In this review/interview hybrid, Associate Editor Dawn Major discusses with author Susan Beckham Zurenda her second novel, The Girl From The Red Rose Motel (Mercer University Press 2023). DM: Susan, I thoroughly enjoyed your first book, Bells for Eli, and absolutely identified with Hazel’s character in The Girl from the Red Rose Motel even more. […]
Read of the Month: “The Girl from the Red Rose Motel” by Susan Beckham Zurenda
January 30, 2024 by Leave a Comment
“Everybody Here is Kin” by BettyJoyce Nash
January 30, 2024 by 1 Comment
Everybody Here is Kin (Madville Publishing 2023) by BettyJoyce Nash is a moving, well-written literary story about family—the ones we are born into and the ones we create. It is also a finely tuned tale of a tight-knit community living on a small barrier island off the coast of Georgia—a place where the year-round islanders […]
“The Bullet Swallower” by Elizabeth Gonzalez James
January 29, 2024 by Leave a Comment
The Bullet Swallower (Simon & Schuster 2024) by Elizabeth Gonzalez James is a wild yarn of a story with elements of a classic western adventure invigorated with mystical realism and more than a gloss of karmic turbulence. In short, it’s fascinating. Literary historical fiction at its finest, this is an ambitious novel which more than […]
“The Digital Self: Poems and Illustrations” by Wesley Bishop
January 16, 2024 by Leave a Comment
“It felt like a time apt for apocalyptic writing,” says Bishop in his note at the end of The Digital Self (Lulu 2023). “Yet,” he says, “we continued to create countless traces of ourselves with each day spent in the digital sphere. The things we liked, or shared, or rage posted about, or emailed, or […]
“The Light Pirate,” by Lily Brooks-Dalton
January 15, 2024 by 2 Comments
The Light Pirate (Grand Central, 2022) debuted less than a year ago as an immediate Good Morning America Book Club Pick. Anyone reading this sophomore novel by acclaimed author Brooks-Dalton will understand why—not only is it artfully written and carefully crafted, it takes what was once dystopian climate fiction and twists it, tornado-like, into a […]
January Read of the Month: “Traces” by Patricia L. Hudson
January 3, 2024 by Leave a Comment
Combining the action of the finest suspense novels with the intense family drama of the best women’s fiction, Patricia Hudson’s historical novel Traces (University of Kentucky Press 2022) is a riveting read underpinned by twenty-five years of impeccable research. The novel was a finalist for the Weatherford Award (losing to Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead) and has […]