The Literate Kitty

We’ve all seen them (or, in some cases, maybe even been one of them)... those school girls who hang around in their little cliques, firmly convinced they’re better than everyone else; the ones who, with not much more than condescending looks, artful head tosses, and a few well-timed insults, manage to make the lives of those unfortunate enough to be around them living hells. In other words, the mean girls. But, there are girls who get off on being merely snobby-mean... and then there are the seriously “Mean Girls” we’re hearing about more and more--vindictive young women who are highly-determined and scarily-organized in their misery-making campaigns.   Author Kate White takes a closer look at one such group--attending university rather than high school--in the thought-provoking psychological thriller, The Sixes . In her early 40s--smart, attractive, and extremely successful, with an address book full of über-famous names and numbers, and a long string of best-s...

Oh, how time flies... except, of course, when it doesn’t ... and you’re stuck drumming your fingers impatiently, wishing time would get the proverbial lead out, put the pedal to the metal, and resume that whizzing-by thing it does so incredibly well, most of the time. The bad times never work like that, though, do they? ❖ ~ ❖ ~ ❖ ~ ❖ ~ ❖   Nearly a year after half-human/half-fae Sir October Daye (a knight in the twilight shadows of the fae world and a gritty private detective in both) once again saved the immortal world from certain doom and destruction (this time, from what would’ve been a no-holds-barred civil war of epic proportions), she’s still reeling from the fallout... specifically, trying to cope with the simultaneous, heartbreaking losses of an old friend and of her part-fae/mostly-human daughter. Sometimes--make that, often --Toby’s life really sucks, and--happily for us, if not for her--it dishes out more of the same in Seanan McGuire’s latest tanta...

Have you ever tried guessing what you would do, if faced with some extraordinary situation? (“If a flood came and you could only save three things...”, maybe, or “If you could go back in time and stop ‘x‘ from happening... would you? ”.) Whether it’s a solitary mental exercise or a discussion of hypotheticals at a dinner party, most of us enjoy such little games now and then. One thing almost certainly never subjected to the “what if” treatment, though, is how you’d react to finding something--make that, some one --in a... well, in a most-unexpected place.   Danish authors Lene Kaaberbøl and Agnete Friis tackle precisely that unusual--and horrifying--prospect, in their haunting tale, The Boy in the Suitcase . ***** // ***** Nina Borg is a weary, one-woman dynamo. Married with two children, she works as a nurse for the Red Cross. She also volunteers in an underground network that attempts to aid battered or shunted-off-to-the-side-and-otherwise-forgotten women, c...

Nanny, butler, maid, footman, valet, housekeeper, cook, chauffeur, gardener, au pair, aide... the titles may change over time, but the duties for those who toil away in the households of the rich and privileged remain much the same. And, though we might euphemistically lump them together under the more-palatable “domestic workers” (in our must-above-all-else-be-P.C. world), the truth is they’re still servants, whose jobs involve waiting on others positioned higher up the social ladder. No one is apt to think there’s much equality between the two groups--particularly not the “haves” (those who have more of everything, whether money, status, or power) nor their household staffs (employed to do the menial work). The domestic hires have at their disposal one (potentially) very useful tool, however: knowledge , of all the little habits, eccentricities, and secrets of their employers (and something which the employers are probably mostly unawares they possess). What might someon...