In the vast and twisted world of the horror gene there is a diverse and potent selection of ingredients to induce a nightmare. From slashers, to the supernatural, to creature features, zombies and all things beyond the grave, horror is a creative insight into the subjective nature of fear. Hell can look and feel like a lot of different things. Most of the monsters and ghoulies and people that scare us do so because they want, will or are currently trying to eat, maul, sacrifice or vamp us. Or else, they represent something inside in the dark bowels of human nature that frightens us of one another.

In the proud and spooky hall of genre icons, one big bad shines out for his kind of intellectual way of enjoying our sweet sufferings.

Pinhead, of Clive Barker’s horror-novel-verse and the Hellraiser film series, has been a staple of horror since he first stepped into this dimension in the 1986 novella, “The Hellbound Heart.”

After watching the rock star of the Cenobites completely tear souls apart with ripping hooks, chains and painful flesh removal throughout his long residency in books, films and comics, it’s hard to remember he was once just a couple of sentences.

Barker has always been open about his own surprise at the Pope of Hell’s journey to fame. He really hadn’t intended “Pinhead” to become a big star but he has sure been living with the monster all these long years. Pinhead was a bit of a puzzle box himself for his creator, Barker becoming synonymous with him above all his other works. ("Books of Blood" is a close second.)

Now, 25 years later, Barker has written one final Pinhead story, the last of the sadomasochistic hell priest in his erotic, twisted canon. “The Scarlet Gospels,” Barker’s long awaited new novel, left readers in a living Hell waiting years for him to write the long promised death of Pinhead. Released May 19, the novel marks Barker’s return to adult fiction and is the first sequel he has actually ever written to his original novella.

In a May article with Rue Morgue magazine, Barker spoke about his long promised plans of killing off his iconic and defining character.

When I wrote my earlier post comparing Harper Lee's classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird with her just-released earlier novel, Go Set a Watchman, I was relying on a number of reviews and analyses I had read about the new book. I hadn't gotten my own copy yet. Since then, I've read Watchman, which reinforced the perspectives I got from others and added to them. Watchman isn't a great book—it probably isn't even a very good book in its published form—but it's an intelligent book with sharp analyses of attitudes in the south during the 50s, specifically after the Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools were unconstitutional in the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision. The contrast between the versions of the south and the pervasiveness of racism portrayed in the two books is what most resonates for me—the glossy, airbrushed version in Mockingbird versus the wrinkles-and-all version in Watchman. My general takeaway from the contrast between the two books is, we need to grow up about the way we perceive racism in this country—how substantial it is, how much it underlies the way we as individuals perceive the world and the way our society functions. We need to look racism directly in the face, acknowledge it and do whatever we can, not to eradicate it completely since that's impossible, but to lessen its impact by working to correct its most destructive aspects.

Genuine spoiler alert: I'm going to be talking about Watchman in some detail, so if you plan to read the book and don't want it pre-summarized and analyzed, this is a good time to stop reading.

In Watchman, a 26-year-old woman who is living in New York returns to her home town in the south for a visit. At the beginning of the book, the town and its inhabitants appear to be as she remembered them, especially her father Atticus Finch whom she idolized as a child and continues to idolize as a young adult. In her eyes, Atticus was a man who transcended his time and place, someone who saw beyond race and class, whose judgement was absolutely fair and even handed unlike most white inhabitants of the town, including some wonderful but flawed adults she knew growing up.

As the book continues, she begins to see that Atticus isn't the man she believed he was. To her horror, she finds he's a segregationist and something of a bigot. He's against school integration and making it easy for southern blacks to vote—or he's against doing those things right away, anyway. He wants changes to happen in their own sweet southern time, not on the timetable set by the Supreme Court and the N.A.A.C.P. To paraphrase one of today's much-used phrases, for Atticus, White lives matter, but Black lives — or at least the quality of black lives — don't matter nearly as much, especially if improving their lives has a negative impact on the privileges he and other southern whites have come to expect as their birthright.

A former local musician gone veterans advocate is having a release party for his first poetry book, and all proceeds are going to his program Pay It Forward Tucson—a nonprofit that helps low-income families and veterans in Pima County.

The book, titled "Thoughts and Poetry for the Soul and out of Boredom," was released on Amazon a couple of weeks ago. "I really have no words to express my feelings right now," Engel Indo says in an email.

The book is a compilation of thoughts and poems Indo has posted on Facebook over the past five years. Some are in English and some are in his native language, Spanish. "It is 188 pages of personal experiences in love, in hate, in hope or the lack thereof," he says. 

I featured Indo, who is also a veteran, on the Tucson Weekly's "Local Heroes" issue from 2012. 

Many people know Indo through the Latin rock band A Son y Sol that used to play gigs on the streets of Fourth Avenue and at La Indita Mexican Restaurant. But his aspirations have always gone beyond performing. In the past couple of years, Indo has created various projects that benefit Tucson and communities south of the border, all the way to his hometown of Callao, Peru.

In 2010, Indo created De La Perla a Las Estrellas (From La Perla to the Stars), a program that used music to teach English to children growing up in Callao's La Perla district. It's one of the poorest districts in Peru, and where Indo grew up.

Ms. Magazine just published an essay written by one of them women who served time in prison alongside Piper Kerman. After a relatively short prison sentence, Kerman wrote about the experience in her book Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women's Prison, the book the popular television show of a similar name was based on. 

Beatrice Codianni, the former prisoner who penned the essay, says the television shop changed more than the main character's last name. Codianni said that while the book was an accurate portrayal of Danbury, Litchfield's real-world inspirtaion, she had to give up on the Netflix series two seasons in.

