The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne

The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne by Ron Currie, 368 pages

Babs Dionne is proud of her Acadian roots, and serves as the matriarch to the whole town of Waterville, Maine, helping out and keeping miscreants in line with the help of her coffee klatch of lifelong friends. She's also the leading drug supplier to the area, using those same friends to help keep the business running. When a kingpin learns that Babs has been cutting into his business, he sends a malevolent hitman to take out Babs and any family members who may get in the way.

I'll be honest: it's been a bit since I've read this book and I don't remember a lot of the details of it. However, I do remember chuckling a lot at the dark humor of this Acadian mafia saga. The audiobook was fantastic, and I highly recommend it.

The Road to Tender Hearts

The Road to Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnett, 384 pages

PJ Halliday's life has been in a bit of a rut over the last decade. Sure, he won $1.5 million in scratch-off lottery tickets, but he also hasn't processed the grief of losing his eldest daughter 15 years ago or dealt with his wife leaving him for the birder next door, and he got enough DUIs to have his license revoked for 8 years. So when he learns that his high school crush is now a widow, he decides to take a cross-country road trip to try again to woo her. Complicating matters is the fact that he's suddenly become the guardian of his estranged brother's grandkids, but hey, why not take two newly orphaned fourth graders (both of whom are dealing with the shocking loss of their parents in wildly different ways) on a road trip to a the faraway Tender Hearts Retirement Community?

The description of this book sounds like a mess, and yeah, it kind of is, but in the best possible way. I love the way that Hartnett depicts grief at all ages and stages with kindness and occasional (but appropriate) humor, and I love the way this weird family grows both as a group and as individuals. And I think the fact the death-detecting cat doesn't top my list of why this book is fantastic is pretty telling, as in most books, that would be the best part. Highly recommended.

42 reasons to hate the universe

42 reasons to hate the universe: (and one reason not to) by Chris Ferrie, (2024) 289 pp

Bleak science humor is the focus here (with numeric apologies to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) featuring a potpourri of terrifying vignettes explained with a comedic rude attitude. Some of the essays are only to be feared/hated on a cosmological time scale and others are staring us in the face – you know, the existential threats, like climate change and nuclear annihilation. The material appears to be a compilation of reworked podcasts and blog posts by the Australian author and his collaborators, leading to a bit of redundancy and uneven quality. I’m going out on a ‘galactic’ limb and pretend that the author has an additional motive, informing the reader that the universe is complex and requires critical analysis, albeit, not too seriously. Not for the faint of heart, this explosive tome is best read in small increments – a binge is not recommended – or so says the author.

Horrorstör

Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix (2014) 243 pages

What if a large store with a huge winding showroom - say a store that's similar to an Ikea - was haunted? What if the store manager, whose store keeps having incidents of damage over the night hours, wants to find out what's going on, and tasks the deputy store manager to carry out a quiet investigation before the head honchos from corporate headquarters come to find out why this location has such high losses? Well, that's what Horrorstör is all about.

The book itself looks like an Ikea catalog, with the beginning of each chapter advertising a piece of furniture, dimensions included. The store is called Orsk.

Basil, the deputy store manager meets with two employees to ask them to stay with him and patrol the store from 10 pm that night until 7 am, to see if they can figure out what's going on, since security cameras have not recorded any of the vandalism. Ruth Anne is 47 years old, a longtime cashier who treats everyone well. Amy is 24 and somewhat miserable; life is not turning out as she'd hoped. She despises Basil, who is the embodiment of the Orsk culture, and she is afraid that he is close to firing her. The story is told from Amy's point of view.

Amy and Ruth Anne agree to stay for the night shift, especially when enticed with double pay. By the time 11:30 pm rolls around, some strange things are starting to happen. A couple other employees have snuck in with cameras and electronic equipment to track ghosts. Need to stop here to avoid being a spoiler, but both the front and the back covers show this horror story is encased in a framework of dark humor.