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. […]
“Son of a Bird” by Nin Andrews
September 8, 2025 by Leave a Comment
Son of a Bird (Etruscan Press 2025), is a disarmingly fascinating memoir of a childhood on a dairy farm in Virginia that is told in a collection of prose poems by well-established poet Nin Andrews. While there are some harsh memories, on balance it is a book with a great deal of charm—and courage. Andrews […]
“The Dark Library” by Mary Anna Evans
July 15, 2025 by Leave a Comment
Mary Anna Evans has been intriguing readers with her masterful and intelligent mysteries for over two decades. During this time, Mississippi-born Evans earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Rutgers University and a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Exeter and became an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma. […]
“Museum of the Soon to Depart” Poetry by Andy Young
July 1, 2025 by Leave a Comment
The eighty-eight pages in Museum of the Soon to Depart (Carnegie Mellon University Press 2024) by Andy Young flow with exquisitely phrased words of grief and loss. Yet, no matter how beautifully written, the poems are nonetheless quite somber. The dying and death of the narrator’s mother from brain cancer, coupled with poems about plagues, […]
“Going to Maine: All the Ways to Fall on the Appalachian Trail” by Sally Chaffin Brooks
June 17, 2025 by Leave a Comment
The author, Sally Chaffin Brooks, is also a comedian, and this shows in a positive way in her memoir about hiking the Appalachian Trail when she is only twenty-five. Going to Maine: All the Ways to Fall on the Appalachian Trail (Running Wild Press 2024) is, thus, to be expected humorous and it is in a […]