Author Martin Clark, a retired Virginia Circuit Court judge, writes an outstanding classic legal thriller with The Plinko Bounce (Rare Bird Books 2023). Like most classic legal thrillers, the hero is a lawyer and the odds are stacked against him and his client in a murder case. There is also a tense trial, and post-trial, […]
“Reaching the Shore of the Sea of Fertility” by Anna Laura Reeve
October 3, 2023 by Leave a Comment
Intimate, brave, frank, piercing, and wholly dazzling. Just a few initial words to describe Anna Laura Reeve’s debut collection of poems, Reaching the Shore of the Sea of Fertility (Belle Point Press 2023). Reeve writes with an unflinching honesty that all but hurts, and her words cut with a sharp and precise knife. Yet her phrasing […]
“Burning Eden” by Sarah Bewley
September 20, 2023 by 2 Comments
Burning Eden (Level Best Books 2023), by Gainesville, Florida, first-time novelist and award-winning playwright Sarah Bewley, is a skillfully plotted, character-driven police procedural with a surprisingly tender heart given the rising death toll. The novel also has an evocative gloss of Southern Gothic about it, adding to its impact and richness. After all, the story […]
“Dear Outsiders” by Jenny Sadre-Orafai
September 5, 2023 by Leave a Comment
Dear Outsiders by Jenny Sadre-Orafai (University of Akron Press 2023) is a vibrant tale of two siblings whose often idyllic childhood on the coastline of an unnamed sea changes abruptly. Written in lyrical phrases encapsulated in short prose poems instead of the more traditional paragraphs and chapters, the collection tells the story of the siblings’ […]
“Hillbilly Madonna” by Sara Moore Wagner
September 4, 2023 by Leave a Comment
An exquisite, powerful work by a young poet, Hillbilly Madonna (Driftwood Press 2022) by Sara Moore Wagner is an endlessly complex collection of poems to be relished slowly. Each poem demands special attention as the individual verses convey their own unique tales within well-wrought lines of compelling intensity. The poems, mostly written in free verse […]