In Hardbarned!: One Man’s Quest for Meaningful Work in the American South, an amusing and insightful memoir by Christopher J. Driver, readers are invited to commiserate with a hardworking American in a tough world, trying to pursue the happiness of writing [...]
Any reader of popular fiction knows that underestimating the unlikely heroine is never a good idea, and this is poignantly restated in Epiphany's Gift, a timely thriller by Mallory M. O'Connor. Epiphany Mayall stands in the center of this story, while [...]
In McDowell, tragedy and consequence lead an arrogant and narcissistic Dr. Hiram McDowell to examine his life and search for life’s meaning beyond winning and possessions. Hiram is first glimpsed leaving his Mt. Everest climbing partner to die. If that’s not [...]
Raw… gritty…no single adjective can sufficiently describe the intensity of A Child is a Piece of Paper, Lance Crossley’s starkly realistic novel. The year is 1960. Six-year-old Wanisin Blackwill and his older sister, Mitena, are forced to leave their Indian reserve [...]
Portraits is quite an achievement, as dauntingly detailed in its character descriptions as Shaw (who also wanted his actors to have particular heights, clothes, and eye colors, and his sets to have specific furniture), and as discursive in its stage directions [...]
A grimy New York book is always a winner, and here Moshfegh takes the lethargy and defeatism of twentieth century East Coast living and rolls it up into her protagonist, a nameless, monied female narrator on the cusp of George W's [...]
Electric Order, winner of the 2017 Baum Book Prize, holds no punches in its startling and unique vision of the future. The prologue has a razor-sharp hook that will grip you from the very start. Set in a future not too far [...]
The machinations of a fractured mind can make for great literature, and in The Folly of Sweeney by Brian J. O’Sullivan, readers get a raw glimpse into a truly unusual brain. Touching on elements of the immigrant experience, mental health, alcoholism, [...]
Jake, Lucid Dreamer by David J. Naiman is a charming look at a middle-schooler’s struggle to navigate grief and acceptance. With a touch of the surreal, Naiman has woven a fantastical tale with a powerful message about learning to face your [...]
The Map and The Territory is a pastiche in the true sense of the word. Using Wikipedia, maps, quotes, and works of art – and even a fictional version of himself, playing himself – Houellebecq’s fifth novel nearly got him into [...]