This review was originally published in and is reposted with permission from Shelf Awareness.
A thousand years before the famous family rivalry of Queen Elizabeth I of England and Mary, Queen of Scots, two sisters-in-law and queens in Merovingian France, whose histories were absorbed into legend, fought a civil war. In The Dark Queens: The Bloody Rivalry that Forged the Medieval World, Shelley Puhak's nonfiction debut, Queen Brunhild and Queen Fredegund are restored to center stage.
Brunhild (also referred to as Brunhilda) was a Visigothic princess; Fredegund initially lived as an enslaved woman in the palace. Their husbands--Sigibert I of Austrasia and Chilperic I of Neustria, respectively--were sons of Clothar I. Each inherited a portion of the vast kingdom of the Franks, which Clothar successfully reunified. Both queens would outlive their husbands, serve as regents for their sons, command armies and war against each other for decades. Puhak presents a vivid picture of how they skillfully preserved their lives, their power and their families.
After their deaths, Brunhild's and Fredegund's stories were retold during the Carolingian dynasty as a cautionary tale about women meddling in statecraft. Although the accomplishments of both women were minimized, pieces of their legend live on in opera, in Shakespeare and in today's fantasy novels. Puhak (Guinevere in Baltimore: Poems), whose nonfiction work has been published in the Atlantic and Best American Travel Writing, unearths the real women and traces how their stories were used. She also imagines what it might mean if girls found them featured more prominently in their textbooks. History readers will be enthralled. --Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library
Discover: In this engrossing history, two queens who engage in the cutthroat world of statecraft at the dawn of the Middle Ages.

This review was first published in and is reposted with permission from Shelf Awareness.
​Fantasy, science fiction and horror mingle in Spontaneous Human Combustion, another collection of dark fiction from Richard Thomas (Tribulations).
The horrors in these 14 stories come in forms as diverse as aliens, demons and even mundanities such as disease. In "Nodus Tollens," a deal made to settle a poker debt comes back to haunt a man in more ways than he could imagine. A man feels that he has done something horrible but does not know what it could be in "Battle Not with Monsters." In "Open Waters," the protagonist becomes lost in a virtual reality. Repetition is often a feature of these stories, giving the sense of a simulation or a recurring nightmare. It also plays a role in "In His House," in which the narrator invites readers into a Lovecraftian ritual heralding an imminent apocalypse. Many of the main characters are in some way repulsive, such as the brutal, abusive cop at the center of "Repent." But through the twists and turns of these stories, they begin to pale in comparison, turning vulnerable as presented alongside more otherworldly horrors.
This chilling collection of short stories, with plenty of twists and turns, as well as echoes of Lovecraft and Bradbury, probes the dark corners between the horrors humans inflict on each other and those that haunt our nightmares. This volume will please Thomas's existing fans and will surely create new ones. --Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library
Discover: Horrors both human and inhuman lurk in this provocative collection of 14 dark stories.