Publish and Perish

A vengeful cat, a mysterious village, and a spell-casting professor create terror on the tenure track in these three novellas with academic themes. Adam Grupper's humorous reading lets us into the characters' minds to capture the conceit of James Hynes's supernatural stories--that the horrors of a divorce, an academic controversy, and a tenure review resemble something unearthly. In Grupper's capable hands, "Casting the Runes," the trilogy's final tale, becomes almost cinematic as it ties together the three stories with a capper that's laugh-out-loud farcical before ending with an ironic gruesome touch. While the plots lean toward the predictable, Grupper and Hynes weave characters and images that will haunt listeners. J.A.S. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine