Summer of Horror 2026 - The Friday 56 (With Book Beginnings): Angel Down by Daniel Kraus

 

  

On Friday's I take part in two weekly link ups - The Friday 56, currently hosted by Anne @ My Head Is Full of Books, and Book Beginnings, hosted by Rose City Reader.  For The Friday 56, you choose a book, a book you have just finished, a book you are about to start, your current read, and share a line or a few lines that grab you (but don't spoil anything) from page 56 or 56% of the way through the ebook. Post it and share your post's url on Anne's most recent Friday 56 post. As for Book Beginnings, you share the first sentence or so and your initial thoughts, impressions, or whatever else it inspires, and then link up your post's url with Rose City Reader.

Happy Friday everyone!  This week I'm spotlighting one of my Summer of Horror 2026 (hosted by Tammy @ Books, Bones & Buffy), Angel Down by Daniel Kraus.  I've heard only amazing things about this, not counting the fact that it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, so my hopes are high for this.

Beginning:

and Cyril Bagger considers himself lucky, he ought to be topped, gone west, bumped, clicked it, pushing daisies, a new landowner, napooed, just plain dead, not only dead but scattered around in globs, for the last thing he saw was a shell dropping on top of him with the noise of colliding freight trains, a jim-dandy of a shot from Fritzy the Hun, and kind of ironic, seeing how the whole reason Bagger prefers burial duty is artillery shells can't reach this far behind the frontline trench, but this shell sure did, the way he always pictures it in dreams, a red skull of fire screaming down, giving him one second to think, That old Bagger luck has finally run out,

56:

and Bagger sighs woefully, "At least this will be fast," and the men, these chumps, these stools, these patsies, think they smell blood and draw close, there's nothing like war to habituate you to physical proximity, forever are you jostled by wet, cold, filthy, male bodies, the ground lurches within inches of Bagger, hands out, fingers flexing to work out the bone chill,

What are you reading this week?  Have you read this book?  As always, thanks for visiting my blog and perhaps even commenting below!