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Ann Skea's Bookshelf
The Thinning
Inga Simpson
Hachette Australia
https://www.hachette.com.au
9780733643514, A$32.99 PB / $9.99 Kindle, 279 pp.
https://www.amazon.com/Thinning-Inga-Simpson-ebook/dp/B0D2KYH3DK
We haven't always lived on amber alert, ready to run. When Dianella was the photographer in residence and Dad the head astronomer, we used to have a house, like regular people.
But since the mining accident that Finlay (Fin) says put the moon's cycles 'all out of whack' and disrupted the tides and the rhythms of life on Earth, many things have changed.
Fin remembers the observatory at Siding Spring in the Warrumbungle National Park, 500 kilometres from Sydney, as 'a whole community': a place where she and the other children who lived there would pretend that the telescopes - Huntsman, Solaris, Schmidt, Sky Mapper and the others - were characters in their play, and where she had dreamed of being an astronaut:
Sitting in the prime focus cage of the main telescope was a lot like flying a rocket ship, sailing through the stars into infinity. Our technician, Blair, would move the telescope faster than he needed, to accentuate the feeling. Even walking around the catwalk inside the dome was like being in a spacecraft.
Now, childhood is over and Fin and her parents, plus a few others from the abandoned observatory, are hiding out in the national park, always alert for the government agents, the military, the vans of tech company MuX, and the national park's rangers, who patrol the park and hunt out 'the Illegals' who have chosen to remain off-grid. There are helicopters, drones, informers, security cameras, and the constant need to be ready to 'scatter deeper into the park'.
Animals and plants have changed, species are adapting or dying out and 'survivors are shape shifters', as Fin says, but she still feels the power of the special places where 'the membrane between our world and another is thin', and where there is a closeness to nature that you could maybe 'step through to the other side'. She knows the sky, the constellations, and the stories she has heard from Des and from Uncle Nate, who had been a national park ranger, caring for Country.
Fin's world has been 'shaped by the stars, and the images of them'. She feels close to the Dark Emu that spans 'the stars and dust lanes of the Milky Way', 'flying through the sky, changing with the seasons', but light pollution means that the sky is no longer dark, and the 'second generation' strings of satellites launched by MuX and tracked on photographs by Dianella, are making it ever lighter and further disrupting nature.
Dianella and the others from the illegal observatory group are planning to return to the observatory and 'commandeer the main telescope' for some kind of 'business', which will be timed to coincide with the total eclipse due to happen 'the day after tomorrow'. Fin is not told what this business is, but she is tasked with getting across rough country to the top of Mount Kaputar, where she must climb the radio tower and signal them with a laser light at the moment of complete eclipse. Her hazardous journey, avoiding detection among the crowds who will be congregating at Kaputar to see the eclipse, becomes a thrilling minute-by-minute countdown from chapter to chapter until the end of the book.
To make things more difficult, Fin, is given charge of a young 'Incomplete', 'Terry', whose parents she and Dianella watch being captured, but who manages to escape. The Incompletes are a new generation of humans that has evolved with eyes and brains made for staring at screens: 'they are short-sighted and ill equipped for the outdoors', and they are unable to reproduce - 'not with each other anyway', but can reproduce if mated with a 'Complete'. Terry, who is rescued by Fin's group, is, it seems, wanted alive by the authorities:
'You should just go. It's me they're after,' Terry says. Their forehead is creased, their mouth miserable.
'You? Why would they want you?' I say.
Dianella stares at Terry. 'Yes. Why?'
'To study me.'
The Thinning is beautifully written and Inga Simpson's storytelling is rich and deeply infused with her sensitivity to the world of nature. She manages to capture Fin's character and voice, to bring to life the small group she belongs to, and to pace the story through 'the degrees of separation' that for Fin's family mean:
...the sun dropping, six degrees at a time, in thirty-minute intervals, from golden hour into blue hour, through the three stages of twilight, until the sun is eighteen degrees below the horizon, leaving us in true astronomical dark - when the galactic core visibility begins.
That we are already losing this astronomical dark to light pollution, and that nature is already disrupted by this, is the book's underlying warning, but Inga Simpson is too good a writer to be didactic. Instead, she weaves a tale that draws you into the drama of Fin's journey and the fragile beauty of the rugged land through which she treks.
