'FALLOW'....A CORPORATE BABYMAKER'S LIFE GONE AWRY.....PROVOCATIVE AND SUPERB.....UNTIL A WRONG LEFT TURN......

  Fallow by Sarah Anderson (2026)

     Through two thirds of this book, I felt fully prepared to give it 4.5 stars. It boasts a provocative premise bound to stir up plenty of spirited book club discussions. it's engagingly written with dry deadpan humor that doesn't shy away from taking an acidic eye at its lead character and her rather incredible decade long journey. .And yet there's also a sense of genuine empathy and heart in its depiction of what she considers her triumphs and reversals of fortune.

     But then a sudden twist of the plot sends the book spiraling into an altogether different story and literally all new territory. And last third of the book was nowhere near as immediate and compelling as what came before it. To make matters worse, its resolution seemed abrupt and unsatisfying enough to make me wonder if reading it was worth the effort.

     We follow the fortunes of 20-something slacker Natalie, who dearly loves her creature comforts but lacks the drive and ambition to work hard enough to ever pay for them. But her dreams of a work-free comfortable life come true courtesy of a groundbreaking program offered by 'The Company'. Seeking to free their top women execs from profit-draining maternity leave, they recruit Natalie to serve as a corporate surrogate mother. This involves seven IVF pregnancies spread out over 10 years, with huge cash payouts for Natalie on each baby signed sealed and delivered.......not to mention full medical, dental and obstetric care. Natalie, lured by the money, benefits and company perks, dutifully complies as a corporate babymaker..........until her own emotional attachments (or detachments) and a startling turn of events send her birthing career into a wild tailspin.

     And here's where 'Fallow' transforms itself into another kind of book with bizarre circumstances and a whole new set of characters to deal with. The book continues to raise its political, social and hot button gender oriented issues, but it somehow reads like the story's lost its power, its edge and much of the cutting, understated wit that made it such a pleasure to read in the first place. .

     I don't regret getting into it, because at least 60 percent of "Fallow" fires on all cylinders but that problematic 3rd act knocked it down to 3 stars for me. (***).

      (But I wouldn't mind being a fly on the wall for the book club meetings on this one.....)

'I AM THE MONSTER UNDER THE BED'....A WHOLE MESS 'O MONSTERS IN ONE KOOKY, OOKY, SPOOKY TOWN.....

  I Am the Monster Under the Bed by Emily Zinnikas (2026)

     Can't get enough ghosts, monsters and assorted Things That Go Thunk! in the night? Can't get enough stories of luckless teens who went into the eerie woods and never came out again? Can't get enough dark, dark whatevers who lived under your bed when you were a child?

     Your search is over and your nightmares have all come true. Because author Emily Zinnikas has populated her book with a veritable rush hour traffic jam of supernatural entities........so many that you'd need a 4-way Stop Sign to keep them from crashing into each other.

     Even better news......the story behind this creepy paranormal zoo is a grabber, too. Prolific, gifted and reclusive artist Willa hides away from her adolescent notoriety as the lone survivor of that horrific teens-in-the-woods massacre in her small town of Rapture. (Ironically named, since you can bet that nobody's headed for heaven in this disturbing burg....)

     Even though that entire town reviles her as the true killer who escaped justice, Willa feels compelled to return to Rapture. She's gone back to mourn and to attend the funeral of her high school art teacher, always a beloved mentor and friend to her.. Back living in her old home, Willa's still a loathed pariah in town and she's also besieged and threatened by an unseen stalker, whose identity she thinks she well knows....... and whom she plans to turn the tables on.

     But there's more than just bad memories and simmering hatreds coming to a boil in Rapture. There's Willa's so-called imaginary under-the-bed friend who might make a comeback......not to mention the horrifying unknowable things in the basement and whatever's lurking in those woods that needs to be fed on a regular basis.. And this spooky showdown promises more scary craziness than an up-all-night horror movie festival.....

     My only quibble here comes from the book's last third, which drags out the story's Grand Finale through what feels like chapter after endless chapter. It runs the risk of becoming such an exhaustive marathon to endure that it borders on the ridiculous.. But then again, with all the monsters and who-knows-what coming out to play, there's plenty of undeniable tension, twists, suspense and the stuff of many future bad dreams.

     You can snuggle up with this one, keep just the reading light on and have yourself one chilling private Halloween party.....or do that any dark stormy night of the year.......happy hauntings.....

     4 stars (****).

'DEADLY LITTLE LESSONS'.....AT THIS SCHOOL, THEY EITHER GRADUATE YOU.....OR TERMINATE YOU....

