A Well-Read Tart

A Food and Book Lover’s Blog

THE HOUSE OF LAST RESORT (Dark Side of the Word Podcast)

Hello, Tartlets and Darksiders! A new book club podcast episode is up on Dark Side of the Word. Join me and Kait as we discuss the horror novel The House of Last Resort by Christopher Golden. Happily married couple Tommy and Kate take the adventure of a lifetime: they buy a fixer-upper villa for one Euro in the rural Italian countryside. What they don’t know about their new dream home is that it used to be the “the house of last...

LONE WOMEN (Dark Side of the Word Podcast)

Hello, Tartlets and Darksiders! A new book club podcast episode is up on Dark Side of the Word. Join me and Kait as we discuss the supernatural/historical fiction novel Lone Women by Victor LaValle. After burning down her childhood home with her parents’ dead bodies inside, Adelaide flees California. Her sights are set on Montana, a place where she can homestead and become just like the women she read about in the railroad booklets....

ROUGE (Dark Side of the Word Podcast)

Hello, Tartlets and Darksiders! A new book club podcast episode is up on Dark Side of the Word. Join me and Kait as we discuss the novel Rouge by Mona Awad. Belle isn't coping well after returning home for her mother’s funeral. First, there’s the fact that her mother died falling off an ocean cliff. Then, there are all the mysterious debts she left behind. The fact that her mother sold her beloved dress shop. The shirtless window cleaner....

HIDE (Dark Side of the Word Podcast)

Hello, Tartlets and Darksiders! A new book club podcast episode is up on Dark Side of the Word. Join me and Kait as we discuss the horror/thriller novel Hide by Kiersten White. Fourteen people arrive at an abandoned amusement park for a life-changing opportunity. All they have to do is play an elaborate game of hide-and-seek, and the last person standing will win $50K. But, if they're all hiding, who's the seeker? Why is there blood on the...

JUST LIKE HOME (Dark Side of the Word Podcast)

Hello, Tartlets and Darksiders! A new book club podcast episode is up on Dark Side of the Word. Join me and Kait as we discuss the supernatural suspense novel Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey. Vera didn’t have any intentions of coming back home. But, her mom is dying and she has to get the house ready to sell -- not that anyone's going to buy the house of an infamous serial killer. As Vera begins to pack up the house, disturbing childhood...

STRANGE SALLY DIAMOND (Dark Side of the Word Podcast)

Hello, Tartlets and Darksiders! A new book club podcast episode is up on Dark Side of the Word. Join me and Kait as we discuss the psychological thriller novel Strange Sally Diamond by Liz Nugent. After throwing her father’s corpse into the family trash incinerator, Sally Diamond doesn’t understand why her neighbors are treating her weirdly. But, it's fine; she's used to be on her own, and she has memories of her dad to keep her...

MY MURDER (Dark Side of the Word Podcast)

Hello, Tartlets and Darksiders! A new podcast episode is up on Dark Side of the Word. Join me and Kait as we discuss the psychological thriller novel My Murder by Katie Williams. After being brutally murdered, wife and new mother Lou is brought back to life via cloning, along with several other victims of her serial killer. She gets to return to her happy marriage. Her daughter. Her old job. All the parts of her life she was told she...

SCYTHE (Dark Side of the Word Podcast)

Hello, Tartlets and Darksiders! A new podcast episode is up on Dark Side of the Word. Join me and Kait as we discuss the YA fantasy novel Scythe by Neal Shusterman. In a world where basic human misery is no longer a concern, the revered but fearsome Scythes exist solely to glean the population when Earth becomes a little too, well, populated. Now, two apprentices must vie for a coveted position in the Scythedom, and it soon becomes...

Cursed Bread (Dark Side of the Word Podcast)

Hello, Tartlets and Darksiders! A new podcast episode is up on Dark Side of the Word. Join me and Kait as we discuss Cursed Bread by Sophie Mackintosh. The story is set around one woman in the midst of the (real life) 1951 unsolved mass poisoning of a French village. When we picked up the book, we thought we were in for dark historical fiction with some occult-y vibes -- but, boy, were we wrong. SO WRONG.   Listen as we try our best to piece...

Dark Side of the Word: A Dark Book Podcast

Yup: the unthinkable has happened. I, the woman who hates the sound of her own voice, am co-hosting a book podcast. I've been writing about books for years; now, I'm talking about them, too. If you have a burning desire to hear what my voice sounds like -- and to find out what books you should and shouldn't read -- come listen to me and my critique partner, Kait, on Dark Side of the Word: Podcast.   What kind of books do we talk about? In...