Archive | June, 2026

Sensational Speculative Fiction: Heaven’s Graveyard and Wildflower

16 Jun

Heaven’s Graveyard
by Grace Curtis
Heaven’s Graveyard is an intriguing historic fantasy mystery. In the story Coda or Cod as she prefers to go by is an archeologist working far from the place of her birth, which she left behind along with her childhood love, Lark, after a family scandal. When she receives a message from an old friend promising revelations about a mythic heroine, that she always believed may have been a real person, Cod rushes home despite war brewing in the surrounding lands, only to discover that he has passed away under what she believes are mysterious circumstances. Now she must discover what happened to him as well as the truth of what he unearthed. I loved Heaven’s Graveyard even more than Curtis’s novel The Floating Hotel, which I had previously enjoyed. Like her previous work, this one is filled with quirky characters and unique worlds. Curtis is becoming an author to follow for me.

Wildflower
by Becky Jenkinson
Wildflower is the new debut fantasy novel by Becky Jenkinson set in a world plagued by a dark magical blight. The main character in the story, Felicity has been cursed since birth that she can only speak the truth. Her best friend Card is about to marry Prince Bastion, the son of the Queen who often requires Felicity to help ferret out the veracity of gossip in her kingdom. Felicity knows that the last person she should be drawn to is Will, Prince Bastions ex-best friend and possible source of the blight plaguing the land, but when he helps her find some rare flowers, she can’t help but feel something blossoming. This story will appeal to those who enjoy romantasies filled with diverse characters including strong LGBTQ representation and political intrigue. Fans of this story might also want to check out Violet Thistlewaite is Not a Villain Anymore and A Witch’s Guide to Fake Dating a Demon for more floral magic filled romantasies. Hoboken residents can borrow the ebook from eLibraryNJ.

Written by:
Aimee Harris
Information and Digital Services Manager

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Movie Review: Children of the Corn (1984)

11 Jun

How this movie/Stephen King turned driving through a cornfield (a pretty boring experience, trust me, as a Midwesterner) into one of the most horrifyingly claustrophobic and isolated cult rituals I have ever seen is brilliant. 

Movie poster for Children of the Corn, 1984. A silhouetted hand raises a sickle against a blood-red sky above a dark cornfield. The title "Children of the Corn" appears in bold white text at the bottom.

I discovered the movie while researching comparable titles to my own next novel. I always knew it existed but, for some reason, it never quite appealed to me, until I learned it was based on a Stephen King short story. That pushed me over the edge. 

What makes Children of the Corn classic horror is its roots in the fear of sensory deprivation.

Burt and Vicky are driving through Nebraska when they accidentally hit a child. They swear he came straight out of nowhere. And when there are miles and miles of tall, sun-bleached, waving corn blowing in the wind, there is simply no way to tell what’s hiding inside of it. That image,  simple as it sounds, is the beating heart of this film.

The two scramble with how to deal with this, and the further they go into the endlessness of the roads ahead, the more they find themselves circling nothing but corn, decimated storefronts, and evasive, guarded residents. This leads them to the ghost town of Gatlin. 

But that’s just what the surface shows.

Underneath, a twisted cult-preacher boy named Isaac and his second-in-command, Malachai, run the town. No adults remain. He Who Walks Behind the Rows commanded the children to slaughter every one of them.

A scene from Children of the Corn. A group of children sit in a circle at the edge of a cornfield. A boy stands at the center. Behind him is a police officers skeleton perched as a scarecrow attached to a tall wooden cross made of dried corn stalks.

Thus, Burt and Vicky’s crime is a simple one: being adults in the wrong place at the terribly wrong time.

One of King’s early literary inspirations was William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, and it shows here. Children of the Corn is about the terrifying idea of a world without rules, without adults, without the structures we’ve grown complacent to. It takes one of the most ordinary and mundane American settings, a small town where a stranger would expect a friendly hello, a polite wave, and easy hospitality, and makes everything in it disturbing and petrifying.

The corn breathes alongside them, growing more unsettling with every scene.

I won’t go into the rich undercurrents of fundamentalism, cult and folk ritual, or the movie’s representation of self-imposed malicious parentification. 

The movie created such a powerful dread that it spurred a new archetype for the genre: The Children of the Corn Dynamic – youth-led groups or cults that completely overthrow and control the adult population (King, 1978; TV Tropes).

P.S. Do not confuse this with the 2023 remake/reboot. The original is much more worth your time!

Reserve your DVD copy in the BCCLS system here.

Bluray here.

Or, read the short story published in 1977 on Overdrive/Libby.

Comment below your thoughts once you’ve had a watch.

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Written by:
Sean Willey
Information and Digital Services Assistant

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