WAR OF THE DJINN engaged my imagination with compelling characters and gripping, freshly inventive stories. Alas, in my reading experience ABENI’S SONG fell far on all counts. It’s a YA fantasy set in a mythical African village and steeped in African folklore and customs. The first time I tried to read it, it was so tedious and slow-paced and its characters so stilted and bland that it regularly put me to sleep. Then I decided to give it another chance. I made it halfway through before I realized I was using one excuse after another to not read any further. All my previous problems were still there, plus more. I gave up halfway, at a point when I should have been eager to return to the story. Here’s a roundup of what didn’t work for me:

1.        First and foremost, the kids lack agency and competence. At twelve, most children—especially those in traditional societies—already have a wide range of skills. They contribute to their communities at adult or near-adult levels. Here, they have few responsibilities, they consistently behave in ways that are disrespectful and irresponsible, and they are utterly helpless in the face of a threat to their village. One of the joys of contemporary YA novels for both young and adult readers is the resourcefulness of the young characters.

2.       Abeni and some of her friends are annoying to the point that I lost all sympathy for them. Abeni, the viewpoint character, seems completely unaware, for example, of her mother’s fighting skill, something her mother would have practiced regularly to maintain. She’s a self-centered brat, and no one except the witch calls her on it.

3.       Despite bursts of action, the pacing is excruciatingly slow. Material is repeated, adding to the already excessive length for a YA novel. There’s little sense of dramatic shape, and the tension dissipates in the long gaps between action scenes. I perked up during the attack on the village and its aftermath, only to have all the dramatic momentum evaporate.

4.       The evil characters are two-dimensional, as if they woke up in the morning and went, “Evil! Evil! Rah-rah-rah!” This is in stark contrast to the nuanced complexity of the antagonists in Clark’s adult novels.

I am left wondering if this was either a trunk (early, unsuccessful) novel or an attempt at YA by someone who never reads it. The prose, annoyingly peppered with exclamation marks and juvenile (in the worst sense) worldview, is what one might expect if unfamiliar with the genre. All that said, I liked Clark’s adult novels enough to give future work a try and hope there will be more of them.

 

 

Reprint: Is My Brain Wired to Never See a Ghost?

 

Is my brain wired to never see a ghost? A psychologist on three factors that make a paranormal experience more likely

When you experience something that can’t easily be explained, do you think of the supernatural? Zeferli/iStock via Getty Images Plus

Melissa Maffeo, Wake Forest University

Around 1 in 5 Americans say they’ve seen a ghost. I’m not one of them, and I probably never will be. I blame my brain.

Let me explain. No one can say definitively that ghosts exist, but many people believe they do. Roughly three-quarters of Americans believe in some form of paranormal activity – not only ghosts, but psychic abilities, precognitive dreams, mediums and anything else that conventional explanations can’t account for.

As a psychology professor, I often think about the subjectivity people use when interpreting experiences. I wonder, then, if there are perfectly ordinary explanations for seemingly extraordinary experiences. Maybe a perfect storm of everyday factors can converge and trigger the sensation of a paranormal experience.

In my new book, “Science of the Supernatural,” I explore the idea that the human brain might be creating an experience of the supernatural by misinterpreting the external world. Here are three factors that might trick your brain into creating a fake ghost:

Haunted factor #1: Environmental stimuli

Anyone who’s ever watched a ghost hunting show has seen the paranormal investigator mutter something like “The EMF’s going crazy” when there’s purported supernatural activity afoot. Electromagnetic fields, or EMFs, are invisible areas of energy created by electrically charged particles.

At present, there is no direct evidence that humans can consciously sense EMF the same way we can touch, see or hear things in our environment. But with a handheld device purchased at a local hardware store, you can measure them anywhere. An EMF detector picks up electrical or magnetic activity, whether human-made or otherworldly. But do EMF fluctuations relate to paranormal activity?

The scientific method might help answer this question. In one study, conducted in the South Street vaults underneath Edinburgh, Scotland, EMFs fluctuated more in areas with a history of ghostly happenings. Another study found greater variability of EMFs in the more “haunted” areas of Hampton Court Palace in England.

People might unknowingly be detecting changes in environmental stimuli, like electromagnetic fields. The question then becomes: Did the ghost cause the EMF, or did the EMF cause the ghost?

To date, only one research group has attempted to experimentally manipulate environmental factors, including complex EMF, and measure subsequent perceptions of the paranormal.

Participants did report many peculiarities, ranging from feeling dizzy to feeling like they were detached from their bodies and even sensing a presence – but these experiences didn’t correspond to how the researchers varied environmental conditions, like EMF intensity. Interestingly, the people who described anomalous experiences were the same people who believed more strongly in the paranormal.

