Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Peter Laws

Imagine you are asked to assemble a brand new library. You have dozens of empty bookshelves waiting to be filled and you want to ensure the visitors to your library only have the very best books to choose from. The classics, the most popular, the much loved books but also the books which readers love – the story which made them want to write too, a childhood comfort read or the book which brings them most joy on the darkest days. Where do you start if you have to bring all those titles together in one place?

Well I decided to do just that – I imagined the Decades Library. But I knew I didn’t have the reading knowledge to fill the shelves with all those reading treasures so each week I invite a guest curator to join me here at Grab This Book and I ask them to nominate their recommended reading for my Library shelves.

When I ask my guest to nominate the books they feel should belong in the Ultimate Library (my Decades Library) I ask them to follow two simple rules:

1 – You Can Choose ANY Five Books

2 – You May Only Select One Book Per Decade From Five Consecutive Decades.

Simple. Or so I thought – but I get grumbled at on a fairly regular basis.

No grumbles this week as Peter Laws grasped the challenge and hit me up with five brand new titles which I shall add to the Library shelves.

Peter Laws is an author, journalist and podcaster. He wrote the acclaimed non-fiction book ‘The Frighteners: Why We Love Monsters, Ghosts, Death and Gore’ (Icon Books, 2018). This is a globe-trotting explanation (and defence) of the human morbid streak.

He has also written the Matt Hunter series of scary crime fiction novels (Allison and Busby, 2017 – 2020). He is the writer and host of the popular, scary true stories podcast ‘Frightful’. He is the creator of ‘Creepy Cove Community Church’. A podcast which offers full and immersive church services broadcast from a mysterious haunted fishing town – where all horror movies actually happened. This inventive mix of comedy, horror, music and wellbeing support, has been described as ‘Stephen King meets Songs of Praise.’

Peter is an ordained church minister and has worked in various Churches, though he now focuses on writing and podcasting. He is a popular speaker at festivals and conferences, and he writes a monthly column in the print magazine, ‘The Fortean Times.’ He is also a featured ‘expert’ BBC show, Uncanny, with Danny Robins.

DECADES

1970s: 1978 – The Spiders by Richard Lewis

Whenever I read fiction, my genre of choice is usually horror – and in particular, pulpy horror novels from the 1970s and 1980s. Affectionately known as ‘Paperbacks from Hell’, these mass-produced shockers seemed throwaway at the time. Yet they have a wonderful mix of charm, nostalgia, edgy content and gross-out shock. As an example, I submit Spiders by Richard Lewis. It’s a skin crawling tale of a village attacked by millions of flesh eating spiders. His descriptions of people waking up at night (to find their carpets swamped with spiders) is terrifying, but the grim detail in the death scenes made me want to applaud and vomit, all at the same time. At a mere 153 pages long, Siders is a short, sharp, tightly written hit of really horrible horror. You should probably avoid it if you have arachnophobia. And if you haven’t got it, congratulations. You will by the last page.

1980s: 1987 – Strangers by Taichi Yamada

I stumbled across this book in my thirties, and I’ve never forgotten it. It’s about a recently divorced man call Hideo. He’s a successful TV scriptwriter but he has few friends and no family – his parents were killed in a hit and tun accident, when he was 12. He’s lonely, and it doesn’t help that he lives in a Tokyo office building with a very small number of apartments. It’s so deserted at night that he feels a compulsion to walk back to his childhood neighbourhood to feel connected. While there he’s astonished to meet a couple who look remarkably like his parents. They are ten years younger than he is, so it couldn’t possibly be them…could it? It’s a clever, beautiful, and really quite moving book, with a shivery thread of the supernatural throughout. I loved it.

1990s: 1998 – 99 – Uzumaki by Junji Ito

If Strangers was beautiful, this next book (a graphic novel from Japan) is it’s direct opposite. Sure, the artwork is amazing and rich, but this is absolutely rammed with bizarre, horrific and genuinely frightening images. It’s set in Kurozo-cho, a small foggy town where the locals a starting to be haunted. Not by a ghost or a demon…but by a pattern. They keep seeing spirals everywhere. In the clouds, in seashells, in whirlpools. This spiral madness spreads throughout the town with truly nightmarish results. I read this book last year. I’d dip in a bit just before drifting off to sleep. There were several times when I woke up in the deepest ditch of the night, and I questioned my life choices. Try it.

