Judith Turner-Yamamoto’s debut novel Loving the Dead and Gone (Regal House, September 2022) is a 2020 Petrichor Prize finalist. There’s more than one aching heart in this excellent story exploring the generational effects of love, loss, betrayal, and redemption. The story opens with middle-aged Clayton finding a young man’s body after someone smashed into the […]
September Read of the Month: “Loving the Dead and Gone,” by Judith Turner-Yamamoto
September 7, 2022 by Leave a Comment
August Read of the Month: “The Murder Gene” by Karen Spears Zacharias
August 4, 2022 by Leave a Comment
The Murder Gene (Koehler Books, 2022) is written with the precision of an ace journalist and with the page-turning intrigue of an award-winning novelist. No surprise since the author, Karen Spears Zacharias, is both. This combination of talents results in compelling nonfiction which deserves a wide and appreciative audience. Not only impeccably written, the book […]
“James Dickey: A Literary Life” by Gordon Van Ness
July 8, 2022 by Leave a Comment
For James Dickey, who believed in the “transcendence of the imagination,” as evidenced in a letter to Gore Vidal in 1988—“I make no distinction between fact, fiction, history, reminiscence and fantasy, for the imagination inhabits them all,” —Gordon Van Ness takes on a complex, passionate, revelatory—and often thorny—task in James Dickey: A Literary Life (Mercer […]
June Read of the Month: “Fast Break,” by Terry Lewis
June 1, 2022 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Claire Matturro Ever since Scott Turow re-energized the legal thriller with his critically acclaimed and commercially successful Presumed Innocent, there’s been a bounty of novels written by lawyers about lawyers and legal proceedings. Into this now-crowded field, former Florida circuit court judge Terry Lewis spins a compelling, authentic tale of courtroom intrigue and […]
May Read of the Month: “In the Lonely Backwater,” by Valerie Nieman
May 4, 2022 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Donna Meredith In the Lonely Backwater (Regal House Publishing, 2022) would be a grand read if it were only a clever psychological mystery or simply a unique coming-of-age story, but Valerie Nieman achieves so much more than that. With gorgeous description and elegant prose, Nieman transforms a North Carolina village and marina into […]
April Read of the Month: “Family Law,” by Gin Phillips
April 5, 2022 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Adele Annesi Family Law, by novelist Gin Phillips, is a work of historical fiction set in Montgomery, Alabama, from 1979 through 1981. Told from the perspectives of young attorney Lucia Gilbert and budding teen Rachel Morris, Family Law explores the course of two female alter egos on the cusp of change and […]