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 […]
Claire Hamner Matturro interviews Dr. Allen P. Mendenhall, author of “A Glooming Peace This Morning”
Introduction: Allen Mendenhall served as editor and publisher of Southern Literary Review for a decade, and when Associate Editor Claire Hamner Matturro discovered he had written his first novel, A Glooming Peace This Morning, she reached out for an interview. Mendenhall has written eight non-fiction books, including Of Bees and Boys: Lines from a Southern Lawyer […]
“how small, confronting morning” by Lola Haskins
Poet Lola Haskins’s enthusiasm for her adopted state of Florida is expressed with grace, power, and beauty in how small, confronting morning (Jacar Press 2016; released as ebook 2021), a collection of thirty-five poems. The words and images captured in the book quietly yet passionately evoke a wild and natural Florida that is being lost […]
Claire Hamner Matturro interviews H. H. Leonards, author of “Rosa Parks Beyond the Bus: Life, Lessons, and Leadership”
Rosa Parks (1913-2005) was a Southern Black woman born into the Jim Crow South who became an icon of the civil rights movement after her refusal to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama. Author and friend, H. H. Leonards, writes that with that “one simple act, Mrs. Rosa Parks changed the trajectory of […]
June Read of the Month: “Fast Break,” by Terry Lewis
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 […]