2000s: 2009 – Shatnerquake by Jeff Burke

I figured there was space for a totally insane and ridiculous self-published book from Jeff Burk. Simply because I thought it was a blast. ‘Shatnerquake’ takes place at Shatnercon: the world’s biggest convention for William Shatner fans. Shatner is there in attendance, but he deeply wishes he wasn’t. That’s because a ‘reality bomb’ gets detonated and it somehow brings every character that Shatner has ever played, to life! Their mission: to hunt down and destroy the real William Shatner. I’m a big William Shatner fan and I do not make any apology for that. So I found the idea of a homicidal Captain Kirk and murderous TJ Hooker trying to kill their creator, to be irresistible. A glance at the opening quote ought to tell you that this book is not officially endorsed by the Shat: ‘How do I stay so healthy and boyishly handsome? It’s simple. I drink the blood of young runaways’. – William Shatner.

2010s – 2011: Falling Upward by Fr. Richard Rohr

Finally I offer a non-fiction book with a concept that really touched me. Father Richard Rohr is an intelligent, open-hearted and engaging Franciscan monk, who makes the case that our lives are split into two halves. The first half feels more simplistic, where our opinions and ideas are often clear and in black and white. Yet the second half of life can become confusing or contradictory, where ideas we thought were solid are challenged and where we see a catalogue of our own failures and mistakes building. This loss of foundation and confidence can seem like a disorientating loss, but Rohr persuasively argues that it is an essential gain – a fall, upward. Being a Christian myself, I found Rohr’s open minded faith to be invigorating, and it’s an important reminder that what can feel like spiritual confusion, might actually be spiritual maturity.

Sometimes I share a new selection of recommendations and I am frantically trying to remember if any of the five have featured recently. As I put together Peter’s selections I was quite confident none of his selections have featured in the 21 months of Decades. There have been very few non-fiction selections, fewer graphic novels and horror (beyond Mr King) is scarce too. Shockingly this is also the first mention of William Shatner. Some real variety to get your teeth into – thanks Peter!

DECADES WILL RETURN

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February 16

Deity – Matt Wesolowski

A shamed pop star
A devastating fire
Six witnesses
Six stories
Which one is true?

When pop megastar Zach Crystal dies in a fire at his remote mansion, his mysterious demise rips open the bitter divide between those who adored his music and his endless charity work, and those who viewed him as a despicable predator, who manipulated and abused young and vulnerable girls.

Online journalist, Scott King, whose Six Stories podcasts have become an internet sensation, investigates the accusations of sexual abuse and murder that were levelled at Crystal before he died. But as Scott begins to ask questions and rake over old graves, some startling inconsistencies emerge: Was the fire at Crystal’s remote home really an accident? Are reports of a haunting really true? Why was he never officially charged?

Dark, chillingly topical and deeply thought-provoking, Deity is both an explosive thriller and a startling look at how heroes can fall from grace and why we turn a blind eye to even the most heinous of crimes…

My thanks to Karen at Orenda Books for my review copy of Deity. Thanks also to Anne Cater of Random Things Blog Tours for the opportunity to join the Deity Blog tour.

Six Stories. A phenomonal concept and Matt Wesolowski just seems to deliver chills and tension every single time. With Deity we are concentrating on Zach Crystal, a musician who reached the very top at a young age and lived a mysterious and controversial lifestyle before tragedy struck and he died in a fire at on his remote country estate in the Scottish Highlands.

Scott King is a podcast host who in each of the four previous Wesolowski novels has conducted interviews with six guests in a bid to cast light on mysteries, murders or strange phenomonon. The story telling is always wonderfully layered and the salient points to each story will not be immediately obvious to the reader until Scott King himself draws your attention back to they key revelations which can turn your understanding of a narrative on its head.

Deity is no different. Six interviews with six people to understand better the complex and controversial superstar Zach Crystal. The first story makes it quite clear where the headline controvosy will be found. King interviews a man who alleges Crystal was active in an internet chatroom trying to arrange a meet with a 12 year old girl (Crystal at this time was in his mid 40s). Throughout his career Crystal has spent time with young girls from disadvantaged backgrounds at his remote Highland home. “Entirely innocent” he always maintained and there was never any real traction behind the few stories which cast doubt on his assurances of innocence.

The reason the stories never amounted to anything, King’s first guest asserts, is that King employed a team of hostile investigators who would shut down any rumour or story before it could manifest itself into anything more substantiated. No proof, no story. But Crystal cannot hide from all bad press and when two young girls are found dead (it is alleged in mysterious circumstances) on the grounds of his Highland Estate it has to be acknowledged that his extensive security staff could not have done anything to prevent the unfortunate death in the inhospitable environment of the Cairngorms. It is also worth mentioning that Crystal has bought land and settled in a notoriously dangerous part of the mountains and local legend tells of dangers in the Whispering Woods and Crystal tells of seeing a cadaverous wild animal which stands tall and has flesh hanging from the skull under a wild antlered head.