If Fin's astrological descriptions are sometimes a little too detailed, she makes up for it in the poetry of her brushes with animals, her feeling for the land, and in her thoughts:
The air is so damp, droplets drip from my hair and nose. Ribbons of bark rattle all around us. The moss breathes.
...the delicate spiral of a snail's shell, like an unfolding fern frond. Like the Milky Way, our spiral galaxy, expanding in its own grand time.
What if the thresholds I long to cross are not portals to another dimension, but the capacity to fully inhabit our own? A way of circling back, into ourselves. Our best selves. What if we could see a way to make a new world, where all beings, no matter how fragile, could thrive?
Altogether, The Thinning is a gripping and enjoyable tale full of the beauty that we might lose if we are not more careful to protect the fragile world we live in.
In her Author's Note, Simpson outlines some of the devastating impacts of fracking, and the dangers inherent in the proposed mining of gas seams in the half-million hectares of the New South Wales Pilliga Forest. This area is 'one of the most important areas for biodiversity in eastern Australia', and the scheme is being opposed by the Gomeroi community, farmers and environmental groups, whose land would be affected.
Dr Ann Skea, Reviewer
https://ann.skea.com/THHome.htm
Arthur Turfa's Bookshelf
As If Scattered: Poems
Holaday Mason
Giant Claw
https://www.giantclawpress.com
9798990014923, $17.99
https://www.amazon.com/As-If-Scattered-Holaday-Mason/dp/B0DDNKR5Q2
The poems in this outstanding collection speak to vulnerability, eroticism, family, and place. They are unequal diptychs; a sparse, laconic poem precedes a longer one, linked together by a word or words in the title and content. As a result, the pace of reading slows down so that the reader's attention becomes focused on the poems.
There are moments of bliss here, mingled with moments of sadness and fear. The tone is even, almost clinical in its expression, the speaker calmly takes in the moments and records them as they appear. "So we wait for the Big Moment together/ We will not have long to wait." (p. 69) No resignation, or fear, rather there is a sense that everything is linked, even though it seems scattered.
Arthur Turfa
Reviewer
Bob Schott's Bookshelf
Shun the Heaven: An Antebellum Mystery
David Hoing, author
Roger Hileman, author
https://hoingandhileman.net
Black Rose Writing
www.blackrosewriting.com
9781685135898, $22.95 PB, 312pp
BODT2B9ZNS: $5.99 Kindle, 312pp
https://www.amazon.com/Shun-Heaven-Antebellum-Dave-Hoing/dp/1685135897
Shun the Heaven, by Dave Hoing and Roger Hileman, is another example of historical and period fiction brought forth by this collaborative writing team that has previously produced stellar examples of this genre including among others: Hammon Falls (2010), A Killing Snow (2016) and what I consider to be their tour de force, In the Blood (2020). The title is derived from Shakespeare's Sonnet 129 which ends as: "To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell," with other chapters likewise headed by Shakespearian quotes that have relevance to the novel's plot.
The novel involves the convergence in the Detroit of 1847 of three plot lines following in the wake of the murder of Claire Hinman, the wife of Carl Hinman, her stepbrother. Claire has been found bludgeoned and stabbed and left in the frigid snow of February, 1846. Her murder followed a partially prepaid funeral planned in December of 1845 with a local undertaker by a mysterious woman purporting to be Joanna Hinman, Carl's and Claire's illegitimate half-sister. She offers the undertaker one-quarter down with the balance to be paid upon his services being rendered. The woman leads the undertaker to believe that Claire Hinman is seriously ill and not expected to survive for much longer. Although reluctant to agree to this unusual arrangement and somewhat skeptical as well, he finally does and accepts a bank draft signed by Carl Hinman (who turns out to be illiterate) for the advance partial payment. However, after the murder with the funeral completed, the undertaker is unable to locate Carl Hinman to collect the balance due as Carl Hinman has fled along with Claire's and his young daughter Mariel as circumstances point to Carl as the murderer of his wife, though sufficient evidence is lacking to charge him as yet. Although Carl denies guilt for the murder, he flees to rural Ohio with Mariel where he takes up farming for fear he will eventually be charged and convicted, leaving Mariel effectively an orphan.