Do environmental factors like EMF lead to perceptions of the paranormal? On the one hand, there is a correlation between reportedly haunted places and EMF variability. And there are some indications that humans can detect magnetism. On the other hand, experimental manipulation of EMF did not relate to weird perceptions in a lab setting.

I think we need to look into other haunted factors.

Haunted factor #2: Neurological mix-ups

Kindness, Fishtanks, and Getting Banned - June's Newsletter is Here!

Kindness, Fishtanks, and Getting Banned by Facebook!

I just sent out my newsletter for June 2026! Among other things, it's the story of how my cat, Freya, rescued me from being kicked off Facebook. It also features Freya in her very own action-adventure film as she stalks the Denizens of the Fishtank.

You can read the whole thing here:

Don't miss an issue! If you enjoyed Freya's adventures  (and my books) please subscribe here.

[ARCHIVES] Do Not Murder In My Name: The Rush to Federal Executions

This post first appeared in 2020. 

Now, in the waning days of 2020, the criminal in the White House has pushed through a string of murders. I realize I have used inflammatory language, but nothing less conveys the intensity of my outrage and revulsion. Simply put, someone who initiates and demands the ending of a human life is a criminal. The deliberate, calculated, cold-blooded taking of a human life is murder. 

From the BBC: 

As President Donald Trump's days in the White House wane, his administration is racing through a string of federal executions.

Five executions are scheduled before President-elect Joe Biden's 20 January inauguration - breaking with an 130-year-old precedent of pausing executions amid a presidential transition.

And if all five take place, Mr Trump will be the country's most prolific execution president in more than a century, overseeing the executions of 13 death row inmates since July of this year.

The five executions began this week, starting with convicted killer 40-year-old Brandon Bernard who was put to death at a penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. The execution of 56-year-old Alfred Bourgeois will take place on the evening of 11 December.

I am the family member of a murder victim, and I speak from personal experience of the impulse to revenge the taking of my mother's life. I also know that this is a natural expression of grief, and that with healing, it passes. To me it is essential that those left behind be given the support and time to process that loss and to re-engage with their lives. To focus on killing someone else freezes us in retaliation mode. 

Over the years, I have spoken out against the death penalty, telling my story to groups as diverse as city councils, law students, death penalty abolition activists, and state legislators. In 2012, I was invited to participate in an international conference put on by Murder Victim Families For Human Rights. Then I met others like me, who had lost a single family member to violence, those whose loved ones had been executed or were on death row, and those who experienced both. Every single person who had experienced both was Black. There is no escaping the racial injustice in the way the death penalty is applied (or the way crimes are investigated and prosecuted). Yet the most moving part of that weekend was listening with an open heart to mothers weeping for their executed sons -- and realizing their grief and loss was no less than mine. 

If you, who are reading this, take away nothing else, remember this: every person who is put to death is or has been loved by someone, and is grieved by someone, and missed like an aching hole in the heart by someone.

In 2019, I penned a blog for Death Penalty Focus, called "When we focus on revenge instead of healing, we never heal." You can read it below.

Book Review: A Haunting or a Hoax?

An Ordinary Sort of Evil (A Rip Through Time Novel), by Kelley Armstrong (St Martins)

I love time-travel stories, especially those with a hint (or more!) of mystery and romance. Kelley Armstrong’s “A Rip Through Time” series checks all the boxes. In addition, she has a gift for bringing the reader into the story without needing to read all the previous volumes. The setup takes Mallory Mitchell, a 21^st Century homicide detective, into Victorian Scotland. The catch is that she doesn’t travel in her own (fit, martial-arts trained) body, she gets stuffed into that of a buxom housemaid, an outrageous flirt with ties to the criminal underground. In the early episodes, Mallory reveals her identity and forms alliances with the housemaid’s employer, forensic-science pioneer/undertaker Dr. Duncan Gray and Detective Hugh McCreadie, with the three working murder cases together.

Now Duncan and Mallory are summoned urgently to the home of Lady Adler, where they find a séance instead of a death in the household. The spirit identifies herself as Lady Adler’s missing maid and pleads that Duncan find her killer. How much is a hoax, and has a real crime been committed? One plot twist leads to another, against the background of a simmering romance between Mallory and Duncan. Drenched in historical detail, well-portrayed characters, and nuanced relationships-across-centuries, the book kept me enthralled until the final revelation—and eager to read the next chapter in the love story.

 

Reprint: Strongmen Doomed to Fail!

 

The ‘warrior ethos’ promises victory — history says it leads to defeat

Hitler and Mussolini salute Nazi troops in 1937. Bettmann/Getty Images

John Broich, Case Western Reserve University

At Marine Corps Base Quantico in September 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth promised assembled generals “maximum lethality” and no “stupid rules of engagement.” Under his leadership, the newly rebranded Department of War would “untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill.” Troops would be held to the “highest male standard,” he said. “Weak men won’t qualify.”

