William Schoell

It's hard to beat '80s horror. It's cheesy, pulpy, gory, and almost always entertaining. "Spawn of Hell" displays all of those tags. A cold opening immediately introduces the reader to the "spawn" and then author William Schoell teases us by keeping them out of the story for quite a while. We get to meet the down-on-his-luck protagonist, David Hammond, and quickly develop a relationship with him. David is reeling from a car accident that has left him crippled, both physically and mentally show more because he lost a close friend in the crash. Now dealing with survivor's guilt, he is visited by an old friend within hours of his release from the hospital. Something is not right with the friend from his hometown in Vermont. He's paranoid and disheveled. When David tries to talk his friend into contacting his parents back home, the friend flips out and soon disappears.
David's luck turns in a positive way when he catches the eye of supermodel Anna Braddon who is rebounding from a failed marriage. He can't believe that a woman as beautiful and rich as Anna would be interested in him, but he goes with it and decides to ride the wave as long as he can.
When Anna is notified that her estranged brother has died in Connecticut. She talks David into traveling with her to help deal with his death and belongings. Once they arrive in Connecticut, they realize that her brother's death is very mysterious and they set out to find out what happened.
From this point on, the book takes off in a positive way (honestly, it was pretty slow up to this point). David and Anna, and the residents of Milbourne, CT, are thrust into a terrifying situation involving mutated creatures that prey on humans.
All in all, "Spawn of Hell" is a decent story that is pretty straightforward with few plot twists. It's not that you won't see the ending pages before you get to it, because you probably will. With that said, Schoell cranks up the gore and descriptive interpretations of the creatures. One thing that did bother some was the poor editing of the book. It's unlike Leisure Horror to overlook the number of gaffs present in this book. show less

He was the coolest of the Cool...the Deanster. Even my Generation X remember the dude who sauntered his way through a song and life itself. This book is the first biography written about Dean Martin after his death, and the author uses firm sources (listed fully in the notes section) for the recollections.

The King of Cool's life unfolds chronologically, so it's easy for the reader to follow along. We learn about his first wife and first set of children, his days in debt, literally, to just show more about everyone, and then the Jerry Lewis years, his second family, and the Rat Pack time. There's nothing too astonishing here, which is rather nice given the usual outrageousness most celebrity bios highlight. Sometimes the author tries to create his own thoughts for Dino, without real verification. Still, Schoell doesn't go overboard and seems to respect his subject.

Dean Martin was a simple guy who loved wine, women, golf, and song. The essence of what makes a man cool, I suppose. Perhaps if you read DINO, Nick Tosches' extreme take on Martin, followed by this book and then the books by Dean's kids, you might find the truth somewhere in between. I enjoyed the life of a real entertainer and it even made me go out and purchase some downloads of Mr. Cool's songs. Them was the days.

Book Season = Summer (good book for beach time reading) show less

I am torn as to whether this book is spectacular, or flawed in a single regard. This book focuses upon the life of the author H. P. Lovecraft in its entirety. This is immensely enjoyable as most often, anything regarding Lovecraft has been strictly about his stories and characters rather than his life. This book focused upon Lovecraft's upbringing, his childhood, his family's history, and other such interesting bits of back story such as his frequent nightmares which the author tied into the show more the book as an explanation for the stories which Lovecraft would write. However, while the author corrected the dearth of information about Lovecraft's own life, he neglected any mention of the stories themselves to tie these childhood and life experiences into. Had he provided more, and more significant, examples of these weird and macabre stories to tie Lovecraft's life into, then there would have been a more complete rendering of his life and works. Still, the focus upon Lovecraft's life was welcome.
I would recommend this to High School students to read, in part because they would be more aware of the works in question than younger students. show less

A deep dive into the life, career, and achievements of the mysterious poet Edgar Allan Poe. Born of well established actors, Poe seemed to have an almost annoying sense of entitlement. After his mother's death and his father's abandonment, Poe was taken in by the caretaker of his mother, Fanny Allan and her husband, John Allan. Never being legally adopted by the Allan's threw Poe into a pit of insecurity and in retaliation began engaging in things that were not beneficial for his career. I show more loved this book for the main fact that Poe failed, multiple times and still became a successful, published, poet and author. Although i gained a lot of insight on the life of Poe, I would say this is not an easy book to comprehend-- the story is easy to follow but not in a very memorable fashion. There are not too many pictures to classify it as a picture book. I would recommend this to anyone that is doing research on Poe. show less