The Granddaddy of Goth... Published in 1764, Horace Walpole's dark novel can be seen as the genesis, or beginning, of the gothic horror novel genre.  His model influenced a generation of better known gothic authors, and set the stage, or model for books by Shelley, Poe, Stoker...and bred quite a few copy…

The good ole' days? The history and reality of California's Indian population are dismal.  Under the Spanish, Indians were abused, under the Mexicans, Indians were abused, under the Americans, Indians were abused... I don't find romantic tales about what might have been very enjoyable, given the …

Look a little deeper... The tattooed man that sports ink that moves, charting a map of stories tied together like legs and arms to a torso.  This is Bradbury's illustrated man.  A collection of stories that blend science fiction with supernatural elements, a framework that resembles a good portion of Ray…

You would never expect Edgar Poe to have had involvement in one of the most well known scientific books of his day...but he was. First published in 1839, it was intended that Poe would simply lend his name to this work on seashells for a sum of $50.00, but that changed when Edgar put his pen into the mix.  H…

Coming two years after its first iteration, The Fireman , Fahrenheit 451 is the finished project that gives the full dystopian view of Ray Bradbury's horrific look into a future that prizes ignorance and destroys knowledge.  Read by millions, endorsed as a classic by almost every school, made in motion …

What's in the box? Love and death, two themes Edgar Poe seems to have mastered in his storytelling.  The Oblong Box is a sea tale, and one of three Poe set in the Charleston, South Carolina area.  While in the Army, Poe was stationed at Fort Moultrie on Sullivan's Island, a stone's throw from Cha…

The Gold Bug is perhaps one of Edgar Allan Poe's most notable works, and perhaps one of the most widely read within his lifetime.  It is also his most lucrative, seeing that he received $100.00 in prize money for the story.  Poe entered this story into a writing contest for the Philadelphia Dollar Newspa…

A Ghost Story...with Submarines? Ray Bradbury was one of the most creative fiction writers of all time.  His stories are fresh, original, and at times, downright frightening.  While the Second World War was raging, Ray was writing.  He came up with a creative little ghost story that ties in with perhaps one …

It's a serious book tackling serious social issues in the Black community, issues that have existed for many, many years.  It paints an ugly picture of sex, violence, and ignorance...but a truthful one.  Life is never pretty, and neither is art.  Someone once told me that any work of art, be it a written…

Oscar wrote one novel... The Picture of Dorian Grey, while extremely controversial for the time, particularly for the early homosexual overtones, has come to be seen as one of the key books in 19th-century gothic fiction...right up there with Frankenstein , Dracula , Jekyll and Hyde , and Varney the Vampire …