Hegseth also restricted anonymous whistleblower and discrimination complaints and limited how long past misconduct can be held against a service member, weakening internal rules and oversight processes the military had built over decades.

Months later, with the Iran war underway, he told reporters at a Pentagon briefing that the U.S. was “punching (Iran) while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.” He has also said the U.S. will give “no quarter, no mercy” to its enemies, language legal experts say can constitute a war crime under international law.

Hegseth calls his military doctrine the “warrior ethos.”

Historians of fascism have catalogued similar rhetorical patterns — strongman posturing, contempt for constraint — for decades.

I’m a historian of race and nationalism and author of “Blood, Oil and the Axis,” a book about World War II and nationalism in Iraq and Syria. I’ve studied how fascist regimes fight. At its core, fascism is ultranationalism fused with a cult of masculine strength, racial hierarchy, paranoia about socialism and contempt for democracy. It also has a theory of war: Victory belongs to the ruthless and the ideologically pure. Rules are for the weak.

Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and Imperial Japan all built their military strategies on some version of this ideology in the run-up to the Second World War. And in each case, the strategy failed, undone by its own contradictions.

The fascist theory of war

Democracies don’t necessarily fight clean wars. During World War II, the Allies firebombed cities, created internment camps and dropped atomic bombs.

What distinguishes fascist powers from democracies is their contempt for rules based on their sense of superiority. In 1933, Adolf Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels announced that the Nazis would claim the absolute right to override democratic constraints. “This contemptible parliamentarianism … is gone,” he said.

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini said it more bluntly in 1936: “We do not argue with those who disagree with us, we destroy them.”

But rules of engagement function as a control system that ties tactical decisions to strategy, law and the risk of escalation. Discarding them tends to produce the atrocities and strategic blowback that lose wars.

Democratic procedure does similar work: Political scientists who studied 197 conflicts from 1816 to 1987 found that democracies won about 76% of their conflicts and non-democracies 46%, in large part because accountable leaders and public access to information force a government to notice when a plan isn’t working.

A fascist regime that treats democratic constraints as obstacles is likely to decide inconvenient information is an obstacle too. Because of this, in fascist governments, loyalists rank higher than experts. Fascist systems don’t remove people for being wrong; they remove them for insufficient loyalty. The man who tells the leader what he wants to hear rises. The man whose report contradicts the leader’s views endangers himself.

Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, King Victor Emmanuel III and Queen Elena watch a parade held in Hitler’s honor in 1938. Behind them, from left: Joachim von Ribbentrop, Galeazzo Ciano, Joseph Goebbels and Rudolf Hess. Bettmann/Getty Images

#BookReview: Middle-Grade Fantasy With Universal Appeal (and a Hedgehog)

 The Raven Throne, by Stephanie Burgis (Bloomsbury Children's Books)

My introduction to the marvelous fantasy novels of Stephanie Burgis was through her adult novels. I loved the combination of humor, romance, dramatic tension, and quirky, lovable characters. When I snatched up The Raven Throne, I failed to notice that (a) it is a MG novel; (b) it is a sequel. Nevertheless, I dove in, trusting that I was in good authorial hands. I was not disappointed.

Instead, the story picked me up and carried me away, with adolescent triplets struggling to balance their new lives in the royal court of Corvenne with their unique talents, their psychic bond to the land and its creatures, not to mention the dastardly schemes of the self-serving aristocrats they have supplanted.

Cordelia now occupies the Raven Throne, and she’s deeply bonded to the ancient, powerful Raven spirits. But at the opening of the story, she has fallen ill and slips into a coma that threatens not only her life but that of the land itself. Her triplet siblings, warrior Rosalind and musician Giles, are facing their own challenges from the courtiers who surround them, persuading them to behave like “proper” royals and to forsake their unique magical gifts. Their allies turn out to be a hedgehog and a red squirrel (thereby earning my loyalty, since those are my daughter’s favorite animals, besides wolves). I love how universal their plight is. What child has not felt pressure to “behave” and ignore what their intuition tells them—in other words, to become less and different from who they truly are? As an adult reader who has had my share of life experiences that tried to silence or mold me into conformity, my heart went out to these children. Bravo, hedgehog and squirrel, for helping them be themselves!

As the story progresses, there are more instances that struck me as universal choices, ones that Giles and Rosalind rise to with the courage of clear-sighted children. They make mistakes, trust the wrong people, and give in to flattery and false hope. But through it all, their quest to save their sister and all of Corvenne shines through as universal.

A true delight.

Reprint: Resilience and "Bouncing Back"

‘Bouncing back’ is a myth – resilience means integrating hard experiences into your life story, not ignoring them

Into each life some rain must fall. Anastasiia Voloshko/Moment via Getty Images

Keith M. Bellizzi, University of Connecticut

When Maria looked at herself in the mirror for the first time after her mastectomy, she stood very still.

