Author: Baffled Bear Books

I am Mark, Guardian of Mawson Bear. Mawson sits on Bed-Top Hill. Between naps he ponders about Baffling Things. After deep ponders, most things remain for him as completly baffling as they were before. But they do seem friendlier, somehow. If you, too, are baffled by, well, Things, his little books of ponders could be just right for you.
Books and writers

Witches: MacBeth, Pratchett and Ngaio Marsh

MacBeth, by William of the Wobbly Spear. I first read MacBeth in the form of a comic when I was eleven. (All pictorially presented story were described as ‘comics’ then.) I couldn’t see a super hero anywhere in this one but the characters were just as overwrought as in the DC stuff that I devoured and the story line looked as far fetched. Woods marching … Continue reading Witches: MacBeth, Pratchett and Ngaio Marsh

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Books and writers, dystopian, SciFi, Speculative Fiction

Chronicles of The Pale by Clare Rhoden: A harsh post-cataclysm world

Imagine a landscape more forbidding than Central Australia, the Sahara, the Atacana desert. A landscape still shifting with the after shocks of a cataclysmic event that, 197 years before The Pale begins, destroyed most species. Clare Rhoden quickly establishes this ghastly world in our minds. At the same time she moves the narrative along with fascinating characters to care about. ‘How does anything live out there?’ … Continue reading Chronicles of The Pale by Clare Rhoden: A harsh post-cataclysm world

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Books and writers, Dark fiction, Literature, Mystery, Speculative Fiction

Twilight, Dusk, Mirrors, Dreams: Tales by Dan Djurdjevic

‘To sleep, perchance to dream- ay, there’s the rub.’ Hamlet (III, i, 65-68) For when you are dreaming, you will wake. You assume. But what sort of waking will it be? I think we have all experienced at some time that dread, dripping, crushing sense of fighting our way back up from .. something .. out from .. something. And to emerge as though breaking … Continue reading Twilight, Dusk, Mirrors, Dreams: Tales by Dan Djurdjevic

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Books and writers, Mystery, Young Adult

Girl In The Attic, by Dan Djurdjevic

‘She’d checked her room three times and yes, the lock on her door was fastened .. She was safe. She finally felt her self drifting off to sleep. Until she heard a cough – a girl’s cough- coming from the attic.’ Rose’s dad started doing pointless things up there in his man-cave attic that didn’t even make the grim space more habitable. Then he quarreled … Continue reading Girl In The Attic, by Dan Djurdjevic

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Books and writers

The Brotherhood of the Dragon, by Phil Hore

We begin with Amun Galeas confiding in us about certain events in 1888 in London and .. Wait a minute, who is this Amun Galeas? He doesn’t seem to know that himself. Each time he carries his throbbing head out of a strange bedroom to seek answers he gets bashed. The mutiplying bandages on his head come to resemble a near-cosh proof turban. I, for … Continue reading The Brotherhood of the Dragon, by Phil Hore

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Books and writers, Literature, Odyssey Books

The Dark Poet, by Kathryn Gossow

The book’s dedication: For all the girls who loved a boy they shouldn’t have, and all the broken boys that heal’. A homeless man gets breakfast. A woman plucks limes in her garden. A student and his girlfriend run into an old school acquaintance. Ordinary days and lives. But these eight interlinked stories soon slide us toward brooding hearts, deceit, addiction, and the shadows of … Continue reading The Dark Poet, by Kathryn Gossow

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