Wildside Press – Page 2 – Larque Press | The Digest Enthusiast

Reviews April 25, 2019

John M. Floyd’s Rooster Creek

Excerpt from the review of Black Cat Mystery Magazine No. 1 from The Digest Enthusiast No. 7:

“Rooster Creek” by John M. Floyd is a nicely constructed yarn set somewhere in a rural past. Katie Harrison can’t resist a final look at her childhood farmhouse as she’s passing through. Bad idea. There’s a reason the new owners conduct their maniacal mischief in the middle of nowhere.
In her first encounter with the farmhouse matron, Katie asks:

“I thought you were Mrs. Carter. You’re not?”
“I am. But Mrs. Carter doesn’t care for questions,” the woman said stiffly, “unless she’s the one asking them.”

That dubious exchange should’ve sent Katie packing, but she unwisely digs deeper into Mr. and Mrs. Carter’s weird ways until she reaches the end of her rope.

Uncategorized April 12, 2019

Dan Andriacco’s Murder at Madame Tussaud’s

Excerpt from the review of Black Cat Mystery Magazine No. 1 from The Digest Enthusiast No. 7:

Dan Andriacco’s passion for Holmes and Watson is evident in “Murder at Madame Tussaud’s,” where Professor Carlo Stuarti employs his remarkable powers of observation to sleuth out everything Inspector Catchpool of the Yard overlooks or misinterprets. Stuarti, dubbed the “Count of Conjuring” by his PR man Jack Barker, is a prestidigitator by trade, but Barker does his best to immerse the magician in headline-grabbing crime solving for the halo effect on the Professor’s stage show

Uncategorized April 6, 2019

Meg Opperman’s Pie to Die For

Excerpt from the review of Black Cat Mystery Magazine No. 1 from The Digest Enthusiast No. 7:

Annie is not the happily married newlywed she appears to be in Meg Opperman’s “A Pie to Die For.” Just a few months into her marriage a phone call from Benedict triggers an itch.

“My breath caught. My insides tingled. I could feel the heat stealing its way up my neck toward my cheeks.”

Annie struggles for an excuse to sneak away the night before her mother-in-law is due for Thanks- giving dinner. It’s no surprise she prefers action over approval, but Annie is far from predictable. Op- perman’s stories have appeared in EQMM, Wildside’s Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, Weird Tales, and anthologies. Her story “Twilight Ladies” won the Derringer Award for best short story in 2015.

Reviews March 20, 2019

Barb Goffman’s Crazy Cat Lady

Excerpt from the review of Black Cat Mystery Magazine No. 1 from The Digest Enthusiast No. 7:

Barb Goffman leans cozy until the bitter end in the “Crazy Cat Lady.” A horror novelist shares a first-person account of her downward spiral as her torture-porn tomes repel her friends and fuel her own paranoia. Goffman’s “A Year Without Santa Claus?” (AHMM Jan/Feb 2015) won the Agatha Award for best short story in 2015.

Reviews February 23, 2019

Josh Pachter’s Eb and Flo

Excerpt from the review of Black Cat Mystery Magazine No. 1 from The Digest Enthusiast No. 7:

The sheriff of Lamar County tackles his first murder case since his election in 2012. Down-home but savvy, he nails the perp between visits to his uncle and aunt at the Choctaw Nursing Home in “Eb and Flo” by Josh Pachter. An affecting mash-up spun from elements of Pachter’s real-life past. Pachter is a frequent contributor to EQMM—his own stories and the translation of Dutch and Flemish work for EQMM’s Passport to Crime feature.

Reviews February 2, 2019

Art Taylor’s Fairy Tale

An excerpt from my review of B lack Cat Mystery Magazine No. 1 from The Digest Enthusiast No. 7:

Neighborhoods age along with their denizens. As they change, not all their residents adapt, like William, in Art Taylor’s “Fairy Tale.” William don’t like the new flock of school kids hanging around all the time—their attitudes and their—his word—entitled behavior. He don’t like the word old neither. But his kids are grown and long gone, his wife’s passed on, and if you saw him, you’d be hard-pressed to avoid the “O” word. Taylor takes you inside the man’s head so you can feel his rising ire first hand. With nothing else to occupy his grey matter, William can’t help but pick at the things that irk him, staring out at the street in front of his house. Almost like he was looking for trouble.

