Reviewed by Philip K. Jason Set in rural Madison County, North Carolina in the mid-1980s, this quietly gorgeous novel is most remarkable for its exquisitely rendered sense of place. Mr. Cash not only gives us every kind of sensory news about the community in which he locates his story, but he also paints the […]
January Read of the Month: “A Land More Kind Than Home,” by Wiley Cash
January 16, 2013 by Leave a Comment
November Read of the Month: “A Short Time to Stay Here,” by Terry Roberts
November 7, 2012 by 1 Comment
Reviewed by Matthew Simmons It is difficult to give Terry Roberts’s debut novel, A Short Time to Stay Here, the full and proper treatment it deserves. This is not because it is a novel marked by “difficulty” of some experimental sense; to the contrary, it is a highly-readable, easily-digestible book. But in that statement lies […]
North Carolina Writers’ Network Fall Conference
September 18, 2012 by Leave a Comment
CARY, NC–Boasting scores of independent bookstores, nationally recognized publishers, and the largest population of members in the state, North Carolina’s Research Triangle is the ideal host for the 2012 North Carolina Writers’ Network Fall Conference, November 2-4 at the Embassy Suites in Cary, NC. The annual Fall Conference is North Carolina’s premier literary event and […]
“Sinners of Sanction County,” by Charles Dodd White
June 22, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Review by Danilo Thomas Charles Dodd White’s Sinners of Sanction County, set in the heart of Appalachia, is packed full of booze, animals, backwoodsmen and woodswomen, as well of as the blood that can be drawn from each of them in the most violent, if not creative, of means. These tropes have come to be […]
“MISS JULIA ROCKS THE CRADLE,” BY ANN B. ROSS
December 20, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Paul H. Yarbrough If you haven’t read any of Ann Ross’s Miss Julia series, you have missed a clever protagonist and delightful character with whom you could have become quite close. Miss Julia is a light-plotted Miss Marple with a touch of Jan Karon’s easy-going, Southern, genteel, feminine style (think Mitford series). Ms. […]
“The Lacuna,” by Barbara Kingsolver
December 14, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Reviewed by Bonnie Armstrong Barbara Kingsolver’s first novel in ten years, The Lacuna, opens with the words: “In the beginning were the howlers.” The howlers are monkeys on an island off the coast of Mexico, and the year is 1929. Born in the United States, Harrison William Shepherd spent his boyhood in Mexico with his […]