As a lifelong Tucsonan, I feel like I've got the rhythm of the city down. Of course, even newer desert dwellers know our population shrinks every summer when everyone clears out to escape triple digit temperatures. Last summer, I had that notion challenged. See, I was working at a bookstore and every shift—mid day Monday, Thursday nights, Sunday morning, whenever—was Saturday-level busy. 

Now, I'm sure that surge in book shopping can be partially attributed to the beauty of air conditioning and an armchair on a hot summer day—but word on the street is the people of our fair city are particularly big readers. Perhaps that's why we have so many bookstore categories in Best of Tucson®.  

We've got:

Best Bookstore for New Books
Antigone Books  
Barnes & Noble  
Bookmans Entertainment Exchange  
Mostly Books  
The Book Stop  

Best Bookstore for Used Books
Bookmans Entertainment Exchange 
The Book Stop 
Antigone 
Mostly Books 

Best Independent Bookstore
Bookmans Entertainment Exchange
Antigone Books
The Book Stop
Mostly Books
Revolutionary Grounds 

So tell us (with your votes, that is) where to buy books—and escape the heat. 

We are surrounded by convenience. Entertainment is readily available to us and the only work it really costs us is choosing something to watch on Hulu. There’s nothing wrong with that in moderation, but what happened to reading books for fun? With so many options and the busy day of the average person, is there anyone left who unwinds with a book and their imagination?

According to the largest online retailer out there, Tucsonans are out-reading almost every other city in the country.

Amazon.com named Tucson the fourth Most Well Read City in America on June, 2. The ranking of the top 20 cities was based on the sales of books, newspapers and magazines from Amazon in both print and Kindle formats from April 2014 to 2015. Only cities with populations over 500,000 residents were considered.

The top three cities were Seattle, Portland and Las Vegas.

The data Amazon collected revealed a few trends in the reading habits of the cities included on their list. Apparently everyone really likes “Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynn, because it was the top selling book in seven out of the 20 cities, including Tucson.

It was a hot summer day on the farm in 1986 when, then-farmer Charles D. Thompson Jr. would have his first experience with the border of Mexico. Farming was in Thompson’s blood, becoming the first Thompson to graduate from college he quickly continued his grandfather’s profession in agriculture. After years working as a leader in the organic farming movement, he found himself with a big blackberry crop and little time to make his deliveries.

Acting on a suggestion from a friend, he enlisted the help of five men from the Nayarit state of Mexico who worked for a friend at a chicken processing plant. Though he spoke little Spanish at the time, he would remember those conversations for the rest of his life.  

“They saved my blackberries that afternoon, and that day their stories began to change me forever,” he said. “I began to need to answer questions their lives raised about immigration and globalization, questions that became more important than continuing to be an organic grower.”

Thompson went full throttle in his pursuit of making a difference in the lives of the thousands of small farmers and people living with border issues every day. He and his wife sold their farm, he gained his Ph.D and went on to become a professor of the Practice of Cultural Anthropology and Documentary Studies at Duke University.

In his 15 years at Duke he has taught courses on farm workers, agriculture, immigration and the U.S./Mexican border. He has published six books and created four films all covering his community activism and topics of expertise.

From Entertainment Weekly:

Peter Gallagher has filed suit against Joss Whedon and Lionsgate, claiming the Avengers: Age of Ultron writer took the idea for 2012’s The Cabin in the Woods from his novel.

Gallagher (not the Peter Gallagher who played Seth Cohen’s dad on The O.C.) filed suit in California federal court Monday, saying he believes Whedon, who produced and co-wrote the Cabin in the Woods script, took inspiration from his 2006 book The Little White Trip: A Night in the Pines. The film’s director Drew Goddard and Whedon’s production company Mutant Enemy are also named in the suit.

In the court papers, Gallagher explains what he believes are “striking” similarities between the book and the film, including the names of the lead characters and the cabin, the plot, mood, pace and sequence of events. The suit also points out specific scenes that closely resemble one another.

Gallagher claims he has “lost, and will continue to lose, substantial revenues from the production and sale of the Film,” and is seeking $10 million in damages.

Audiobooks, man. I couldn't get through long drives or slow days at work without them. 

I'm an Audible lady. For those unfamiliar with the service: Every month, in exchange for $15, I get a credit for one book of any price and I can purchase audiobooks to stream. It's not like Netflix—you do have to pay for every book you want to listen to. Audible offers a small discount on the books, but nothing too significant. I try to get by with paying for one new/long/expensive title with my monthly credit, and filling out the other weeks with cheaper books. But not this week! 

Through April 20, all titles are 50 percent off. 50 percent! They're calling it a "Spring Cleaning" sale for your wishlist, but I think you and I both know it's really just going to make digital bookshelves more congested.

Have fun, booknerds.

Devastating news for literature lovers: Terry Pratchett died. Pratchett, king of footnotes, suffered from Alzheimer's Disease for almost 10 years. Pratchett wrote more than 70 books during his life—but good luck finding any at Bookman's today. 

There's a lot that could be said about what Pratchett gave the world, but I'll let his Twitter account have the last word on this one:

AT LAST, SIR TERRY, WE MUST WALK TOGETHER.

— Terry Pratchett (@terryandrob) March 12, 2015

Terry took Death’s arm and followed him through the doors and on to the black desert under the endless night.

— Terry Pratchett (@terryandrob) March 12, 2015

The End.

— Terry Pratchett (@terryandrob) March 12, 2015