Andrew Nance is a fine writer with a keen eye for plot twists and for creating rising tensions. He excels at writing suspenseful, complex, and intriguing mysteries as he’s demonstrated before with All the Lovely Children and Red Canvas. With his newest book, Green Canvas (Red Adept Publishing 2024), he proves he’s yet at the […]
“Harbor Lights” by James Lee Burke
April 16, 2024 by Leave a Comment
Harbor Lights (Atlantic Monthly Press January 2024) by James Lee Burke is a collection of eight varied and gripping short stories by the multiple award-winning, bestselling author of the long-running Dave Robicheaux series. While harrowing in places, the stories collectively are stunningly powerful and impeccably crafted. The book includes a previously unpublished novella, “Strange Cargo,” […]
“Valediction: Poems and Prose” by Linda Parsons
April 1, 2024 by Leave a Comment
Valediction: Poems and Prose (Madville Publishing 2023) by Linda Parsons is an achingly lovely collection in which the poet treks through ordinary facets of life weighing marvel against damage. Parsons’ poems and her micro-essays, which she calls visitations, are eminently relatable—the death of a beloved dog, a complicated father-daughter relationship, loving support from older women […]
“Louise and Vincent” by Diane Byington
March 19, 2024 by Leave a Comment
Louise and Vincent (Red Adept Publishing LLC 2023) by Diane Byington is a moving, well-written novel which should captivate readers, especially those who like history and stories of strong women. The book blends well-researched history with the author’s rich imagination and her talent to create a story about star-crossed lovers, domestic abuse, and the power […]
March Read of the Month: “A Glooming Peace This Morning” by Allen Mendenhall
March 6, 2024 by Leave a Comment
Allen Mendenhall’s debut novel, A Glooming Peace This Morning (Livingston Press 2023), is an achingly lovely, stirring novel about confused youth, a tragically mismatched relationship, legal ethics, and small-town Deep South in the 1970s. The story is told in the voice of a mature man looking back forty years to events in his youth, and […]
“Everybody Here is Kin” by BettyJoyce Nash
January 30, 2024 by Leave a Comment
Everybody Here is Kin (Madville Publishing 2023) by BettyJoyce Nash is a moving, well-written literary story about family—the ones we are born into and the ones we create. It is also a finely tuned tale of a tight-knit community living on a small barrier island off the coast of Georgia—a place where the year-round islanders […]