This novella is ninety pages of sheer delight, a well-told story with a tender twist. While Visiting Babette (Sagging Meniscus Press 2025) uses the technique of the unreliable narrator to spin a charming, endlessly clever, and at least slightly bizarre tale of two cousins, Ina and Babette. These two are more like close sisters, each […]
June Read of the Month: “NOLA Face: A Latina’s Life in the Big Easy” by Brooke Champagne
June 4, 2025 by Leave a Comment
Part of the story behind Brooke Champagne’s astonishingly good essay collection, NOLA Face: A Latina’s Life in the Big Easy (UGa Press 2024) is a dog. Well, not just Nola herself, the “brindled, emaciated pit-boxer” that Champagne and her husband adopted after Hurricane Katrina, but moreso her particular expression, born of jealousy and/or inadequacy, when […]
“Song of Sourwood Mountain” by Ann H. Gabhart
June 2, 2025 by Leave a Comment
Ann Gabhart’s latest novel, Song of Sourwood Mountain (Revell Press 2024), explores the meaning of family and community. With its focus on a slow-developing romance, and overt evangelical religious values, the novel reads like a historical Christian romance in the tradition of Grace Livingston Hill. The Song of Sourwood Mountain tells the story of Mira […]
“The Cheese Biscuit Queen Kiss My Aspic!” by Mary Martha Greene
May 14, 2025 by Leave a Comment
Are you hungry? Because if you are, Mary Martha Greene will send you straight into the kitchen with her new book, The Cheese Biscuit Queen Kiss My Aspic!. You’re probably not going to get past the first couple of recipes in this book before you have to gather your ingredients and make one of them. […]
“Good Eye, Bad Eye” by Jeanne Malmgren
May 14, 2025 by Leave a Comment
Readers of Jeanne Malmgren’s engaging memoir, Good Eye, Bad Eye, will find the universal themes and the clarity of her writing style appealing. From her personal story of trauma following a childhood eye injury, life truths emerge as Jeanne struggles to find her way in the world. This is not another poor-pitiful-me memoir. Instead, it […]
May 2025 Books of Note: Jim Melvin’s “Do You Believe in Magic?” and Jack Woodville London’s “Dangerous Latitudes”
May 13, 2025 by Leave a Comment
Do You Believe in Magic? (Green Bird Publishing 2025) by Jim Melvin is a highly imaginative fantasy novel starring three thirteen year olds who find themselves transformed from middle school outsiders into leaders with special powers when they travel through a portal into a parallel world. Billed as “Book One of the Dark Circle Trilogy,” […]