One hand rested on the bathroom counter. The other hovered near the flat space where her breast had been. The scar was raw and angry. The loss was quiet but enormous. Her body felt foreign.

In moments like these, people are often urged to be resilient – which can feel like being told to show no weakness, to push through no matter what. Or they imagine resilience as bouncing back: returning somehow unscathed to be the person you were before.

But standing in that bathroom, Maria knew there was no going back. And toughness wouldn’t change what had happened. The real question was how she could move forward, carrying this experience into her new reality.

Maria’s story, one I came to know personally, is far from unique. Loss, trauma and illness often bring the same wrenching questions of identity and the painful uncertainty of what comes next.

I’ve spent more than two decades studying resilience, particularly among individuals and families navigating these kinds of life-changing events. I am also a four-time cancer survivor and author of a new book, “Falling Forward: The New Science of Resilience and Personal Transformation.” If there is one myth I wish society would retire, it’s the idea that resilience means “toughness” or “bouncing back.”

Resilience doesn’t rely on relentless positivity in the face of traumatic challenges. pocketlight/iStock via Getty Images Plus

Rethinking resilience based on research

Moments like Maria’s reveal something important: The way people tend to talk about resilience often doesn’t match how people actually live through adversity.

In popular culture, resilience is often equated with grit, toughness or relentless positivity. People celebrate the warrior, the fighter, the triumphant survivor.

But across research, clinical practice and lived experience, resilience is something far more nuanced, raw and human.

It’s not a personality trait that some people simply have and others lack. Decades of research show resilience is a dynamic process. It’s shaped by the small, everyday decisions and adjustments individuals make as they adapt to significant adversity while maintaining, or gradually regaining, their psychological and physical footing over time.

And importantly, resilience does not mean the absence of distress.

Research on people facing serious life disruptions shows that distress and resilience often coexist. For example, in my study of adolescent and young adult cancer survivors, participants reported being upset about finances, body image and disrupted life plans, while simultaneously highlighting positive changes, such as strengthened relationships and a greater sense of purpose.

Resilience, in other words, is not about erasing pain and suffering. It is about learning how to integrate difficult experiences into a life that continues forward.

Book Review: A Brilliant Ecological Disaster Fantasy From Martha Wells

City of Bones (Updated and Revised Edition) by Martha Wells (Tor)

This is an updated and revised, “author’s preferred” version of a novel by the same name that was published by Tor in 1995. Somehow, I missed the earlier edition, but this one is a long, intricately detailed story that is part ecological apocalypse, part mystery, part fantasy, part racial conflict in a rigidly hierarchical society, and pure adventure.

In a world like Earth, and yet unlike, an ecological cataclysm has reduced human life to a chain of cities on the edge of the Waste, an immense desert that is all that remains of once-mighty oceans. Water and food are scarce, and poverty ensures starvation, except for the nonhuman semi-marsupial krismen, whom legends say were bred by the Ancients to withstand desert conditions. The story begins with Khat, a kris, and his human partner, Sagai, who deal in relics in the bottom tiers of the city Charisat, trying to stay one step ahead of the dreaded Trade Inspectors, for Sagai has a measure of protection as a human, but Khat has none. When Khat is approached by Elen, a magic-wielding Warder, to find relics hidden in a deep-desert artificial structure called a Remnant and believed to be part of one of the Ancients' arcane engines, he really has no choice. What begins as a reluctant expedition quickly turns into a struggle for survival, a deepening mystery, betrayals upon conspiracies, a fanatical cult bent on transforming what remains of human civilization, and revelations about the technology and nature of the Ancients.

Although City of Bones was first released three decades ago, this version represents Wells at her best. Her characters are vividly drawn, especially Khat, and the gradual way she peels back layers of past and personality is superb. The world-building, contrasting the rigidly hierarchical Charisat against the lawlessness of the Waste and the utter chaos of the looming cataclysm, is intricate, well-thought out, and revealed without ever overwhelming the reader with a mass of details. There’s enough context and backstory to fill an entire series.

And then there’s Khat, as human emotionally as he is alien in physiology. I loved his combination of confidence, physical prowess, inner wounds, capacity for tenderness, and courage. Most of all, his integrity shines through the story so that in the end, his choices ring true. Wells created a character I cared deeply about and then refused to cheapen him with a too-easy solution.

This is a long book, worthy of being savored, and sure to inspire readers to return to it for all the nuances we missed the first time.

Highly recommended.