News January 30, 2019

Black Cat Mystery Magazine No. 4

Contents
John Gregory Betancourt and Carla Coupe: From the Cat’s Perch
Michael Bracken “Something Fishy”
Alan Orloff “Inseparable, Insufferable”
Julie Leo “Use of the Awkward Hand”
Janet Fox “The Timeline Murders” (verse)
Dayle A. Dermatis “Umberto Scolari and the Feast of Paradise”
Ramona DeFelice Long “Moe’s Seafood House”
Su Kopil “Mud Season”
Steve Liskow “Messin’ with the Kid”
Tais Teng “Assassin’s Scroll”
Cynthia Ward “Trouble in Mind”

Black Cat Mystery Magazine No. 4 January 2019
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Editors: John Gregory Betancourt and Carla Coupe
Production Team: Sam Cooper, Steve Coupe, Shawn Garrett, Karl Würf
Cover: Uncredited
6” x 9” 132 pages
POD $12.00 Kindle $3.99
Black Cat Mystery website

Uncategorized January 14, 2019

Alan Orloff’s Getting Away

An excerpt from my review of Black Cat Mystery Magazine No. 1 from The Digest Enthusiast No. 7:

Alan Orloff offers the opening gambit in this issue with “Getting Away.” Lloyd Birnbaum runs a one-man travel agency. Has for years. He does book travel for the sake of the rubes, but relocation, along with fresh identities for his criminal clientele is where his real fortunes lie. Orloff is the author of several novels—mysteries and thrillers. He garnered an Agatha nomination in 2010, and a Kindle Scout award for Running From the Past, in 2015.

News December 20, 2018

Weirdbook No. 40

Regularly $12.00, now $8.15. Grab it fast, who knows how long this price will last!

Weirdbook Vol. 2 No. 10 Issue 40 November 2018
Contents
Doug Draa: From the Editor’s Tower

Stories
Adrian Cole “Iconoclasm”
Franklyn Searight “Have a Crappy Halloween”
Samson Stormcrow Hayes “Early Snow”
Glynn Owen Barrass “The Dollhouse”
Loren Rhoads “Elle a Vu un Loup”
Christian Riley “Bringing the Bodies Home”
Marlane Quade Cook “Restored”
David M. Hoenig “Nameless and Named”
Paul Lubaczewski “Playing A Starring Role”
Mike Chinn “And the Living is Easy”
Paul StJohn Mackintosh “The Prague Relic”
Matt Sullivan “The Circle”
John Linwood Grant “Sanctuary”
Matt Neil Hill “The Giving of Gifts”
Jack Lothian “The Santa Anna”
Kevin Henry “The Dread Fishermen”
Andrew Darlington “Blind Vision”
William Tea “The Thirteenth Step”
Clint Smith “This Godless Apprenticeship”
John W. Dennehy “Waiting”
Paul R. McNamee “Pouring Whiskey In My Soul”
Darrell Schweitzer “True Blue”
Rohit Sawant “The Treadmill”
W.D. Clifton “The Veiled Isle”

Poetry
Jessica Amanda Salmonson “Gila King”
Frederick J. Mayer “Necro-Meretrix”
Frederick J. Mayer “Grinning Moon”
Russ Parkhurst “The Burning Man”
Russ Parkhurst “Silent Hours”
Maxwell I Gold “The Old White Crone”

Weirdbook Vol. 2 No. 10 Issue 40 November 2018
Publisher/Executive Editor: John Gregory Betancourt
Editor: Doug Draa
Consulting Editor: W. Paul Ganley
Cover: J. Florêncio
Interior Artwork: Allen Koszowski
256 pages, 6” x 9”
$12.00 POD, Kindle*
Wildside Press website

*Not available at the time of this writing

Reviews December 11, 2018

Black Cat Mystery Magazine No. 1

An excerpt from my review of BCMM No. 1 from The Digest Enthusiast No. 7:

Editors John Gregory Betancourt and Carla Coupe welcome their readers to the first edition of BCMM from their “The Cat’s Perch” introduction. “We won’t shy away from intense, dark fiction that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand on end. Just as we won’t turn down the next amateur detective in the finest Agatha Christie tradition. Storytelling matters most.”

Black Cat Mystery Magazine’s debut includes an impressive list of contributors, many that will be familiar to readers of those bimonthly digests from Penny Publications.