Winner of the 2025 Anhinga Prize: “dumb” by Betsy Johnson Betsy Johnson’s manuscripts have been finalists in the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize, the National Poetry Series Competition, and the University of Wisconsin Poetry Prizes. Her work has appeared in the Kenyon Review, the Iowa Review (online), Boulevard, Prairie Schooner, and Alaska Quarterly Review. She lives in Minnesota and […]
December Read of the Month: “Junah at the End of the World” by Dan Leach
December 2, 2025 by Leave a Comment
Editor’s note: SLR has two Reads of the Month for December. We think you will love both books. You won’t find a more huggable narrator than twelve-year-old Junah, the unforgettable protagonist of Junah at the End of the World by Dan Leach. His voice—funny, irreverent, and deeply original—calls to mind Holden Caulfield from The Catcher […]
“Fun City Heist” by Michael Kardos
November 17, 2025 by Leave a Comment
Need an entertaining escape from the troubles of our times? Fun City Heist (Severn House 2025) by Michael Kardos just might be your answer. If you enjoy Elmore Leonard and Donald Westlake novels, you will find Fun City Heist delightfully entertaining. As a one-time professional drummer, it seems inevitable that writer Michael Kardos would eventually […]
“These Blue Mountains” by Sarah Loudin Thomas
November 3, 2025 by Leave a Comment
If you have never visited Black Mountain, North Carolina, by the time you finish reading Sarah Loudin Thomas’s These Blue Mountains (Bethany House 2025) you will want to pack your bags and go. Fans of Kim Michele Richardson’s The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, Jayne Anne Phillips’s Night Watch, and Annette Clapsaddle’s Even As We […]
“Shelter Me” by Daren Dean
November 1, 2025 by Leave a Comment
In Shelter Me, Daren Dean brings to life the residents of a struggling neighborhood in central Louisiana. Though the town of Satsuma Grove is fictional, the catastrophic flood at the heart of this novel is based on the real and unnamed 2016 disaster, during which twenty to thirty inches of rain fell over just three […]
“Devil’s Hand” by Lori B. Duff
October 7, 2025 by Leave a Comment
Lawyer Jessica Fischer returns in Devil’s Hand (She Writes Press 2025), the second installment in Lori B. Duff’s legal thriller series following Devil’s Defense (reviewed here). This time, Jessica represents Susan Wolan in what initially appears to be a straightforward divorce case. Compared to defending a coach who didn’t want to meet the daughter he […]