 

Personal Statement Regarding Marion Zimmer Bradley and Sexual Abuse of Children

In light of the Epstein Files revelations, the charges against Rep. Swalwell, and my past association with Marion Zimmer Bradley:

I am a survivor of childhood sexual assault and adult rape. I stand unequivocally with my fellow survivors. I believe their stories, because mine is one of them. Overcoming the pain, self-blame, and paralyzing shame often requires time for those stories to come to light, but they are no less true. In my case, as for many others, survival meant shutting off my gut reactions to dangerous people and situations. What happened to me as a child was only the first incident, but it left a lingering conviction that I was never allowed to say NO. When I look back at my association with Marion Zimmer Bradley, which also involved contact with her ex-husband, the convicted pedophile Walter Breen, I knew on some level that the household was profoundly unhealthy. I wish I had been able to listen to my instincts and sever all contact when I realized what he was and that, although divorced, they remained close. I am horrified that Breen had any contact at all with my children. I assisted the police in their investigation of him that led to his incarceration, but that does not alter my responsibility.

I was overwhelmed by the revelations about Bradley herself.  It was not until later, when I grappled with my own history of assault and denial, that I was able to face the truth. I deeply regret that I did not come forward sooner or add my voice to those of other writers in condemning the sexual abuse and exploitation of children. I am doing so now.

The violation of children (and adults) – both by the perpetrators and those who enable them – is a betrayal of the most fundamental human trust, that of children for the adults who ought to care for them. Those like Bradley who know of such crimes and do not take action, or who participate by procuring children for pedophiles, are just as guilty because they could have stopped the abuse, they could have protected the innocent and spared them decades of nightmares, and they failed to do so.

If anything I have said or done in any way excuses Bradley or any other pedophile or pedophile enabler, I truly regret it, and I ask for your understanding.

 

Regarding my posthumous Darkover novel collaborations:

Under the auspices of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Literary Trust, I wrote nine Darkover novels. The writing is mine, but because she created Darkover, her name also appears on the cover. After the allegations came out, I fulfilled my existing publishing contracts. There will be no more Darkover novels written by me. The decision to reject works by an author who has done reprehensible things is a personal one. However, it was and remains my hope to make the Darkover series available to readers who loved it, written by someone other than Bradley.

Short Book Review: Penric and Desdemona Tackle Possessed Ox

The Adventure of the Demonic Ox, by Lois McMaster Bujold (Subterranean)

The Demonic Ox is yet another enchanting adventure featuring cleric-scholar Learned Penric and the centuries-old chaos demon, Desdemona, who has taken up residence in his mind. In past adventures, Des has given Pen supernatural powers of healing, perception, and strength, and she has a wicked (literally, since she is a demon) sense of humor, but her long existence through many hosts has made her extraordinarily powerful, a fact that Pen never forgets. Now Pen is summoned to investigate a different sort of demonic possession, the host being a valuable ox. Under the quite reasonable expectation that this will be a simple enough matter to resolve (is the ox actually possessed or crazed with a natural illness?), Pen brings along a small coterie of youngsters from his household. He expects the outing to be pleasant and instructive, but unfortunately, he is mistaken. A series of increasingly disastrous turns of events risks not only Pen’s life but those of his young charges.

Like previous adventures, Demonic Ox begins in a slow-paced manner, focusing on everyday family relationships. The sudden reversals spin the story at a breakneck pace, and the increasingly desperate conditions reveal new aspects of the central characters. Although Demonic Ox is not a good entrance point into the series, for established readers, it offers a richly rewarding journey.

I can hardly wait to read what happens next!

Short Book Review: The Return of You Sexy Thing

Devil's Gun, by Cat Rambo (Tor)

At the end of You Sexy Thing, the crew of the space yacht found themselves on the run from a vengeful pirate king. Not only that, but each of them is left grappling with wounds old and recent. The most poignant of these is Talon, a teenaged were-lion whose twin brother was killed by the pirate, and who can barely function alone. A captain grieves the loss of a love, her second-in-command can’t forget his lost daughter, a cloned princess searches for meaning in her life, and the ship itself tries to figure out emotions. Their next step involves transit through an intergalactic Gate, or so they hope. The Gates, created by the mysterious, vanished Forerunners, are supposed to be eternal, yet rumors abound of them dying. When a xenoarchaeologist claims to be able to fix the problem, the captain suspects a con. Nevertheless, the Gate opens as promised, taking them to the most dangerous place known, the corpse of a gigantic space moth, where they might be able to find the one weapon that can put an end to the pirate king.

Rambo’s writing is inventive, sympathetic, and full of vivid imagery. Best of all, her characters invite the reader into their lives and thoughts, weaving together a diverse crew bound by respect, affection, and suspicion. This novel, like the one before it, is a joy from one page to the next.

But wait, there’s more…

Recommended.

