Reviewed by Daniel James Sundahl All things being equal: Possessed by spiritual dissatisfaction, or a hunger for knowledge or mastery, Faust makes a pact with the devil. It’s an old legend, of course, with tales told as early as the 1500s, and the stuff of drama, Marlowe and Goethe, and then Thomas Mann. The Faustian […]
February Read of the Month: “Kiss of the Jewel Bird,” by Dale Cramer
“The Velvet Hours,” by Alyson Richman
Reviewed by Donna Meredith In The Velvet Hours, Alyson Richman explores two different eras in Paris, the Belle Epoque and the lead-up to Hitler’s Nazi invasion, each rendered with meticulous attention to detail. The novel would be a fine read as a multi-generational romance, but it soars beyond that convention because it was inspired by […]
January Read of the Month: “The Ocean’s Edge,” by William Bernhardt
Reviewed by Carl Sennhenn No one perhaps would suspect, surely not expect, the author of acclaimed and prize-winning mystery novels to write and publish poetry. But William Bernhardt, the author of the successful Ben Kincaid series, has done just that with two volumes of poetry, The White Bird and now The Ocean’s Edge. If The […]
“Watershed Days,” by Thorpe Moeckel
Reviewed by Daniel James Sundahl One might be at a loss with this book absent some context, but even with context one might still be at a loss. Mr. Moeckel’s book covers some two years of occasional vignettes, an even dozen from 2005-2006 and another even dozen from 2006-2007: adventures of a sort. The vignettes, […]
Denise Tolan
Denise Tolan teaches amazing students at Northwest Vista College in San Antonio, Texas. She is a graduate of the Red Earth MFA in Creative Writing Program at Oklahoma City University. Denise has been published in places such as Reed, Apple Valley Review, The Great American Literary Magazine, The Tishman Review, and Gravel. Denise’s creative nonfiction recently […]





