Pride of Eden by Taylor Brown / Book Review

What happens when environmental activism and the passion of a group of outsiders come together? Taylor Brown explores this idea in his book Pride of Eden, as we move closer and closer to the cataclysm that is our natural disaster. It is clear that not only is this a

Read Full Story...

Holiday Best Picks 2018

It was an excellent year for good books. And it's also the time of the year when people are shopping for gifts for their favorite bibliophile. This selection represents some really good book this year. These are great holiday gifts that don't shift too far into gratuitous violence

Read Full Story...

The Orphan of Salt Winds / Elizabeth Brooks

Elizabeth Brooks  Tin House Books   Jan. 15, 2019 300 pages  ISBN 978-1947793224 When the orphan Virginia Wrathmell is brought to Salt Winds, an epic old home by the marsh in Tollbury, she is introduced to her adoptive parents Lorna and Clem. They live in the shadow of secrets and

Read Full Story...

The Book of M.

Peng Shepherd William Morrow June 2018 496 Pages ISBN 978-0062669605 In this well-crafted debut novel, Peng Shepherd innovates the dystopian novel with surprising twists and turns. The plot is simple but hard to imagine: perfect for creating tension and chaos. When people start losing their shadows, it initiates

Read Full Story...

I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing: Star Wars and the Triumph of Geek Culture

A. D. Jameson  Farrar, Straus and Giroux  ISBN 978-0374537364 304p Being a lifelong card-carrying Star Wars fans, this book was merely a fan pick to make sure that commentary on the film(s) was in line. What surprised me was that this book was more than just a book

Read Full Story...

The Hawkman: A Fairy Tale of the Great War

Jane Rosenberg LaForge AmberJack Pub. ISBN: 978-1944995676 (paperback) 280p Released: June 5, 2018 The Hawkman: A Fairy Tale of the Great War by Jane Rosenberg LaForge is a re-telling of several Grimm’s fairy tales against the backdrop of World War I.  As a fan of World War I literature,

Read Full Story...

Seconds

Bryan Lee O’Malley Ballantine Books (2014) ISBN 978-0345529374 336p Available Now If you know Scott Pilgrim, you've been introduced to Bryan Lee O’Malley, however, when someone recommended Seconds to me, I was curious. In many ways, this standalone comic is a stunning, complex, and contemporary graphic novel that

Read Full Story...

Entangled Lives

Imran Omer Roundfire Books ISBN: 978-1785357848 Release Date: July 27, 2018 Jane Smiley (author of Private Life and Some Luck) said that “in our dangerous world, the freedom and empathy that fiction develops in its remains essential.” She was defining how fiction has the power to show us

Read Full Story...

Losing the Girl: Life on Earth Book 1

Mari Naomi  Graphic Universe  Pub Date: Jan 1, 2018 ISBN 978-1541510449 280 Pages  Available Now Claudia is missing. While they wait to find out what happened (runaway, hiding, alien abduction), her friends from Blithedale High are carrying on with their teenage lives. While they struggle with love, belonging,

Read Full Story...

The Storm

Arif Anwar Release Date:  Atria Books ISBN 978-1501174506 May 2018 In this stunning debut novel, Arif Anwar weaves a complex threaded story that weaves mystery, difficult choices, and the fate of history into an epic story of three generations of Bangladeshi history. The book opens with Shahryar, a graduate

Read Full Story...

Roses, Wine & Murder - In the City of Steeples

Rose Young Release: November 2018 ASIN: B0779LZPBX 316p Available Now  If you’ve heard the term “cozy mystery” you know the subgenre of crime fiction downplays some of the graphic elements in crime storytelling, leaving the main story to the local hometown detectives in the story. In Roses, Wine

Read Full Story...

The Bridge: How the Roeblings Connected Brooklyn to New York

Peter Tomasi (author) Sara DuVall (Illustrator) Abrams ComicArts Pub Date: April 2018 ISBN: 978-1419728525 208 Pages At a glance, we can look at buildings, memorials, and landmarks and immediately sense their place in the world. In this stunning graphic novel, The Bridge tells the story of the iconic

Read Full Story...

Gods of Howl Mountain

Taylor Brown St. Martin's Press Pub Date: March 20, 2018 ISBN 978-1250111777 p304 Available Now  When it comes to protagonists, Taylor Brown has changed that paradigm in his novel Gods of Howl Mountain. Rory Docherty is a wounded Korean veteran, back home to bootleg liquor, clash with local factions, evade

Read Full Story...

Paris in the Present Tense

Mark Helprin Overlook Press / 2017 ISBN: 978-1468314762 400 Pages Available It has been awhile since a novel has changed the way I think about the novel. But Paris in the Present Tense is a lyrical novel that has empowered my faith in the contemporary novel. Let's face it,

Read Full Story...

ActivAmerica

Meagan Cass University of North Texas Press / 2017 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction ISBN 978-1574416947 / Paper / 192 Pages Available  ActivAmerica is a collection of short stories drawn from America's obsession with fitness, sports, and how we re-envision ourselves through sports. If this doesn't sound

Read Full Story...

The Mezzogiorno Social Club

Ercole Gaudioso Guernica Editions / 2017 ISBN 978-1-77183-165-9  Paperback/ 290 Pages Available Now  It should be said, right off the bat that this is a story of cops and mobsters. Crafted with characters that wear the dust and the crime on their clothes, The Mezzogiorno Social Club is

Read Full Story...

The Old Man and the Sand Eel

Will Millard  Penguin Books / 2018 ASIN: B06Y62BYKZ 336 Pages Available Now  Fishing in simplest terms is an obsession. It is a complicated and often fluid set of skills that depend on season, weather, location, bait, technique and hundreds of other possibilities. Then there is the adrenaline rush of

Read Full Story...

Black Obelisk - Classic (1923)

Erich Maria Remarque Ballantine Books (1998) 448p. / Paperback ISBN 0449912442 Available Now  This classic by the author of All Quiet on the Western Front follows the post-World War I life of a returning soldier, poet, and monument seller who sees his country on the edge of change. And

Read Full Story...

Body Politic

Rich Murphy  Prolific Press Inc. / 2016  ISBN: 978-1632750846 Language and politics have a symbiotic relationship in strange and creative ways. George Orwell knew this when he wrote about the language of politics and what that language does for our society. In Orwell's Politics and the English Language, he spoke

Read Full Story...

A Field Guide to Murder & Fly Fishing

Tim Weed Green Writers Press. 2017.  978-0-9974528-7-7 ($24.95)  Hardcover.  Diving into this collection of short stories by writer and travel expert Tim Weed, you might want to pack your bags and roam the continent in search of great harrowing adventures. And in some ways, this collection delivers on

Read Full Story...

Kindred

Octavia Butler  Damian Duffy (illustrator) Abrams ComicArts (1/17)  ASIN: B01IDGS7BQ pp. 248 Creating a graphic novel experience is often a balance between images (graphic) and the novel (the story) and how they work together. Adapted to the graphic novel by John Jennings (illustrator) and Damien Duffy (editor), this

Read Full Story...