Taster Flight: Everyday Supernatural

We have always turned to stories to help us understand our world and our place in it. Nowadays, we have scientific explanations for most natural phenomenon, but there are still aspects of our world that science does not explain. Why bad things happen to good people. Why people do evil things. The power of love, for better and for worse. In these cases, stories with the supernatural can help us make sense of it all, even if they are completely fictional. Today's taster flight has four such stories: everyday life, with the supernatural ever present.

In Burning Girls, bad things happen because of a demon, who will collect a debt owed, no matter what. A grandmother teaches her knowledge of the supernatural to her granddaughter, but even this knowledge cannot fully protect her and her family.

In The Devil in America, it is the Devil himself causing the problems, and again there is a debt that must be paid. In this story, the knowledge to control the supernatural has been lost in the slave trade, and the women who try to face the Devil must learn how to do it without the help of their ancestors.

The source of the evil in Firestarter Kuwaka is much more prosaic, and the heroine has much more control over her powers. The strength of this story is the way it examines the impact of all of this on the rest of life.

Kia and Gio looks at how aspects of the supernatural can provide comfort as well as explanations for the bad things that happen, and in doing so uncovers some universal insights about love and loss.

All four of these stories do an excellent job of creating their world and drawing the reader into it. Settle in and try all four, and I think you'll end up with a clearer view of what it means to be human.