Reviewed by Claire Hamner Matturro Best-selling author Charles Martin’s newest book, The Water Keeper (Thomas Nelson May 2020), is a compelling classic thriller—with more than one sudden turn and several surprising twists. On the most basic level, it operates like most modern thrillers with plenty of edge-of-your-seat suspense, action, danger, violence, and death-defying moments. The […]
“Bead by Bead,” by Suzanne Henley
June 9, 2020 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Susan Cushman In 2013 I was in a life-threatening car wreck. I broke my neck, right leg, and ankle, and was stuck in my house for the first few months of my recovery. One day Suzanne Henley came to see me and brought me a beautiful necklace she had made from exotic beads […]
June Read of the Month: “Buried Seeds,” by Donna Meredith
June 2, 2020 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Claire Hamner Matturro Women through the ages have had to choose between their own needs and those of their families. In her newest book, Buried Seeds (Wild Women Writers, April 2020), award-winning author Donna Meredith takes this basic conflict further by asking how much two women will risk to take strong stands on […]
“Alcestis in the Underworld,” by Nina Murray
May 27, 2020 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Joshua S. Fullman Despite the social division, even antagonism, between the various city-states and polities that made up the Greek world, Hellenism nevertheless found a measure of cultural cohesion in their religious narratives. The myth of Alcestis, to cite but one of these narratives, required a poet no less skilled than Euripides to […]
“The Girl with Kaleidoscope Eyes,” by Williams Rawlings
May 20, 2020 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Donna Meredith The Girl with Kaleidoscope Eyes, by William Rawlings, would be a great read if only because it presents a richly layered mystery and a wronged protagonist deserving of much more than the world has handed him. But the novel is so much more than that. Rawlings took the historic Savannah setting […]
“Falling Apart, Radiant,” by Mary Jane Ryals
May 13, 2020 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Claire Hamner Matturro In her newest chapbook, Falling Apart, Radiant, Mary Jane Ryals offers us poems of resiliency which resonate with tenderness and intimacy about what it means to live, suffer, get up and do it all again. Ryals invites her readers in for a close look at her fight against cancer, but […]