Watch This, Read That: Netflix Edition

The Good Place = = = Beforelife by Randal Graham (ECW Press)

If the quirky, absurdist humour and moral philosophy of The Good Place struck a heavenly chord with you, Randal Graham’s satirical novel Beforelife (ECW Press) is just the otherworldly ticket you’ll want. Like The Good Place‘s Eleanor who wakes in a seemingly utopian afterlife to find she’s been killed by an avalanche of shopping carts, Beforelife‘s Ian finds a similar fate with a train in Toronto’s Union Station and a first-class pass to an afterlife where everyone who believes in a pre-mortem life is diagnosed with “Beforelife Delusion.” (You know there’s nothing nefarious going on.)

GLOW = = = Rolling Thunder by A.J. Devlin (NeWest Press)

If you found yourself cheering on the rough-and-tumble women of GLOW, we’re willing to bet A.J. Devlin’s follow-up novel Rolling Thunder is the grand slam you’ll want to lap up. Former pro wrestler “Hammerhead” Jed Ounstead is back — now a fully-fledged private investigator, Jed is leaving the wrestling realm to enter a new arena: women’s flat-track roller derby. When old acquaintance Stormy Daze seeks his help finding her team’s missing coach, Jed discovers that the turnbuckle-and-metal-chair mayhem of the wrestling ring pales in comparison to roller derby’s four-wheeled ferocity. 

If the pitch-perfect sci-fi and nostalgic ’80s setting of Stranger Things is your jam, Oisin Curran’s Blood Fable (Book*hug Press) will hit a lot of the same notes — its setting is also a small American town during the Reagan era but perhaps most so through the eyes of its child protagonist and his fantastical attempts to make sense of the world around him. Like Stranger Things’ Will, what’s in the boy in Blood Fable‘s own mind is both the key to the town’s survival and also, potentially, its undoing.

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