Bad Books For Bad People

Author Leanna Renee Hieber has created an alternative Victorian London that merges ghost-hunting, Jack the Ripper, capital-R Romantic love, and a healthy dose of post-Harry-Potter magic in her novel Strangely Beautiful. Originally published as two books in 2009 and 2010, Hieber's story features a beautiful, innocent young woman raised in a convent and dropped into a supernatural battle that will change the course of her life. The author describes this book as "Victorian Ghostbusters" and seeks to create a new brand of Gothic with a modern sensibility within its pages. How will Jack and Kate react to this fanciful new spin on tried-and-true suspense tropes? Why does Kate loathe the male lead more than any other character from any other book they've read so far? When does a wish-fulfillment fantasy for a teenager become a horror story for a middle aged person? And how do Jesus, Snape, and Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS figure into all of this? Find out all this and more in this month's episode of Bad Books for Bad P

British pulp author Sax Rohmer built a career on depicting the threat posed to the Western way of life by the Demonic Other. His most famous creation, Dr. Fu Manchu, is infamous not just for the hideous violence he wreaks on his enemies, but also for being a dreadful racist caricature. This formula of depicting the horrors of the non-British enemy worked so well for Rohmer that he would revisit it numerous times, even substituting "Asian" for "feminist" when creating his sexy supervillainess Sumuru. In this month's episode, Jack and Kate discuss the first Fu Manchu novel, Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu [1913], as well as the first Sumuru novel, Nude in Mink [1950]. What will they make of Rohmer's brand of phobic suspense? Do any of the characters stop mid-action to grab a cozy fish dinner? How does the author use smoking to convey character? How much more awesome are Fu Manchu and Sumuru than the bumbling protagonists who attempt to foil their plans? Just how inept are British men in dealing with beautiful, sexuall

Beginning with her smash hit debut novel, 1976's Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice has spent a career detailing the lives, loves, and melodramas of a sprawling cast of supernatural characters. In interviews where she's discussed 2016's Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis, Rice promised a whole new spin on her beloved Vampire Chronicles. The concept of blending gothic vampires with new age science fiction is an appealing one, but does the author deliver on her promise? Jack and Kate dive into this latest offering from the queen of modern gothic horror. How many of the Vampire Chronicles books have our hosts skipped? Will Kate's dreams of lots of characters she doesn't recognize meeting up with ancient aliens come true? Will we learn the vagaries of vampire science? Isn't a ghost with a body just a dude? How is Lestat doing after all these years? Find out all this and more in this month's episode of Bad Books for Bad People. ***Spoilers Abound*** Find us at BadBooksBadPeople.com, on Twitter @badbooksb

After failing in his quest to find financing for his 18- to 24-hour-long film version of Frank Herbert's Dune, Chilean-French filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky (El Topo and Santa Sangre) partnered with French artist Moebius to create a science fiction graphic novel titled The Incal. This epic, first published between 1981 and 1988, takes its hapless hero John DiFool across strange galaxies while providing a platform for Jodorowsky to explore his esoteric ideas, which blend shamanism, the tarot, Freudian psychoanalysis, and theater. As you might gather, there's a lot going on here. Jack and Kate break down how Dune's DNA exists within The Incal even though its creators take the tale in a direction that's far more madcap, alchemical, and... well, French. Can a work of art succeed at being both serious and light-hearted at the same time? Why are women so goddamn allegorical? Is there such a thing as an unfilmable graphic novel? Who is Kill Wolfhead and why is he the best? Find out all this and more in this month's

Hanns Heinz Ewers' 1911 novel Alraune is part horror, part science fiction, part decadent prose, and absolutely of the most extreme femme fatale stories ever written. Kate and Jack tackle Ewers' complicated personal and political history and why this German author's weird tales deserve to be read alongside the work of other horror luminaries. Kate and Jack selfishly take on the role of readers this month, highlighting the author's luridly beautiful writing. Explore sexy funtimes dekadentenstil with bloodletting, gender bending, and attempts to scientifically identify the sluttiest woman in Berlin. What on earth is a German fencing fraternity? Why should we bring back dueling for satisfaction? How can reading out loud be an effective pathway to getting laid? Find out all this and more in this month's episode of Bad Books for Bad People. Find us at BadBooksBadPeople.com, on Twitter @badbooksbadppl, Instagram @badbooksbadpeople and on Facebook. You can discover where to get all the books featured on Bad Books f