 Deadly Little Lessons by Danielle Valentine (2026)

     I would think by now that we all know what lies in store for a wayward, delinquent teen girl when she enters a top-of-the-line, handsomely appointed Prep school featuring the highest of academic standards and a lush campus that looks like a slightly scaled down Ivy League university.

     Those ominous three soundtrack notes should pound in our ears.....Dum Dum DUMMMMM!!! Or to put it mildly....This. Does. Not. Bode. Well.

     Lia MIchaels, skilled lock-picker, computer hacker, and veteran of many foster homes and juvie lockups, is as stunned as anyone when she's accepted, along with her beloved foster sis Scarlett to Luminary Prep. An all new experiment in secondary education, Luminary has thrown away standard classroom procedures and now accentuates actual hands-on practical experiences and events for every subject taught. Their students are forced to either learn by doing.......or done in. Possibly so permanent, they'll miss prom.

     It doesn't take long for Lia and her incoming class to gape in alarm at what this means for their high school careers. At Luminary, you either graduate.......or you evaporate. In the course of their courses, the student body (or bodies) start severely shrinking. Sometimes their 'lessons' leave them maimed, or presumably dead......or erased altogether from the school role call. This place makes The Hunger Games look like Sesame Street. And only one lucky, plucky student gets to move on to college......the last one left alive in time for the graduation ceremony. (We can only assume they'd also have to serve as their one and only Valedictorian. And certainly cuts down on the number of parents in attendance..)

     Amid all these catastrophic classroom disasters, the school's instructors merely repeat a pre-written blather that always ends with..."work the curriculum"........which really doesn't sit well with the students still breathing when the the end-of-class bell rings.

     But toughened streetwise Lia isn't one to go down without a fight and she and a small band of remaining survivors try to uncover the secrets and motives of Luminary as they prepare to execute a daring escape from the place....... before the school starts executing......well, them.

     Similar to dystopian YA, "Deadly Little Lessons" once again proves that no depths exist that adults won't sink to in their efforts to control, dominate and abuse teenagers, thinking they know what's best for them. And to swallow the premise here, you'll really need to park all sense of reality and disbelief deep in the closet somewhere.

     Having said that, though, "Deadly Little Lessons" does in fact make for a fun, fast and enormously entertaining entry in that ever popular genre of 'Shady-Prep-School-Is-Even-Shadier-Than-We-Thought'...with even a little bit 'o budding romance thrown in.

      At least the poor kids didn't have to put up with witches, vampires or slobbering zombies... .....although those ' work the curriculum' jerks really need a stern talking to.....or a stake through their hearts. 

     4 stars (****).

 

WEEKEND MADNESS WRAP-UP......SPECIAL EDITION: "A GOP MIDTERM CONVENTION LIKE THE WORLD HAS NEVER SEEN BEFORE....."

 

And to close out this day of remembrance and mourning, we leave you with actual  real photographs of our glorious leader, our Commander-In-Chief as the names of 9/11 victims are read out loud at a D.C.Memorial......

      He couldn't stay awake.

    We ask that ALL U.S. voters remember these images as the midterm elections come closer...

To BQ visitors:  Great weekend to you all....see you next week.

To Trumpanzees:  Let's face it.....for all the heat she took over her name for you, it turns out Hilary Clinton was right all along. You truly are a basket of deplorables....and you've forced us all to live in your stupid, depraved and corrupt world long enough. Hopefully, at least some of this non-stop insanity will come to an end November 3rd.  Take heart, though.....you might find a return to a normal world a refreshing change of pace.

THURSDAY MADNESS WRAP-UP.....SPECIAL 'WHAT WE'LL DO WITH OUR $5000" EDITION.......

We're already making plans on how we'll spend Trump's promised $5000......our personal wishlist....

       1.  Buy a Unicorn to frolic in our backyard....'cause nobody else in the neighborhood has one.

      2. Add that money to our upcoming promised DOGE payout, which we're certain must be on its way to us any day now.....

     3.  Spend  $2500 of the money on a McDonald's gift card to send to the President for Christmas...accompanied by extra packets of leftover cholesterol-heavy grease to spread on the fries.....

   4. Consider using all of our vote money and DOGE money to donate toward the President staging a 4th of July Steel Cage match on the White House Lawn.....a fight to the death between Melania and Natalie.....preferably held in mud, ketchup or orange Jello. 

