Bad Books for Bad People

Anne Somerset's The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide, and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV tells the all documented, all true story of a years-long scandal that rocked the court of the S…

Jack and Kate are back from vacation! We're just about at the midway point of the year and your hosts are ready to take a look back at some of the things they've enjoyed during 2018 so far. The rule…

Bringing the ennui of the Decadents to tried-and-true Gothic themes, Tanith Lee's Dark Dance is a fascinating entry in the 90s horror novel canon. Heroine Rachaela drifts back and forth from her sho…

Jack and Kate take a different approach in this mini episode by paying tribute to author, scholar, theater expert, and collector Mel Gordon. Mel's books had a huge impact on both of your hosts and t…

L.P. Hartley's Facial Justice depicts a post-nuclear dystopia in which absolute equality is enforced by rule of... well, not law, but supposedly benevolent edicts designed to protect citizens--or in…

For this mini episode, Jack and Kate take a look at the "title track" from Angela Carter's famed short story collection, The Bloody Chamber. This feminist reimagining of the Bluebeard story blends s…

In Creatures of Will and Temper, Molly Tanzer takes elements of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and crafts a story of romance, swordplay, and demonology. It's an ambitious premise that goes…

In an effort to atone for the damage done during the Book Battle episode, Jack and Kate trade short story selections designed to delight one another. Do their efforts succeed?

Kate assigns Jack "The…

Ray Russell's Incubus has a place of pride even among the outrageous titles of the horror paperback boom of the 70s and 80s. Telling the story of a series of horrific rape-murders in a strangely New…

Jack and Kate take a look back at the year that was and discuss some of their top picks for 2017. The rules of engagement are simple: the hosts each choose one movie, album, TV show, book and "wild …

The much beloved--and also frequently reviled--Dragonlance books are a series of Dungeons & Dragons tie-in novels written by Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis. Combining the high fantasy of Tolkien wi…

Matthew G. Lewis's 1796 novel The Monk represents the first sordid blooming of the gothic horror novel. Rockstar Spanish monk Ambrosio faces an increasingly jaw-dropping series of temptations thanks…

Kate and Jack explore one of the creator-owned titles from the current Golden Age of Comics, the action-packed yet poignant Weird Western Pretty Deadly. Writer Kelly Sue DeConnick, artist Emma Rios,…

Things get painful for our hosts as the results of a high-stakes book dare. Kate assigns Jack Ready Player One, the nerd nostalgia sci fi blockbuster by Ernest Cline, and Jack retaliates by assignin…

Paperbacks from Hell by Grady Hendrix strikes the perfect balance of context, curiosity, and lurid sensationalism in its approach to the paperback horror boom of the 70s and 80s. Daring to peer bene…

Although perhaps best known to BBfBP listeners as an author who helped redefine the horror genre in the early 1990s, Kathe Koja has written novels that span numerous genres. Her 2011 novel Under the…

Red Spectres, translated and edited by Muireann Maguire, collects examples of a rarely-seen side of Gothic literature, tales produced in the early days of Communist rule in Russia. These macabre sto…

Ernest G Henham's 1898 novel Tenebrae gets inside the mind of a morbidly-inclined young man as he spirals into madness and murder after he believes he has been betrayed by his brother. Published dur…

Michael Moorcock is one of the most influential science fiction and fantasy authors of the latter half of the 20th Century. Chief among his contributions to speculative fiction is the creation of th…

Author, activist, and academic China Miéville is a luminary in the world of fantasy fiction, creating complex and magical worlds that challenge the traditional "sword and sorcery" of years past. In …