Scott Gould’s newest collection, Idiot Men, provides the stage for wayward characters who make poor choices in life and love against a backdrop of elegant prose. In “Word of the Day” (winner of the 2020 Larry Brown Short Story Award), a long-haul truck driver’s wife flees to Jamaica with her lover, leaving him to babysit her hairless tomcat, […]
“Louise and Vincent” by Diane Byington
March 19, 2024 by Leave a Comment
Louise and Vincent (Red Adept Publishing LLC 2023) by Diane Byington is a moving, well-written novel which should captivate readers, especially those who like history and stories of strong women. The book blends well-researched history with the author’s rich imagination and her talent to create a story about star-crossed lovers, domestic abuse, and the power […]
March Read of the Month: “A Glooming Peace This Morning” by Allen Mendenhall
March 6, 2024 by Leave a Comment
Allen Mendenhall’s debut novel, A Glooming Peace This Morning (Livingston Press 2023), is an achingly lovely, stirring novel about confused youth, a tragically mismatched relationship, legal ethics, and small-town Deep South in the 1970s. The story is told in the voice of a mature man looking back forty years to events in his youth, and […]
Claire Hamner Matturro interviews Dr. Allen P. Mendenhall, author of “A Glooming Peace This Morning”
March 5, 2024 by Leave a Comment
Introduction: Allen Mendenhall served as editor and publisher of Southern Literary Review for a decade, and when Associate Editor Claire Hamner Matturro discovered he had written his first novel, A Glooming Peace This Morning, she reached out for an interview. Mendenhall has written eight non-fiction books, including Of Bees and Boys: Lines from a Southern Lawyer […]
“Winston’s Book of Souls” by Terresa Cooper Haskew
March 4, 2024 by Leave a Comment
Although Terresa Haskew’s debut novel, Winston’s Book of Souls (Touchpoint Press 2024), begins with a dead body and revelation of other crimes, it is at heart a story of desire for atonement. Her characters make mistakes but yearn to live good lives. With an ever-increasing tone of foreboding, the story pulls readers relentlessly forward to […]