Author J. E. Weiner kicks off her debut novel, The Wretched and Undone (HTF Publishing 2025) with a rattlesnake falling from the rafters of a church onto the congregation below. That’s a tough scene to follow, but Weiner keeps ramping up tension and introducing unexpected events, each scene propelling the story forward as we follow […]
“Rural Astronomy” by Georgann Eubanks
July 15, 2025 by Leave a Comment
Reading Georgann Eubanks’s Rural Astronomy (EastOver Press June 2025) felt like revisiting a hometown after a long absence—some of the landscape has changed, some of the houses sport new shutters, some of the memories are bittersweet, and the territory is both comforting and strange. It’s no wonder that Eubanks leads readers through a literary journey […]
“Pretty Girls Get Away With Murder” by Brandi Bradley
April 15, 2025 by Leave a Comment
Pretty Girls Get Away With Murder (Rumor Mill Press 2025) is not your mama’s police procedural, folks. In this sequel to Local Monsters, author Brandi Bradley has crafted a particularly riveting mystery by going heavy on character development instead of hitting the reader—boom, boom, boom—with chronological facts and forensics. Told from alternating points of […]
“Rowdy Boundaries” by James L. Robinson
February 28, 2025 by Leave a Comment
Every lawyer has stories to tell—alarming, hilarious, intriguing, or just plain peculiar tales of people and events that require legal intervention in one way or another. James L. Robertson has collected a variety of Mississippi’s most notable accounts of law-breaking characters and balanced them out with a few outlandish but little-known episodes. Robertson is well-positioned […]
“Small Town Big Secrets” by Dee Harris
June 17, 2024 by Leave a Comment
While it might sound like Small Town Big Secrets (Atlantic Publishing 2022) is a breezy summer read, there’s a lot going on in Dee Harris’s novel. When Ora Collins misses church (“the first time in fourteen years”), everyone who has ever lived in a small town will know that something is greatly amiss. This time […]