Crystal himself chooses to wear antlers and often masks his face when performing so the link to the mysterious creature is a fascination for the reader. It also makes Crystal seem even more of an odd character.

The accusations against Crystal which were laid out by King’s first guest are firmly shut down by his second guest. A YouTube star who is a devoted fan of Zach Crystal, has spent time in his company and on his Estate, and who believes all the stories of inappropriate behaviour with minors is just women seeking to cash in on the deceased star now that he cannot defend himself. This guest turns the story of the the first guest on its head. Although the reader may not like what they are hearing about Crystal (he does come across as a total bampot) it cannot be taken for granted he is guilty of the allegations which follow him around.

Through four more guests we strip back some of the mystery surrounding Crystal. Did he deserve to die? Was he a troubled individual – thrust into fame too young and with no social skills to survive in the entertainment industry? Why did he always have to take groups of vulnerable underage girls to his home? It does make for uncomfortable reading and I never shook the feeling that Crystal was a dangerous individual, so why are his defenders so determined to protest his innocence?

One unexpected development was the return of a character from an earlier novel. No spoilers but I found this a nice touch for returning readers but the appearance of this character will not leave new readers baffled as their involvement is very different. One other surprise was that the story is set, in part, in Inverness and surrounding areas (one interview takes place in Aviemore). I grew up in the Inverness area. When you live in London you probably don’t bat an eye if you pick up a book and find the story is set in your home town – if you live in Inverness this is much more of a novelty and it certainly brought a smile or two as I was reading.

Deity is the fifth book in the Six Stories series. I own all the earlier books in audiobook, paperback and in digital format – I am a bit of a fan. It is a tough call but I think Deity may be my favourite of the five books. I think the complexity of Crystal and the frustration King encounters in trying to find tangible proof around any of the rumours linked to the star make this the most complex of books in the series. Kings podcasts assert they are not to uncover the truth or reach a conclusion but to present more facts to allow listeners to make their own judgement – the reader is doing this here to a greater degree than other books.

If you are new to the series you can read the Six Stories books in any order – I envy you the hours of enjoyment they will bring you. If you are a returning reader you can be assured Deity is a triumph.

Deity is published by Orenda Books and is currently available in paperback and digital version. You can order a copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08D6J458T/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1

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November 2

Hydra (Six Stories) – Matt Wesolowski – Audiobook

A family massacre. A deluded murderess. Five witnesses. Six stories. Which one is true?

One cold November night in 2014, in a small town in the north west of England, 21-year-old Arla Macleod bludgeoned her mother, father and younger sister to death with a hammer, in an unprovoked attack known as the Macleod Massacre. Now incarcerated at a medium-security mental-health institution, Arla will speak to no one but Scott King, an investigative journalist, whose Six Stories podcasts have become an internet sensation.

King finds himself immersed in an increasingly complex case, interviewing five witnesses and Arla herself, as he questions whether Arla’s responsibility for the massacre was a diminished as her legal team made out.
As he unpicks the stories, he finds himself thrust into a world of deadly forbidden ‘games’, online trolls, and the mysterious black-eyed kids, whose presence seems to extend far beyond the delusions of a murderess…

Dark, chilling and gripping, Hydra is both a classic murder mystery and an up-to-the-minute, startling thriller, that shines light in places you may never, ever want to see again.

My thanks to Karen at Orenda Books for my Audible books review copy.

I have seen early copies of Changeling reaching readers this week. Changeling is a Six Stories thriller from Matt Wesolowski and I am very much looking forward to seeing what it will bring (mainly because of this review by Kate at Bibliophile Book Club).

Why am I so excited about Changeling? Well recently I had the pleasure (a chilling pleasure) of listening to Matt’s second Six Stories book Hydra. If ever a series should be enjoyed as an audiobook then it must surely be this one.

Six Stories is a podcast produced by Scott King. He revisits a crime or an event and over a six part series of podcasts he interviews guests who will cast new light onto the known/established facts and listeners are challenged to reconsider the “official” findings or outcome of events.