Reprint: Whiteness and Gender Inequalities in Protest

 When civil rights protesters are killed, some deaths – generally those of white people – resonate more

Posters memorialize Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two white Minneapolis residents killed by federal agents. AP Photo/Ryan Murphy

Aniko Bodroghkozy, University of Virginia

Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two white Minneapolis residents killed in January 2026 by federal agents while protesting the Trump administration’s immigration policy, have become household names. National media outlets continue to focus on their deaths and the circumstances around them.

Neither of them was the first person to be shot and killed by immigration enforcement officials over the past year. There have been numerous shootings and some deaths.

In September 2025, Silverio Villegas González was killed in Chicago under circumstances similar to Good’s death. Ruben Ray Martinez was shot multiple times by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Texas in March 2025, but their involvement was not revealed until nearly a year later. Neither Martinez nor Villegas González has become a household name, and their deadly encounters with federal agents have not drawn nearly the same level of media attention as Good’s or Pretti’s.

As a media historian, I’ve been struck by the similarities between the media’s coverage of Minneapolis and its coverage of Selma, Alabama, in 1965, when voting rights protests led to violence that left three people dead, including two white victims.

I’ve written about the Selma campaign, as well as the media’s treatment of white female activists killed during racial justice protests, in my books “Equal Time: Television and the Civil Rights Movement” and “Making #Charlottesville: Media from Civil Rights to Unite the Right.”

These two events reveal that the deaths of white activists often draw and sustain far more attention than the deaths of Black or Latino people in similar contexts. But the Selma and Minneapolis events also show that male and female white activist victims aren’t necessarily treated the same way.

Remembering Selma

Video footage of law enforcement beating and gassing marchers on Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge remains an iconic visual document of the Civil Rights Movement. John Lewis, who later became a congressman, was an activist at the head of the march on March 7, 1965, and was beaten in the head at the base of the bridge by Alabama state troopers. But he was not a household name in 1965, and media coverage at the time did not identify him.

Reporters also didn’t pay much attention to what had motivated the march: the killing of Black voting rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson by an Alabama state trooper during a nighttime march a week earlier.

Martin Luther King Jr. delivers a eulogy in Selma, Ala., for James Reeb, a fellow minister who was beaten to death. AP Photo

Still, the prime-time television broadcast of footage from “Bloody Sunday” at the Pettus Bridge shocked Americans, just as footage from Minneapolis has similarly distressed and disturbed many people today.

In 1965, a small number of white Americans from around the country, including numerous members of the clergy, descended on Selma to stand with the brutalized voting rights activists. They included James Reeb, a Unitarian minister from Massachusetts, and Viola Liuzzo, a wife and mother of five from Michigan.

Reeb, following a second aborted march across the Pettus Bridge two days after Bloody Sunday, was viciously beaten by a group of white racists and left lying on the ground, mortally wounded. His beating and subsequent death received plentiful media attention.

President Lyndon B. Johnson contacted Reeb’s widow. She gave media interviews about her husband. Johnson also extolled Reeb at the beginning of his joint address to Congress calling for robust voting rights legislation, four days after Reeb’s death. Johnson never mentioned Jackson’s death.

Liuzzo was ferrying people back to Selma from Montgomery on March 25 after the conclusion of the final, successful march to the state capital when a carload of Ku Klux Klansmen, one an FBI informant, chased her down and shot her through her car window. Her death received even more coverage than Reeb’s, keeping Selma in the news.

The Voting Rights Act passed five months later.

Smearing the victim

Book Review: A Flirtatious Fae Queen Takes on a Straightlaced General

Enchanting the Fae Queen, by Stephanie Burgis (Tor)

Enchanting the Fae Queen is the second installment in Stephanie Burgis’s “Queens of Villainy” series. We met all three in the first volume, Wooing the Witch Queen. (Read my review here.) Now Lorelei, the temptress fae Queen of Balravia who showers glitter and rainbow-colored sparkles everywhere she goes without the slightest regard for good taste, decorum, or royal dignity, takes center stage. Her love interest is the Evil Empire’s most famous (and virtuous) general, Gerard de Moireul. Because of escalating tensions between the aforementioned Evil Empire and a consortium of smaller kingdoms ruled by the Queens of Villainy, Lorelei decides to remove Gerard from the political stage. The two have various adventures, including as partners in a Fae Tournament, grow to understand one another, and fall in love.

In true “enemies to lovers” style, Lorelei and Gerard could not be more different at the beginning of the story. She’s an unrelenting, promiscuous, no-holds-barred flirt, whereas he is highly disciplined to the point of forsaking emotion and physical pleasure for razor-sharp analytical intellect. This is one of the many qualities that make him a formidable general. Lorelei’s powerful magic and her unpredictability likewise make her a daunting opponent. As the story progresses, we see that the two are not nearly as different as they seemed. Both are still grappling with unhealed childhood rejection, and both have difficulty trusting others. But where Lorelei’s loyalty to her fellow Queens of Villainy is founded in respect and common purpose, Gerard harbors an unsuspecting, naïve allegiance to his Emperor.

