Lake County by Edgar Award–winning author Lori Roy (Thomas & Mercer 2024) is a treasure of a historical mystery/thriller suspense novel. The story is well imagined, and charming, even with its violence. Exuberantly paced, it is a complicated work with a dash of noir and a righteous dose of historical Tampa, Florida. Many smaller stories […]
“No Perfect Mothers” by Karen Spears Zacharias
October 15, 2024 by Leave a Comment
Karen Spears Zacharias’s novel No Perfect Mothers imagines the life of Carrie Buck, the plaintiff in the Supreme Court Case upholding the constitutionality of eugenics-inspired, forced sterilization. As Zacharias observes in the acknowledgments, “The book is important at this pivotal time as women seek to reclaim what the Supreme Court has once again taken from […]
Dawn Major interviews Raymond L. Atkins, A Southern Bard
October 15, 2024 by Leave a Comment
Introduction: I was an undergrad at Kennesaw State University when I attended my first poetry reading and had the pleasure of hearing Robert Pinsky read. I can’t recall if he had already served out his term as the U.S. Poet Laureate; Pinsky served as Poet Laureate for three consecutive years, so it may have been […]
“Craft & Current: A manual for magical writing” by Janisse Ray
October 15, 2024 by 2 Comments
Janisse Ray could have taken the easy way out. She could have produced a manual for writers that offers up her secrets of scene-building, dialogue, narrative tension—the usual stuff. She could have stuck to the basics, and her legion of fans would have eaten up this book, anyway. Ray, however, did not take the easy […]
Blackened Beauty: A Review of William Woolfitt’s “The Night the Rain Had Nowhere to Go”
October 9, 2024 by Leave a Comment
Every once in a great while, a reader encounters a collection of poetry that leaves a pleasantly gritty residue in the mind. Such is the case with William Woolfitt’s The Night the Rain Had Nowhere to Go (Belle Point Press 2024). In sixty pages, hard labor, stark poverty, tragic history, and environmental dystopia blend with […]
“The Book of Sorrows” by Kenneth Robbins
October 8, 2024 by Leave a Comment
The Book of Sorrows (Southern Arizona Press 2023), by professor, author, and playwright Kenneth Robbins, is a brave and sometimes acerbic retelling of portions of the Old Testament in verse form. Brave, because it must have been a difficult undertaking to recast Old Testament stories as poems with modern sensibilities. Brave also because some readers […]