The undertaker retains lawyers in an attempt to locate Carl and collect the balance due for his services. To that effect, they locate and contact by letter Claire's father, Noah Blackbourne, an East Coast sailor serving for years aboard whaling ships, the sea always being his first love despite his dutiful affection for his late wife, Claire's mother, and more so, for their daughter. Years before Noah had married a tumultuous seaside serving wench named Jane after an impromptu and singular sexual dalliance had led to the conception of their daughter whom he loved dearly. He had felt that honor dictated marriage. However, the resulting stormy marital union proved untenable and Jane ran off with another customer named Horace Hinman, a widower, taking Claire with them for a visit to Jane's sister in Ohio. Although she deserts Noah, Jane never divorced him or therefore legally married Hinman. Carl Hinman is the son and only child of Horace by his late wife. Together, the illicit couple have two daughters of their own producing a complicated family situation after returning to Boston, in which Blackbourne was unaware that they resided.
Horace died of heart disease in 1828 and Jane continues to reside in Boston with her children where her sister joins the family. When Jane died of cholera in 1832, Noah, having just discovered that she and the children were living in Boston, secretly attended the funeral. His daughter does not recognize him having been only two when her mother had left him. Jane's sister continued to raise Jane's children, while Carl Hinman, old enough to be on his own, eventually moved to Detroit after marrying Claire Blackbourne in 1836 where he worked in a tannery. They eventually had Mariel, their only child.
Upon learning of the death of his daughter, Noah decides to travel to Detroit and investigate what seems to him to be the suspicious circumstances surrounding Claire's death, with his suspicions centering on the son-in-law whom he doesn't know but despises if for no other reason than he bears the name of the man who had taken Noah's wife and daughter from him. He was outraged when he learned of his daughter's marriage to her stepbrother. Accordingly, accompanied by his faithful sailor friend and sidekick, William Short ("Short Bill"), they embark on a precarious journey west in the course of which they brave a shipboard Great Lakes storm rivaling in intensity any Short Bill or he had ever faced in the North Atlantic.
The third plot line of the novel involves a traveling medicine/freak show owned by one "Major Marcus T. LaVoie," purportedly of Franklin, Tennessee, complete with an ersatz Southern accent. He claims to have fought the Seminoles at the Battle of Wahoo Swamp and afterwards partially obtained from a Seminole warrior his "miracle liniment" guaranteed to cure whatever ails one which he peddles at a hefty price during the course of his troupe's performances. In reality, he is Marc Kane from Ebytown, Canada, a fact known to his intimates, chief among them being Jubal Lawson, a midget (but not a dwarf which he defensively points out to anyone mistaking him as such). Jubal performs as a dancing midget in another freak show until he comes to the attention of LaVoie who purchases his contract recognizing that the man has capabilities well beyond that of a mere "freak" of nature. Lawson is very intelligent and well educated and is a first class and honest bookkeeper. LaVoie also uses Jubal as a barker as well as a participant in one of LaVoie's trick acts. A lonely and melancholy Lawson corresponds with and occasionally visits his childhood love, a cousin from Detroit named Annalee, a beautiful, sophisticated and affluent temptress.
The show picks up in the course of its travels an attractive Black woman named Cuff who had escaped Southern slavery along with her daughter, now safely secreted somewhere north while her mother attends to other matters. She convinces LaVoie to allow her to join his show which he reluctantly agrees to after she convinces him of her talents to be employed to enhance the show. Lawson forms an interracial attraction for the woman which she politely but unequivocally rebuffs. Later she convinces an ever more skeptical LaVoie to harbor two other escaped slaves who would prove handy to him, or so she assures him.
One day, Salmon J. Garrett, LaVoie's advance man, a consumptive who always seems to be on his last legs, though always manages to surprise LaVoie by turning up yet again, returns with the exciting news that a wealthy, seemingly mysterious man named Samuel Zug (an actual historical figure of the time) from Detroit has for reasons unknown to Garrett taken an interest in LaVoie's show and wishes to become its patron with significant financial assistance. As the matter of what Zug expects in return from LaVoie is left unspecified for the time being, LaVoie is skeptical but decides to travel with his show to Detroit to at least investigate the offer notwithstanding that LaVoie has always preferred to steer clear of cities, preferring to perform in rural communities inhabited by yokels as opposed to the more sophisticated city denizens.
