Review: Treasure "Very Pleased With the Credit John Bellairs Gives His Characters"

Book review: The Treasure of Alpheus Winterborn

Review: Letter "A Nice change Of Pace From The Ones Usually Faced By Bellairs's Heroes"

Book review: The Letter, the Witch, and the Ring

Review: House "Surprisingly Creepy...An Excellent, Scary Story"

Book review: The House with a Clock in its Walls

Review: Mummy "[Characters] Continue[s] To...Charm..."

Book review: The Mummy, the Will, and the Crypt

Review: Curse "Wonderfully Quirky Personalities...Every Character Vibrates With Life"

Book review: The Curse of the Blue Figurine

Review: Lamp "A Feeling Of Actual Menace And Scenes That Are Beautifully Uncanny"

Book review: The Lamp from the Warlock's Tomb

Review: Spell "[a] Master At Creating A Creepy Atmosphere"

Book review: The Spell of the Sorcerer's Skull

Jacket Whys: Swirls and Light

We found recent commentary about the "ever-growing trend toward the exclusive use of photo-shopped images on kids’ book covers." The author cites four examples, including Brad Strickland's Grimoire: Tracked by Terror (2007):

Memoriam: Gary Gygax

The father of role-playing games and the co-founder of Dungeons & Dragons, Gary Gygax, has died. Gygax, along with Dave Arneson, created the long-popular fantasy game in 1974 which is estimated to have been played by 20 Million people.

The Cons of Film Adaptations

First...this is nice...someone put together a presentation about “the guy" who wrote House.  Perhaps they were thinking of Ron Bellairs.  Second, speaking of “Ron" and that aborted project, here’s a bit of commentary on making House into a movie. They say don't.

Just Call Me Angel of the Mourning

According to this post, The Doom of the Haunted Opera contains a “weeping angel.” At first we wondered if this was a type of the statues Lewis sees in the cemetery.  You may recall in The House with a Clock in its Walls, Lewis sees gravestones with “weeping women leaning on urns and cupids extinguishing flames [64]”.

Knowledge Must Prove Ignorance

Bellairs fan Jon Caulkett notes John Bellairs's Wikipedia article has been creatively rewritten to include this new fact:

Review: Eyes "Scary, Tense, Funny, And Quirky"

Book review: The Eyes of the Killer Robot

The House That Silence Built

Whaddya know, someone wrote fan fiction. This one’s a doozy: John Bellairs and Dr. Who.

Something About the Game of Gloom

In the game of Gloom you assume control of the fate of an eccentric family of misfits and misanthropes. The goal of the game is sad, but simple: you want your characters to suffer the greatest tragedies possible before passing on to the well-deserved respite of death. Blogger Graham Linehan points out the delightful obvious similarities between the game (not kin to another game by id software) and the artwork of Edward Gorey: