A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever: The Story of Spinal Tap by Rob Reiner with Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer (Gallery Books). Reviewed by Daniel de Visé. “‘This Is Spinal Tap’ feels like the ultimate cult film: powerfully appealing to a select group of fans, baffling to everyone else. Studio executives found Rob Reiner’s 1984 ‘mockumentary’ utterly unfunny. Test screenings in Dallas and Seattle were disastrous. Many theatergoers thought it was a serious documentary about a real band. Either you got the joke or you didn’t.”

Amity: A Novel by Nathan Harris (Little, Brown and Company). Reviewed by Patricia S. Gormley. “Amity interrogates the traditional American tropes of rugged individualism and the romanticized conquering of the land. It’s an engrossing read that offers rare insight into the post-Civil War period, making it a worthy addition to the Westerns and other historical fiction already on your shelf.”

Transformed by India: A Life by Stephen P. Huyler (Pippa Rann Books & Media). Reviewed by Raima Larter. “This delightful voyage through a fascinating land continues as he recounts his time as a graduate student in an anthropology program based in London. He tries to carve out a research project, eventually settling on an exploration of the traditional art of Indian tribal peoples known generically as Adivasis. This art, largely created by women as part of their daily puja, or worship, had been dismissed by more modernized Indians as crude and uninteresting, but Huyler saw value in the women’s creations.”

The Midnight Shift by Cheon Seon-Ran; translated by Gene Png (Bloomsbury Publishing). Reviewed by Alice Stephens. “The vampires in Cheon Seon-Ran’s The Midnight Shift choose their victims precisely for their lack of community, seeking out “the scent of lonely blood” coming from those who have nobody to care if they live or die, or who wish for death due to age, addiction, or unbearable solitude. And in contemporary Incheon, South Korea’s third most-populous city, who’d believe that the deaths of dementia patients were caused by these mythical monsters?”

Lucky Day by Chuck Tingle (Tor Nightfire). Reviewed by Nick Havey. “Lucky Day is, fundamentally, a rollickingly fun horror novel that is somehow jovial in its exploration of eldritch terrors and rips in the space-time continuum. It makes statistics fun. Its A+ cast of characters, including casino head Denver (a smooth-talking, no-bullshit woman cosplaying as a wealthy cowboy for no apparent reason), engaging Las Vegas locale, and commitment to the sci-fi bit make it a remarkable read.”

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