Prairie Fox Reads

  Cookies, Confessions, and Christmas Carnage: A Review of Merry with All That Murder by Jack Steen The Asylum Confession Files #6 | Horror, Thriller, and Mystery | 182 pages | First published December 12, 2022 Rating: ★★★★☆ Jack Steen’s Merry with All That Murder takes the comforting ingredients of Christmas fiction—cookies, candy canes, familiar songs, and holiday traditions—and contaminates them with blood, revenge, and deathbed testimony. The sixth installment in The Asylum Confession Files is a compact anthology of five confessions from violent patients spending their final hours in an asylum’s death ward. The book retains the series’ grimly effective premise. Jack Steen, the narrator and night nurse, cares for patients who are expected to die before leaving his ward. Many are serial killers, mass murderers, and other dangerous criminals. In exchange for easing their deaths, he asks them to provide the complete versions of their crimes: not the sanitized statements, officia...

      Title:   A Fire Endless   (Elements of Cadence, #2) Author:   Rebecca Ross Edition:   First Edition Publication Date:   December 8, 2022 (Harper Voyager) Page Count:   512 pages ISBN:   978-0008514709 Genre:   Adult Fantasy / Romantasy / Folklore Target Audience:   Adult and crossover New Adult readers interested in atmospheric, character-driven mythological fantasy.   Disclaimer: I was provided a copy of this book from the publisher for review; however, this has not affected the content of this review in any way. All opinions and analyses remain my own.   Rating:   ★★★★½ (4.5 / 5 Stars) Introduction: Publication and Context Published in late 2022, Rebecca Ross’s   A Fire Endless   arrives as the sweeping conclusion to the   Elements of Cadence   duology. Arising during a literary moment heavily invested in the “romantasy” subgenre, Ross’s work distinguishes itself through its grounded f...

  Surviving Loss and Searching for Meaning: A Review of RELEASED: From the Human Identity Crisis & Spiritual Dis-ease by Kaya Gibson Posted on Prairie Fox Reads  https://prairiefoxreads.blogspot.com/2022/12/surviving-loss-and-searching-for.html Book Details: Title: RELEASED: From the Human Identity Crisis & Spiritual Dis-ease Author: Kaya Gibson Original Publication: December 1, 2004 Current Edition: Kindle Edition (Published November 21, 2022) Format: Kindle Edition, 157 pages Genres: Memoir, Spirituality, Inspirational Nonfiction, Near-Death Experience Some memoirs are written to document a life. Others are written to communicate a message the author believes is larger than themselves. Kaya Gibson's RELEASED firmly belongs in the second category. Part personal memoir, part spiritual testimony, and part exploration of a near-death experience, the book chronicles Gibson's journey through profound physical challenges, devastating loss, and a transformative...

  Intelligence, Evil, and the Birth of Criminal Psychology: A Review of All That Is Wicked In All That Is Wicked , Kate Winkler Dawson examines the life and crimes of Edward Rulloff, a nineteenth-century murderer whose intelligence fascinated the public almost as much as his violence horrified it. Rulloff was a criminal, linguist, self-styled scholar, and master manipulator who became the object of intense scrutiny from journalists, physicians, psychiatrists, neurologists, and phrenologists. Many believed that studying him—and eventually his brain—might reveal the physical or psychological source of evil. Dawson’s book operates at the intersection of true crime, intellectual history, and the early development of criminal psychology. It is not merely a chronological account of Rulloff’s offenses. It is also a study of how Victorian America attempted to understand people who seemed to violate every accepted standard of morality. Through Rulloff’s case, Dawson explores an enduring que...