One of the book’s strengths is the gradual revelation of the characters to the reader, to each other, and to themselves. The tournament is full of inventive detail and suspense, providing ample opportunity for Lorelei and Gerard to demonstrate the depths beneath the masks they show the world.

My concern arises from the initial scenes when Lorelei holds Gerard prisoner. Since I didn’t like Lorelei to begin with (from her appearance in Wooing the Witch King), it was uphill going to stay with her as a sympathetic character. She thinks she’s using playful seduction and bedroom banter as a weapon, and he’s doing his best to ignore the highly suggestive way he’s tied up and how his body is acting. In the current awareness of the devastating effects of sexual coercion and power inequality, these scenes held implications of rape, psychological if not bodily. Consent is fundamental for men as well as women, and a visceral response does not equal willingness, desire (or love). Readers who are survivors of sexual abuse might find this material disturbing and miss out on how the relationship develops.

Trigger warning.

Reprint in Honor of Valentine's Day: Love is a Virtue

 

More than a feeling – thinking about love as a virtue can change how we respond to hate

Seeing hate as a feeling tied to love, rather than being its opposite, might help us choose how to respond. Lusky/E+ via Getty Images

Tucker J. Gregor, University of Iowa

Love and hate seem like obvious opposites. Love, whether romantic or otherwise, involves a sense of warmth and affection for others. Hate involves feelings of disdain. Love builds up, whereas hate destroys.

However, this description of love and hate treats them as merely emotions. As a religious ethicist, I am interested in the role love plays in our moral lives: how and why it can help us live well together. How does our understanding of the love-hate relationship change if we imagine love not as an emotion but as a virtue?

The 13th-century theologian Thomas Aquinas is a foundational thinker in the history of Christian ethics. For Aquinas, hate is not the antithesis of love, or even opposed to it. In his most important work, the “Summa Theologiae,” he writes that hate responds to love. In other words, hate is a reaction to threats against what we love, or what we deeply value. We can better understand the experience of hate by getting clear on what it means to love.

Greek roots

Today, scientists know that feelings of love are related to biochemical processes that release chemicals in the brain, increasing pleasure and excitement. Beyond mere biology or even emotions, some philosophers and psychologists contend that love is also a practice.

Love can also refer to a virtue: a habit or settled disposition that increases the likelihood of people thinking, feeling and acting in ways that promote happiness and well-being. For example, the virtue of courage can help people endure and thrive in the midst of fear and uncertainty.

Audiobook review: A BnB murder mystery with occasional witchcraft

 In the Company of Witches, by Auralee Wallace (Berkley)

I listened to the audiobook version of this cozy mystery with great delight. Part cozy murder mystery, part family saga, part sweet urban fantasy (witches, ghosts, you know the drill), the story invites the reader to contemplate deeper issues of generational trauma, loss, and healing. I say “invites" because the process involves sitting down with a cup of tea and scones.

The Warren witches have used their powers to help their neighbors in the quiet New England town of Evenfall for four hundred years. Currently, sisters Nora and Izzy, along with their niece Brynn, run a bed and breakfast, complete with a secret garden of poisonous plants used in magic. Brynn, too, has a secret: she once was able to communicate with ghosts, but that talent disappeared with her husband’s recent death. And Brynn has no intention of ever using her magic again. So when an unpopular heir to a historic mansion is found dead (aka, murdered) in the bed and breakfast, Aunt Nora becomes the prime suspect.

The story moves along briskly, with plenty of offbeat characters, revelations, and plot twists. If I had to name a fault, it would be how the aunts kept nagging Brynn to use her magic again and her drawn-out reluctance to tell them why she can’t. Otherwise, an entertaining book.

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1614518320i/56552949.jpg

Book Review: Librarian to a Wicked Witch

 Wooing the Witch Queen, by Stephanie Burgis (Tor)

Stephanie Burgis continues to delight readers with her playful twists on fairytale stories. In my opinion, her recent books have taken her skill to a new level.

In Wooing the Witch Queen, she combines magic, Victorian-esque politics, vivid psychological family drama (with attendant trauma), and a sweet, believable love story. Archduke Felix has spent his life as a political pawn and abuse victim of his ambitious relative. When he escapes and shows up at the doorstep of the wicked queen, Saskia, he has no idea of the parallels of their lives. Under her incredibly powerful magic, she’s insecure, convinced that she’s unlovable. A twist of coincidence lands him in the position of her masked librarian, tasked with setting to order the literary chaos of her collection. I’m a sucker for libraries and librarians, and Felix’s education, which has been restricted to poetry and the like, not swordsmanship, serves him well. Not only are their kingdoms on the brink of war, but Saskia has vowed to kill him on sight because of the lies told about his role in the war. His life depends on keeping his identity hidden behind his “dark wizard” mask.

