Book #135 of 2025: The End of the World As We Know It: New Tales of Stephen King’s The Stand edited by Christopher Golden and Brian Keene [Disclaimer: I am Facebook friends with one of the editors.] Stephen King’s 1978 novel The Stand is a massive post-apocalyptic classic — over 1100 pages in its revised …
Tag Archives: S. A. Cosby
Book Review: King of Ashes by S. A. Cosby
Book #96 of 2025: King of Ashes by S. A. Cosby Another excellent slice of southern crime fiction from author S. A. Cosby, this time riffing rather obviously off The Godfather: an adult son comes home and gets increasingly involved in the local criminal activity, despite people repeatedly cautioning him that he could do so …
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Book Review: All the Sinners Bleed by S. A. Cosby
Book #87 of 2023: All the Sinners Bleed by S. A. Cosby Author S. A. Cosby’s latest novel is his best work yet, a gripping southern noir with heavy shades of True Detective and extreme depictions of mutilation out of something like Hannibal. Check my content warnings below — it’s definitely not for the faint …
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Book Review: My Darkest Prayer by S. A. Cosby
Book #74 of 2023: My Darkest Prayer by S. A. Cosby I went back to read this 2019 debut novel on the strength of author S. A. Cosby’s later works Blacktop Wasteland and Razorblade Tears, and I can confirm that his talent for immersive storytelling is already apparent here. It’s another crime thriller / southern …
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Book Review: Blacktop Wasteland by S. A. Cosby
Book #347 of 2021: Blacktop Wasteland by S. A. Cosby Between this novel and author S. A. Cosby’s later Razorblade Tears, I am fully ready to crown him the Elmore Leonard of the state of Virginia, demonstrating that late crime writer’s same flair for action scenes, local dialect, and colorful characters with particular codes of …
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Book Review: Razorblade Tears by S. A. Cosby
Book #324 of 2021: Razorblade Tears by S. A. Cosby This is a heavy title, both for the graphic violence / gore and for the inherent bleakness of the premise: two grieving fathers, unaccepting of their sons’ sexuality in life, are drawn to one another in shared rage after the young husbands are brutally murdered …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 