In Milk Blood Heat (Grove Press, 2021) Dantiel W. Muniz serves up a savory, delicious stew of short stories in an outstanding debut collection. The stories are set in the steamy cities and suburbs of Florida centered on Black residents and their communities. Female voices and themes predominate. This collection is a rare gem in […]
November Read of the Month: “Milk Blood Heat” by Dantiel W. Muniz
November 3, 2022 by Leave a Comment
October Read of the Month: “Haints on Black Mountain: A Haunted Short Story Collection” by Ann Hite
October 6, 2022 by Leave a Comment
There are novelists who never master the short story form or who wouldn’t consider writing memoir. There are also writers of short fiction who balk at the idea of committing to a novel. And though 2012 Georgia Author of the Year and Townsend Prize finalist Ann Hite stays true to her Appalachian settings and Southern […]
September Read of the Month: “Loving the Dead and Gone,” by Judith Turner-Yamamoto
September 7, 2022 by Leave a Comment
Judith Turner-Yamamoto’s debut novel Loving the Dead and Gone (Regal House, September 2022) is a 2020 Petrichor Prize finalist. There’s more than one aching heart in this excellent story exploring the generational effects of love, loss, betrayal, and redemption. The story opens with middle-aged Clayton finding a young man’s body after someone smashed into the […]
August Read of the Month: “The Murder Gene” by Karen Spears Zacharias
August 4, 2022 by Leave a Comment
The Murder Gene (Koehler Books, 2022) is written with the precision of an ace journalist and with the page-turning intrigue of an award-winning novelist. No surprise since the author, Karen Spears Zacharias, is both. This combination of talents results in compelling nonfiction which deserves a wide and appreciative audience. Not only impeccably written, the book […]
“James Dickey: A Literary Life” by Gordon Van Ness
July 8, 2022 by Leave a Comment
For James Dickey, who believed in the “transcendence of the imagination,” as evidenced in a letter to Gore Vidal in 1988—“I make no distinction between fact, fiction, history, reminiscence and fantasy, for the imagination inhabits them all,” —Gordon Van Ness takes on a complex, passionate, revelatory—and often thorny—task in James Dickey: A Literary Life (Mercer […]
June Read of the Month: “Fast Break,” by Terry Lewis
June 1, 2022 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Claire Matturro Ever since Scott Turow re-energized the legal thriller with his critically acclaimed and commercially successful Presumed Innocent, there’s been a bounty of novels written by lawyers about lawyers and legal proceedings. Into this now-crowded field, former Florida circuit court judge Terry Lewis spins a compelling, authentic tale of courtroom intrigue and […]