Of course, they fall in love.

Over books.

And mutual sexual attraction, which is fine by me.

I admit that I have no idea how original the world of Wooing the Witch Queen is. I found it both familiar enough that I didn’t need a ton of explanation, and fresh enough to keep me entertained. As I said, I’m a sucker for libraries and librarians.

There are more books in this series. I’m looking forward to the adventures of the other members of the Queens of Villainy.

Reprint: The Joy of Mindful Reading

 

Deep reading can boost your critical thinking and help you resist misinformation – here’s how to build the skill

Just slowing down gives you time to question and reflect. Morsa Images/DigitalVision via Getty Images

JT Torres, Washington and Lee University and Jeff Saerys-Foy, Quinnipiac University

The average American checks their phone over 140 times a day, clocking an average of 4.5 hours of daily use, with 57% of people admitting they’re “addicted” to their phone. Tech companies, influencers and other content creators compete for all that attention, which has incentivized the rise of misinformation.

Considering this challenging information landscape, strong critical reading skills are as relevant and necessary as they’ve ever been.

Unfortunately, literacy continues to be a serious concern. Reading comprehension scores have continued to decline. The majority of Gen Z parents are not reading aloud to their young children because they view it as a chore. Many college students cannot make it through an entire book.

With their endless scrolling and easy reposting and sharing of content, social media platforms are designed to encourage passive engagement that people use to relieve boredom and escape stress.

As a cognitive scientist and a literacy expert, we research the ways people process information through reading. Based on our work, we believe that deep reading can be an effective way to counter misinformation as well as reduce stress and loneliness. It can be tough to go deeper than a speedy skim, but there are strategies you can use to strengthen important reading skills.

Counterintuitively, social media can make you feel more bored and lonely. Dmitrii Marchenko/Moment via Getty Images

Deep reading versus doomscrolling

People use smartphones and social media for a variety of reasons, such as to relieve boredom, seek attention, make connections and share news. The infinite amount of information available at your fingertips can lead to information overload, interfering with how you pay attention and make decisions. Research from cognitive science helps to explain how scrolling trains your brain to think passively.

To keep people engaged, social media algorithms feed people content similar to what they’ve already engaged with, reinforcing users’ beliefs with similar posts. Repeated exposure to information increases its believability, especially if different sources repeat the information, an effect known as illusory truth.

Deep reading, on the other hand, refers to the intentional process of engaging with information in critical, analytical and empathetic ways. It involves making inferences, drawing connections, engaging with different perspectives and questioning possible interpretations.

Deep reading does require effort. It can trigger negative feelings like irritation or confusion, and it can very often feel unpleasant. The important question, then: Why would anyone choose the hard work of deep reading when they can just scroll and skim?

Short Book Reviews: A Queer Lovecraftian School Mystery

The Afterdark, by E. Latimer (Penguin)

After her twin sister drowns under questionable circumstances, Evie questions whether the darkness she has always known lurks inside her was responsible. In the blink of an eye, she gets shipped off to an elite boarding school where her father is the principal. Northcroft, located on a remote island and surrounded by dense, old-growth forest. Spooky things happen, beginning with a nightly bell and shutters slamming down, to her father refusing to see her, to a masked cult and mysterious warnings. To make matters worse, Evie falls for glamorous film star Holland Morgan, not knowing that Holland was her dead sister’s old flame. Every day, it seems, Evie discovers another layer of creepiness. If the school and the members of the clandestine mask-wearing “honor” society weren’t bad enough, the woods themselves are a thousand times worse. Something is out there, something ancient and utterly inhuman, something that Evie is increasingly unable to resist.

The Afterdark hits so many story tropes: it’s a school story with a spooky cult, a lesbian romance, a tale of a teen struggling to break free from a highly dysfunctional family, a Lovecraftian dark horror story, and a murder mystery, all tied up with one cliffhanger plot twist after another. The story grabbed me right away and kept me turning pages, and although I’m not a typical horror reader, for me the dark fantasy elements enhanced and intensified the story in appropriate and emotionally manageable ways. So don’t pass up this marvelous book because of the genre.

 

Another rave review of ARILINN

Just spotted this on Goodreads:

Darkover is my favourite fictional world. It has held me captive through many volumes and through many years. I find it is a place I yearn for sometimes, and I will gladly pick up a favourite book to reread. Something that seldom happens with other books.

Arilinn snared me in from beginning to end. Fast paced and action filled with characters I truly came to care for. The now, to me, familiar world and culture of Darkover marvellously supports the story of hardship and growth of Leora Hastur.

I could not put the book down, and read well into the wee hours of the morning. An absolute must read if you love the Darkover world, and a good introduction to other world travellers.

-- B