As the books in the Six Stories series are each recreating a podcast show it makes complete sense that Wesolowki’s books are best enjoyed as an audiobook listen. It also helps that the actors/narrators who contributed to Hydra were exceptional and brought this creepy tale to life in a way I don’t normally experience with an audiobook. It is possibly more accurate to consider the Hydra audiobook as a dramatization than a reading.

How to do Hydra justice without spoiling the story? Hydra focuses on a family murder – Arla Macleod killed her mother, step father and her sister. There is a suggestion that her fascination with supernatural may have influenced her actions – Arla suggests that on the night of the murders she opened the door to mysterious Black-Eyed Kids. Could these ghostly children have brought about the death of three innocents?

Arla’s story (and that of her fellow contributors) are chilling, tragic and desperate tales. I got too involved in the stories and became enraged at stories of bullying, frustrated at the ignorance of children and happy when the underdogs tried to stand up for themselves. The author has done a fantastic job of capturing the best and the worst of human behaviour.

Hydra was wonderfully interlaced by dramatic events away from the podcast too. No spoilers, however, the Six Stories host will come to realise that not everyone appreciates his work. The local community does not like three brutal murders being brought back to the attention of a wider audience and a mysterious stranger certainly does not welcome the nature of discussions which are being broadcast.

Hydra is a wickedly chilling read. It takes a very clever narrative style and delivers a dramatic punch. I urge you to try the audiobook but you really should ensure you read this story. A five star score from this reader.

Hydra is available in paperback, digital and (my recommendation) audiobook format. You can order your copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_1_10?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=hydra+matt+wesolowski&sprefix=hydra+matt%2Caps%2C151&crid=2LDXHENNPTBB3

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March 29

Six Stories – Matt Wesolowski

1997. Scarclaw Fell. The body of teenager Tom Jeffries is found at an outward bound centre. Verdict? Misadventure. But not everyone is convinced. And the truth of what happened in the beautiful but eerie fell is locked in the memories of the tight-knit group of friends who took that fateful trip, and the flimsy testimony of those living nearby.

2017. Enter elusive investigative journalist Scott King, whose podcast examinations of complicated cases have rivalled the success of Serial, with his concealed identity making him a cult internet figure.

In a series of six interviews, King attempts to work out how the dynamics of a group of idle teenagers conspired with the sinister legends surrounding the fell to result in Jeffries’ mysterious death. And who’s to blame… As every interview unveils a new revelation, you’ll be forced to work out for yourself how Tom Jeffries died, and who is telling the truth. A chilling, unpredictable and startling thriller, Six Stories is also a classic murder mystery with a modern twist, and a devastating ending.

My thanks to Karen at Orenda for my review copy and the chance to join the blog tour.

Very, very occasionally something different crops up in my reading queue, a book which is quite unlike anything else that is clamouring to be read – Six Stories is that book. A murder story, told (in the main) as a series of podcast interviews where journalist Scott King chats with a key player in an unsolved murder case from an incident which took place in 1997.

A teenager, part of a group of kids visiting a remote “outward bound centre” vanishes in the night. His body turns up one year later but despite extensive police involvement and significant media interest no arrest was ever made and the crime remains unsolved.

Journalist King interviews other teens from the small group that visited the centre that fateful weekend. They were frequent guests on familiar territory and the “responsible adults” supervising them were quite lax in allowing these young adults scope to drink and smoke. Each of the titular “Stories” is an interview with one of the people who make up that group. As the stories are told we are given more insight into the dynamic of the kids, there are bullies and there are sheep. Some were friends, others were outcasts but each will contribute more to the bigger picture of what may have happened to Tom Jeffries.

It is frequently made clear that King is not a detective and that he is not looking to “solve” the mystery. However, the reader cannot help but get drawn into events and you find yourself hoping that something will break – a clue will slip out which gives you an insight into how the book may resolve the issue. As such you read Six Stories with an increasing level of concentration and focus lest you miss the nugget which may let slip an inconsistency in the various recollections.

The interview/podcast format is superb. The individual episodes are broken up with very short sequences which are not part of the podcast but these add an additional dark and intriguing element to the tale. Six Stories is incredibly atmospheric and the interview sections give a real intimacy to the telling of the story. At times it did not feel like I was reading a book – more akin to listening to an old story teller spinning a yarn for the crowd in a smoky tavern.

If you want a richly rewarding reading experience then Six Stories is it.

Six Stories is published by Orenda Books and is available in paperback and digital format. You can order a copy here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Six-Stories-Matt-Wesolowski/dp/1910633623/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1490822340&sr=8-1&keywords=Matt+Wesolowski

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