In the mid-1990s, R.L. Stine's Goosebumps series was a sensation, creeping out kids across the globe. The phenomenon of kid-friendly horror fiction is hardly a new one, so Kate and Jack tackle three Goosebumps titles and see how they stack up against the terrifying stories of their childhoods. Bring on the haunted houses, possessed dummies, and nightmarish theme parks! This month's guest reader is Aunt John from Kindertrauma, the long-running website dedicated to all things childhood-horror-related.  How weird are the Goosebumps books? Why do people love them so much? How do you say Goosebumps in Dutch? What highly inappropriate Freudian subtext can our hosts insert into their conversation about these stories for young readers? All these questions and more will be answered in this episode of Bad Books for Bad People. Find us at BadBooksBadPeople.com, on Twitter @badbooksbadppl, Instagram @badbooksbadpeople and on Facebook.

Ultra-prolific British pulp author Dennis Wheatley is best known for his occult thrillers, which combined Wheatley's fascination with magic with his conservative politics. Kate and Jack tackle his 1953 offering To the Devil A Daughter, which involves a mystery author and her interior decorator son who get enmeshed in an occult conspiracy when they delve too deeply into the mysterious young lady who becomes their neighbor on the French Riviera. This month's guest reader is Kristen Korvette, founder and editor of Slutist, whose study of (and firsthand experience with) witches make her an ideal fit to read from a stuffy, ultra-conservative book about sinister Satanists. Why does possession by the devil turn our imperiled heroine into someone vastly more awesome? Will a mutual hatred of taxes bring the novel's heroes into an understanding with the villains? Are our hosts secretly Dennis Wheatley villains themselves? How is Stalin involved in this whole mess? Find out all this and more in this month's episode of

The potboiler Gothics of V.C. Andrews were beloved by adult women... and their tween daughters. Both Jack and Kate are new to the author's infamous tales of female woe, and they discuss what it's like to read her work for the first time during this discussion of Andrews' 1982 novel My Sweet Audrina. This claustrophobic tale of a girl raised with family secrets in the shadow of her dead sister proves to be a surprisingly traumatic experience for Kate who is forced to confront some of her darkest fears, including the horrors of inheriting someone else's kids. Here to read an especially sensational passage from the book is Wendy Mays, hostess of Pet Cinematary, the podcast dedicated to taking a deeper look at the role of animals in film. This is her first time reading the work of V.C. Andrews as well, and it turned out to be a much more difficult task than your hosts imagined to find a woman unfamiliar with these macabre little novels. How does the domestic nightmare world of My Sweet Audrina effect your hosts?

Kate and Jack discuss Image of the Beast and its sequel Blown by Philip José Farmer. Released in 1968 and 1969 by adult science fiction publisher Essex House, Kate describes these ultra-explicit, super-bizarre novels as "like the monster mash version of Georges Bataille's Story of the Eye." But that's only part of the picture as we follow private detective Herald Childe on his journey into a world of monsters, ritual murder, and warring horror memorabilia collectors.  The guest reader is man of mystery Baron XIII, who has the distinction of being Kate's most frequently punched-in-the-head friend. Baron XIII reveals his seven-day drawing challenge in exchange for reading one of the most extreme passages from these books. Are these books sexy? Will we learn anything about Philip José Farmer's sexual preferences? What lives in that one character's nether regions?  What does Lord Byron have to do with all of this? Tune in to this episode of Bad Books for Bad People to find out! Find us at BadBooksBadPeople.com, 

In this episode, Kate and Jack talk about BleakWarrior, Alistair Rennie's 2016 novel in the New Weird genre that at least one reviewer has linked to black metal. Jack provides some far more accurate (and alluring!) descriptions: "as if SoulCalibur were a porno directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky" OR "as if you got your weirdest friend drunk on cheap tequila and asked them to describe what He-Man would be like if it were dirty and a bit Shakespearean." A race of super-humans leaps through time and space in search of ultra-violent battles and super-kinky sex in this sordid tale that your hosts enjoyed far more than they should have. The guest reader for this book is Degtyarov, founder and editor of Black Ivory Tower, a website and zine devoted to esoteric black metal and related musical genres. How black metal is this book? Do your hosts care very much? To what extremely obscure and unlikely things will they compare this novel? Will the guest reader be able to hold it together through the entire passage he's forc