James McBride has always had a remarkable ability to examine and understand the human mind, and in Deacon King Kong he puts his talents on display once again.
Taking us to a housing project in Brooklyn, we witness the shooting of a drug dealer by an old church deacon and its far-reaching effects on those who witnessed it, as well as those who didn’t.
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“Hell’s Super” by Mark Cain – The Mystery of the Escalator
Mark Cain has given us without a doubt one of the more original and humorous book collections available today with his Circles in Hell series, starting with the bestseller, Hell’s Super.
In it, we are introduced for the first time to Steve, hell’s superintendent, its handyman, who has fallen in love with a saint come to ease the suffering of the damned, all while trying to solve the mystery of the sabotaged escalator which leads from the bowels of hell to the pearly gates themselves.
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“Jerusalem” by Alan Moore – Holy City of English Decadence
Alan Moore may have established his reputation largely through timeless comic books such as Watchmen, but he has also proven himself to be a novelist with no equal, namely through his 2016 work titled Jersualem.
In it, we are taken on an exploration of the madness, brilliancy, decay and degeneracy which has seeped over the years into the town of Northampton in the United Kingdom, taking a close look at the lives of its denizens, forgotten to the rest of the world.
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“Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers” by Bryan Mark Rigg – The Thin Ancestral Line
Bryan Mark Rigg has dedicated his craft, so far at least, to the study of a very particular and interesting topic few are familiar with: the “Mischlinge” (“partial-Jews”), referring to the Jewish people who served in the Nazi army.
In Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers he delves deep into the topic, documenting the stories and fates of some 150,000 such men and how their lives unfolded while caught between two worlds.
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“Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead” by Olga Tokarczuk – The Village of the Dying
Olga Tokarczuk may not be all too famous in the Western world, but she has certainly earned her stripes over in Europe, earning many prestigious awards along the way.
Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead might be one of her more interesting novels, following the trials and tribulations of an older reclusive woman living in a small Polish village where people are turning up dead under strange circumstances. She tries to insert herself into the investigation, certain she knows who the culprit is… but much to the chagrin of new victims, nobody seems interested in her ideas.