Book Reviews

[ad_1] Winter Counts opens on Virgil Wounded Horse in a parked car outside a bar biding his time before he beats the hell out of local predatory rapist. Virgil is Rosebud Reservation’s local enforcer, the only one willing to put his body on the line to make sure his community is protected and sees justice, … Read more

[ad_1] Great historical fiction reaches beyond the era it explores to tell truths about our current moment. Kathleen Rooney achieves this in just the opening sentence of her new novel, Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey, as she writes “monuments matter most to pigeons and soldiers.” Her story follows Charles Whittlesey and homing pigeon Cher Ami, … Read more

[ad_1] Climate change may be a planet-wide problem, but novels about the subject can be deeply personal. Case in point: Australian author Charlotte McConaghy’s transporting debut, Migrations. It tells the story of Franny Stone, who seeks out the last flock of Arctic terns in Greenland and then follows them on what might be their final … Read more

[ad_1] Last week I saw the groundhog for the first time. He lumbered across the patch of lawn at the bottom of our garden, looking much like a muskrat or a beaver but for his tail—the muskrat has a tail, unsurprisingly, like a rat; the beaver of course has his paddle; whereas the muskrat’s tail … Read more

[ad_1] Transition is often met with uncertainty. Changes in life challenge our perceptions, our emotions, and the way we feel about ourselves. In Shruti Swamy’s debut story collection, A House is a Body, a thread of internal change weaves throughout the twelve stories. Characters accept and face the consequences of unavoidable circumstances in life, and it’s … Read more

[ad_1] Picking up a sequel to a book as original as Gideon the Ninth is a little scary—the first book set an incredibly high bar. Tamsyn Muir’s second novel, Harrow the Ninth, thankfully, clears it with room to spare. Returning to that preposterous but somehow organic blend of black magic and science fiction, Harrow the … Read more

[ad_1] Writers don’t need to have supernatural abilities to foretell the future; we just need vivid imaginations, intense curiosity, and the ability to logically extrapolate what comes next and next and next. The world we’re writing in always has some differences from the world our books are released into, resembling the current world more or … Read more

[ad_1] A quote from Toni Morrison—“It is not only about ‘us’; it is also about me and you. Just the two of us.”—is the first epigram in here is the sweet hand, francine j. harris’ newest collection. The use of Morrison’s quote informs us of the personal nature of the expansive, crackling poems to come. … Read more

[ad_1] Attention animal lovers, nature lovers, literary lovers—the Flannery O’Connor Award-winning author Becky Mandelbaum has written a book just for you. The Bright Side Sanctuary for Animals is Mandelbaum’s debut novel, and it is characterized by love the size of the Kansas sky, an indelible attachment to home, and enough dogs to comfort you through … Read more

[ad_1] In 1966, Jean Rhys published Wide Sargasso Sea, a reimagining of Jane Eyre that delved into the past and present of Mr. Rochester’s first wife, Bertha Mason. Simply seen as the omnipresent ‘madwoman’ in Bronte’s novel, Rhys gave her a complex inner world and humanized her apparent madness. There have been numerous spiritual successors … Read more