Reviewed by Claire Hamner Matturro Colson Whitehead once more proves the sheer power of his talent with The Nickel Boys (Doubleday, 2019), a heartbreaking, chilling story about an innocent black youth sent to a hellish reform school in North Florida during the Jim Crow days. While the book is fiction, what makes it so devastating […]
July Read of the Month: “Privilege,” by Claire Matturro
July 3, 2019 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Donna Meredith On the first page of Claire Matturro’s steamy mystery Privilege, 18-year-old Ruby asks criminal defense attorney Gardner Randolph if she can trust him. He leers at Ruby’s chest and already readers want to sound the warning: “No! Don’t trust him!” But she is young, homeless, in trouble with the law and […]
June Read of the Month: “The Final Reckoning,” by Robert Bailey
June 5, 2019 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Claire Hamner Matturro Robert Bailey pumps up the thrill in legal thriller with the fourth and final book in his series about Professor Thomas McMurtrie, or Tom, a law professor who returns to the active practice of law. While none of the four books in his series lacks action, The Final Reckoning is […]
May Read of the Month: “The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek,” by Kim Michele Richardson
May 1, 2019 by 1 Comment
Reviewed by Philip K. Jason Readers are likely to find Ms. Richardson’s fourth novel to be one of the most original and unusual contributions they will encounter in the realm of the current literature of the American South. Set in the heart of the Great Depression, this engaging story rests on two little-known historical features. […]
March Reads of the Month: “Walker Percy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the Search for Influence” and “Reading Walker Percy’s Novels,” by Jessica Hooten Wilson
March 7, 2019 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Leslie Marsh Jessica Hooten Wilson’s stated ambition is no less than “to revitalize influence studies, especially as they relate to our religious assumptions about aesthetics.” On current form, she may well be the one to achieve this. Hooten Wilson’s two books are dealt with in tandem not only because they have appeared in […]