    5. Immediately donate the entire amount to the Democratic Party.....

     6. Move to Canada after the U.S. falls into bankruptcy from Trump having to print another Trillion dollars to pay for the $5000 checks....thereby adding yet another trillion dollars to the national debt, which was already over a trillion thanks to you-know-who.....

      7. Hope and pray that all Trump voters will take a deep breath and hold it until their $5000 checks arrive in the mail......

     

'11 HARROWHOUSE'......CHARLES GRODIN TRIES TO MSTK3000 HIS OWN MOVIE....

11 Harrowhouse (1974) 

       Normally, we would've given this lifeless, dead-on-arrival heist thriller Zero stars. It was taken from one of those slightly best-selling time wasters whose paperback edition you'd buy at the airport newsstand to make a two hour flight less boring. 

      Completely botched in every way as a movie, it did feature newly-minted movie star Charles Grodin coming off his stellar success in 1972's "The Heartbreak Kid".

       An absolute master of monotone, deadpan comedic timing, Grodin could already see how this potentially crowd pleasing, supposedly clever diamond theft caper had flown off the rails. 

       Barely directed, with no sense of style, flair or energy by editor turned director Aram Avakian, the movie just laid there like a corpse, filled with inert silent sequences devoid of even minimal dialogue.

       In a last ditch, Hail Mary attempt to resuscitate the film, Grodin wrote a dryly witty voice-over narration for his character, serving as a non-stop tongue-in-cheek commentary on everything happening......through the entirety of the running time. 

        You could say, to be kind, that he was ahead of his time, because his narration not only fills in all those deadening silent sequences, it also resembles  an actor's  'just kidding around'  DVD commentary track.

         On the unkind side, we could look at it as Grodin mocking and deconstructing his own movie....very similar to the chatty robots who take apart cheesy sci-fi and horror films on 'Mystery Science Theater 3000'. 

         Not that he did himself and the movie any favors......no one could figure out if was a thriller or a comedy and the film tanked badly.  Grodin's rep as a shiny new movie star dimmed down and he struggled to find work in the next few years. 

       The movie itself?  A huge meh. Miscast as a  suave diamond dealer Grodin teams up with hubba-hubba, adrenalin-fueled girl toy (Candice Bergen) to rob a stuffy British diamond clearing house by literally vacuuming up the gems with a hose. But first they sneak through the place's wiring and alarm systems using a cockroach, in case you're wondering why the bug's featured so prominently on the poster.

        A lengthy, exhausting climactic chase involving cars, trucks and horses drags on and on, peppered with Grodin's offscreen snarking. 

         Well, at least he did what he could with his own gift for understated jokery to make the film bearable to sit though......and for that, we're willing to bump '11 Harrowhouse' up to 1 star (*). 

          Still doesn't mean it's worth a watch, though.  Which it isn't, even for Grodin and Bergen fans......

'LAWS OF SOLOMON'.....A KILLER REGAINING HIS HUMANITY......WHILE DRAGGED BACK INTO CARNAGE....

 Laws of Solomon by Eriq La Salle (2026)

     A triple whammy, this one. An incredibly fast read.....a gut punching, blood soaked action thriller......and most importantly, a penetrating, impassioned examination of redemption, soul crushing loss and a life lived steeped in the brutality that human beings upon one another.

     All of this packed into one swiftly paced book that flies by while it pumps up your adrenalin and breaks your heart at the same time.

     Solomon's early life in mad dictator Idi Amin's Uganda has been forever altered by atrocities beyond all rational description. His family wiped out before his eyes, he's forced into servitude as a merciless child soldier, Soloman, as an adolescent and adult, forges himself into one of the most fearsome (and feared) professional slaughterers on earth. But his life as a mercenary for hire and enforcer for gangsters has left his soul barren, with only little traces of humanity left.

     His attempt to retreat into a monastic solitary life as a gardener on a vast estate comes to an abrupt end. Again, a twist of cruel fate puts him in the path of barbarous evil. Solomon finds himself the defender and protector of an angelic child pursued by a vicious drug lord capable of bottomless carnage...........and whose intent to capture the boy proves relentless and strewn with the bodies of innocent victims in his way.

     Solomon's skills as a bringer of death and vengeance are pushed to the very limit of what he can endure. And the gentle good heart of the boy, Gaby, has started to chip away at his battle hardened nature. We're given illuminating painful looks into Solomon's past filled with the tragedies he lives with daily. By the time I'd reached the last page, I realized the book kept me in its grip for the entire day. from start to finish. And that I knew I couldn't give this book any less than 5 stars. (*****).

      I think I've made my point here........drop everything and read it.