Introduction: Carol Baldwin spent eighteen years researching and writing her latest book, Half-Truths (Monarch Educational Services 2025). I can’t even imagine. I spent about six years on my first novel, and that felt like an eternity. But Baldwin seems to love research, an important quality for someone taking on a historical fiction novel set at […]
“Sunrise on the Reaping” by Suzanne Collins
September 15, 2025 by Leave a Comment
In a dystopian North America, a boy is pulled into the competition of a lifetime. The winner is guaranteed to never go hungry again, but the losers never make it out alive. The 50th Hunger Games have arrived, and sixteen-year-old Haymitch Abernathy must go into the arena to fight for his life. Suzanne Collins takes […]
Susan Cushman
September 15, 2025 by Leave a Comment
Susan Cushman has nine published books—two novels, (Cherry Bomb and John and Mary Margaret,) one short story collection, two memoirs, and four anthologies for which she served as editor. A native of Jackson, Mississippi, she has lived in Memphis, Tennessee, since 1988. Susan has been married for 54 years and has three adopted adult children, […]
“She Had To Die” by Rebecca Barrett
September 14, 2025 by Leave a Comment
In Rebecca Barrett’s new novel She Had To Die (2025), murder in a small-town near Mobile Alabama sets off a riveting police procedural steeped in late-sixties atmosphere. A beautiful young woman, Ruby Stanton, is found shot dead in a shabby motel, and Mobile detectives Hugo August and his longtime friend Junior Knight are called in. […]
Donna Meredith interviews Susan Gilmore, author of “The Curious Calling of Leonard Bush”
September 11, 2025 by Leave a Comment
Book Summary: When twelve-year-old Leonard Bush loses his leg in a freak accident, he decides to give his leg a proper burial in the hilltop cemetery of his East Tennessee town. This event somehow sets off a chain of miraculous and catastrophic events—upending the lives of Leonard’s rigidly God-fearing mother, June; his deeply conflicted father, […]
“The Curious Calling of Leonard Bush” by Susan Gilmore
September 10, 2025 by Leave a Comment
Susan Gilmore’s The Curious Calling of Leonard Bush (Blair, 2025) opens with a funeral—for an amputated leg. A “curious” beginning, to be sure, but not a gimmick. Instead, this unusual event launches a deeply meaningful, beautifully written story about grief, guilt, community, and healing in Sweetwater, Tennessee. Through rotating third-person perspectives, Gilmore delivers a tender, […]