When Carl Hinman's young daughter becomes seriously ill, he has no choice but to travel back to Detroit - despite the potential danger to himself and thus to Mariel - with the child to seek the services of a highly respected physician in the hope of saving his beloved daughter, the convergence of the three plot lines comes to fruition. In the process, the mystery of the murder of Claire Hinman is largely resolved as Carl is forced to come clean to his suspicious and vengeful father-in-law. Incidentally, Jubal Lawson is shaken to the core by a chance encounter during the course of a performance with the show. As a result, he abruptly returns to his previous employer as a dancing midget (a personal indignity he had sworn he would never stoop to again) after attending to some pressing personal business that he feels he must. A side development occurs when LaVoie comes to understand Zug's intention, a proposition that rattles the conscience of a man heretofore seemingly bereft of one and forces a decision entailing profound risks and potential consequences.
Shun the Heaven is another fine Hoing & Hileman historical fiction piece, set in the antebellum United States, replete with well-researched historical characters, issues, settings and nuances. The novel brings forth rich leading character developments and enjoys the presence of several interesting supporting characters as well. It's well worth the reader's time.
Bob Schott
Reviewer
Carl Logan's Bookshelf
Federal Investments in Research and Development in the United States
Albert N. Link
Edward Elgar Publishing
www.e-elgar.com
9781035330621, $105.00, HC, 152pp
https://www.amazon.com/Federal-Investments-Research-Development-United/dp/1035330628
Synopsis: "Federal Investments in Research and Development in the United States" by Albert N. Link (Professor Emeritus and former Virginia Batte Phillips Distinguished Professor of Economics, University of North Carolina at Greensboro) examines the history, trends and institutional nature of federal investments in research and development (R&D) in the United States. An esteemed expert in the field, Professor Link deftly charts unexplored topics and issues associated with the role of public sector R&D in influencing economic growth.
Rich in econometric data, "Federal Investments in Research and Development in the United States" traces the history of federal R&D investments. Chapters outline how the institutional nature of federal R&D investments includes the research activity of Federally Funded Research and Development Centers, individual national laboratories, mission-driven government agencies, and private-sector firms with research projects funded through the Small Business Innovation Research program. Profesor Link emphasizes the diversity of principal investigators involved in federally funded R&D endeavors, as well as the influence of guidance given to federal R&D research by public-sector project managers.
Providing a roadmap for future academic and policy research on federal investments in R&D, this book is invaluable to students and scholars of innovation and technology, economics, knowledge management, public policy, and public administration. Its practical insights are beneficial to public-sector policy officials.
Critique: With the second presidential administration of Donald J. Trump's current and fervent campaign of taking the metaphorical combination of a wrecking ball and chain saw to the Federal organizations, departments, and personnel that create, fund, and oversee governmental research and development projects, it is no mere hyperbole to state that "Federal Investments in Research and Development in the United States" by Professor Albert N. Link is a timely and absolutely essential study for anyone and everyone trying to oppose Trump and the Leon Musk elements of his administration that are aiding and abetting him in dismantling these vital programs in such diverse fields as health, budgeting, and the separation of powers between the presidency and the congress. This hardcover edition of "Federal Investments in Research and Development in the United States" is especially, urgently, and unreservedly recommended for personal, professional, community, governmental, corporate, and college/university library Contemporary Economics collections and supplemental Federal Government curriculum studies lists.
Editorial Note: Albert N. Link, Professor Emeritus and former Virginia Batte Phillips Distinguished Professor of Economics, University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Continuum
Marlena Buczek Smith, et al.
ORO Editions
www.oroeditions.com
9781961856448, $45.00, HC, 328pp
https://www.amazon.com/Continuum-Marlena-Buczek-Smith/dp/1961856441
Synopsis: "Continuum" by Marlena Buczek Smith is socially conscious study that will be of value to any social-political non for profit organization (such as Amnesty International), who fights in behalf of human rights.
Many graphic design books are currently available, but none that juxtaposes poetics and the visual language of graphic design so cohesively. "Continuum" challenges graphic designers to leave their comfort zone to become "part poet" thereby having the potential to meld two communities into one. We project as our society is more digitized, any product released to it has more potential to transform itself into digital noise rendering the product itself ineffective.
Effectiveness is the key and printed material is hands down more effective. The expectation is that this erudite edition of "Continuum" from Oro Editions will appeal to a broad readership. That if spacetime is right, any work can permeate though the consciousness of society.
Critique: Enhanced for the reader's benefit with the inclusion of a number of contributors, "Continuum" by Marlena Buczek Smith will prove to be enormously inspirational to graphic designers, student of graphic design, teacher of graphic design, as well as writers, poets and students of politics who would enjoy learning about global issues in a much different way from what traditional mass media (television and newspapers) exposes us to. This large format (9.49 x 0.83 x 7.01 inches, 3 pounds) hardcover edition of "Continuum" is exceptional in organization and presentation and features a two page listing of the contributors and their credentials, a two page Poetry Index, and a one page Image Index. A solid work of meticulous and insightful scholarship, "Continuum" is a unique, fascinating, and thought provoking read that is especially and unreservedly recommended for personal, professional, community, and college/university library Graphic Design instructional reference collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists.
Editorial Note: Marlena Buczek Smith (http://marlenabuczek.com) moved to the US from Poland in the early '90s, where she attended the School of Visual Arts in NYC. Her body of work includes posters, commercial graphic design, and paintings. Her posters have been printed in various publications including Print Quarterly and Graphis, the latter elevating her status to Graphis Master in 2023. She is featured in Graphis Journal 377 publication (Fall 2023). Marlena is frequently invited to judge and/or participate internationally in poster exhibitions, including the 8th International Biennale of the Socio-Political Poster, the 14 International Triennial of Political Posters, What Unites Us 2, and the 2021 New Jersey Arts Annual: Revision and Respond.
Carl Logan
Reviewer
Clint Travis' Bookshelf
The October 7 War
Ziv Koren
Gefen Publishing House
c/o Storch
www.gefenpublishing.com
9789657801734, $70.00, HC, 298pp
https://www.amazon.com/October-7-War-Ziv-Koren/dp/9657801737
Synopsis: From the Preface by Photographer Ziv Koren
We live in such a visually documented age that it is easy to mistakenly think that what was not photographed did not happen. The events of October 7 are a national nightmare, parts of which will remain a kind of black hole. So many stories, tragedies, and human dramas occurred simultaneously on that dark day and were not photographed.
The 400 photos chosen for the book out of the hundreds of thousands I took during these months are the "presence" that represents the "absence," a reflection of the inherent failure to be everywhere at the same time, to document everything at every moment. That's why I've made the unusual choice to dedicate space to those photographs that no one captured. To pay respect to some of those thousands of fateful moments that went undocumented and to the heroes of those moments.
"The Photos Not Taken," which concludes the book, is the monument I wish to erect in honor of those who were there and in memory of those who are no longer with us. For me, as a photographer who has had the privilege of documenting some of the most dramatic events in the world over the past 30 years, this is also a moment of bowing my head in the face of a reality stronger than all of us. A moment of humility.
Critique: This large format (1.02 x 9.45 x 1.18 inches, 5.06 pounds) hardcover edition of "The October 7 War" showcasing photojournalist Ziv Koren's monumentally visual testament and memorial to the devastating impact of the Hamas invasion of Israel that was to launch a deadly conflict that still continues to this day on the lives of Israelis and Gaza bound Palestinians. The brutality of Hamas was on a par with that of the Nazi Holocaust of almost one hundred years ago. The part-page, full page, and occasional two-page images that comprise this unique and historic volume are informatively captioned and in color. Simply stated, this photojournalism masterpiece edition of "The October 7 War" from the Gefen Publishing House is especially and unreservedly recommended for personal, synagogue, community, and college/university library Israeli/Palestinian Conflict History collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists.
Editorial Note: Ziv Koren (https://www.zivkoren.com) has been a professional photojournalist for over 30 years. Today, Koren works for the daily "Yedioth Ahronoth", represents "Polaris Images" photo agency in Israel, serves as an ambassador for "Canson" fine art paper, for "Think-Tank Photo", as an advisor for "Canon Israel" and is working on personal projects worldwide.
Israel's War of Self-Defence
Rabbi Alan Silverstein
Gefen Publishing House
c/o Storch
www.gefenpublishing.com
9789657801819, $19.95, HC, 250pp
https://www.amazon.com/Israels-War-Self-Defense-Alan-Silverstein/dp/9657801818
Synopsis: With the publication of "Israel's War of Self Defense", Rabbi Alan Silverstein provides an informed and informative exploration of Israel's history, values, and challenges, emphasizing its resilience and the morality underpinning its defense.
Rabbi Silverstein also delves into the roots of Zionism, the impact of antisemitism, the attitudes of the Jewish diaspora toward Israel, and the strategies of adversaries like Hamas. Silverstein defends Israel against accusations such as apartheid and colonialism, while affirming its right to self-defense and existence.
Rabbi Silverstein's narrative is enriched by personal stories, inspiring accounts of bravery, and the nation's capacity for unity. It highlights Zionism as not only a political movement but a cultural and spiritual revival central to Jewish identity.
Critique: Deftly organized into five major sections (Inspirations from Israeli Society; Zionism and Antisemitism; Diaspora Attitudes toward Israel; Hamas's Strategy; and Anti-Israel Accusations), "Israel's War of Self-Defense" ends with two significant conclusions in "A Two-State Solution Is Not Possible" and "Addressing the Core of the Arab-Israel Conflict". Eloquent, exceptional, insightful, and impressively well written, organized and presented, this hardcover edition from the Gefen Publishing House of "Israel's War of Self-Defense" by Rabbi Alan Silverstein presents the hardline conservative Zionist viewpoint for community and college/university library Israeli/Palestinian collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists, as well as for the reading lists of both the non-specialist general reader with an interest in the subject, and the academic and governmental professionals concerned with the conflict.
Editorial Note: Rabbi Alan Silverstein, (www.agudath.org/cai_leadership) was religious leader of Congregation Agudath Israel in Caldwell, New Jersey, for more than four decades, retiring in 2021. He served as president of the Rabbinical Assembly, the international association of Conservative rabbis (1993 - 95); as president of the World Council of Conservative/Masorti Synagogues (2000 - 05); and as chair of the Foundation for Masorti Judaism in Israel (2010 - 14). He currently serves as president of Mercaz Olami, representing the world Masorti/Conservative movement.
Clint Travis
Reviewer
Debra Gaynor's Bookshelf
When I Disappear
Amanda McKinney
Storm Publishing
9781805088899, $15.99 Paperback, $34.99 Audible
https://www.amazon.com/When-Disappear-gripping-psychological-thriller/dp/1805088890
4 stars
Someone has been leaving letters for Sylvia Stone. The letters each contain a clue except the last one which contains a threat "you're next." Twenty years previously Sylvia's mother, Marjorie Stone, was murdered. Rhett Cohen was a carpenter renovating Marjorie's kitchen. He was charged with and convicted of the murder although he has maintained his innocence. The letters cast doubt on Rhett's guilt. Only the killer would have the information. When Rhett is released from prison, he shows up at Sylvia's home demanding to see the letters. Sylvia had already given the letters to the police, but she had made copies. She also realizes she may have been living with a lie for the last twenty years.
Right after Rhett's release Sylvia disappears. Rhett is determined to reveal the killer before he is blamed for Sylvia's disappearance.
This is a psychological thriller. The characters MAKE this tale. I liked them, I liked that they were flawed, it gave a sense of reality. The author kept the chapters short and to the point. The plot is fast paced, and the suspense intensifies. The twists and turns kept me turning pages. The author used multiple points of view to tell the story, and she used flashbacks. The timeline shifts from past to present flawlessly. The ending was exquisite.
Into the Rapids
Ann Braden
Nancy Paulsen Books
c/o Penguin
https://www.penguin.com
9780593856369, $17.99 Hardcover, $10.99 Ebook, $13.65 Audio
https://www.amazon.com/Into-Rapids-Ann-Braden/dp/0593856368
Addy's father attended Survival Camp and wrote his name on the ceiling. He and Addy's mother met at the camp. For years Addy has planned to go the same Survival Camp; she wants to sign her name on the ceiling next to her father's. Addy wants to connect with her father in some manner. Her father died in a Superstorm when she was a baby.
A superstorm hits the small mountain town in Vermont. The storm leaves the area without power, the bridge was washed out and the area flooded. Caleb was a classmate of Addy; they weren't friends, as a matter of fact she thought of Caleb as an enemy. He is concerned about the welfare of Ike, a neighbor, who is missing and presumed dead. The town is searching for Ike. Addy and her mother have secluded themselves from everyone. While they live in a community, they have never allowed themselves to become part of the community. Addy is shocked to see people helping each other. When Caleb formulates a way to get Addy to her camp, she is amazed to see people caring about each other.
Addy is concerned about leaving her mother at home alone. The storm has brought back bad memories. Without power her mother has no way of contacting her therapist. Addy is amazed that so many people would help her, a person they do not know.
This is a beautiful story. The intended audience is middle school age students. Author Ann Braden offers readers a realistic tale of fiction. The topic is relevant and will touch many. Readers will be touched by the distress, anguish, apprehension, and despair shown in this tale. But fear not there is also promise, family, acceptance, and closeness in this tale. The characters are amazing. There is a lesson to learn from this tale "People need people and its ok to ask for help."
The Age of Enchantment (Chronicles of Whetherwhy #1)
Anna James, author
David Wyatt, illustrator
Flamingo Books
c/o Penguin
https://www.penguin.com
B0DSS5P4TY, $18.99 Hardback, $9.99 Paperback, $9.99 Ebook
https://www.amazon.com/Chronicles-Whetherwhy-Enchantment-Anna-James/dp/0593691911
Grandpa gathered his grandchildren together and began to read a story. He whisked them away to Whetherwhy Island.
Whetherwhy Island is a place where magic is normal. Everyone has at least a little bit of magic. The type or how much magic each person has depends on which season they were born. However, some people are special, although it is rare, they can draw on all four seasons for their power; they are enchanters. Thistledown Academy of Enchantment is a school where enchanters study magic.
Juniper Quinn lives in a small town on the island with her family who own a bookbindery. Juniper is an enchanter. When she goes to the academy her twin brother, Rafferty, follows her to Stormgrove. He can't imagine living without her; he takes an apprenticeship at a bookbindery.
Juniper takes to her studies; she makes friends, learns spells and is enjoying the academy. However, Rafferty, finds trouble. He finds secret societies and monsters. Trouble lies ahead for this young man.
I like grandpa sitting down reading to his grandchildren. Occasionally the story would pause so a child could ask a question. Children love for someone to read to them. In this tale grandpa introduces the children to a magic world.
WOW! What a great beginning to a new series. The world building is superb. As I read this book I could see the eerie alleys, charmed classrooms, and night markets. This book highlights relationships, courage, and the sibling connection. I suspect this series may be the next Harry Potter.
The King of Avalon: A Hellequin Universe Novella
Steve McHugh
https://stevejmchugh.wordpress.com
Independently Published
B0DB2D6SPT, $9.99 PB
https://www.amazon.com/King-Avalon-Hellequin-Universe-Chronicles/dp/B0DG3SFMZP
In this tale Mordred is the main character. He is the king. Mordred had been tortured by his enemies. They experimented on him, the results, he became a vile monster. He fought his way back from the insanity he was living. He joined his friends in the fight for freedom for all people, even the ones that despised him and doubted him. He had never pursued the crown but now it was thrust upon him. People now see him as a hero.
A museum is being dedicated to honoring those who died in the war. Criminals have targeted the museum. Mordred must once again battle enemies from his past.
When I think of Avalon I always think of King Arthur, Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table. This series has gone in a new direction. In The King of Avalon, Mordred is the good guy. This is the FIFTH book in the series, and I have not read the first book; I should have. I felt as if I had parachuted into the middle of a battle and had no idea why I was there. It took me a bit to connect with this tale and I believe it was because I had not read the first book. This tale is fun, and most readers will enjoy it.
The Mother Next Door
Andrea Dunlop and Mike Weber
St. Martin's Press
c/o Macmillan Publishers
https://us.macmillan.com/stmartinspress
9781250284273, $30.00 Hardback, $14.99 Ebook
https://www.amazon.com/Mother-Next-Door-Deception-Munchausen/dp/1250284279
This book is non-fiction. It is the retelling of three tragic stories of Munchausen by Proxy.
WebMD defines Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy as "a mental illness where a caregiver makes up or exaggerates an illness in a person in their care. It is now called a factitious disorder imposed on another (FDIA). The caregiver, usually the mother, seeks medical help for exaggerated or made-up symptoms of a child in their care. The caregiver's reward is attention."
The Mother Next Door was written by author Andrea Dunlop and Mike Weber. Dunlop is an author and podcaster. Weber was the law enforcement on the case.
Hope Ybarra, Brittany Phillips, and Mary Welch. Each of these women fabricated the medical story that their children had debilitating medical conditions.
Hope Ybarra: Mother of three. For eight years she claimed to have a rare and aggressive form of bone cancer. She went through numerous, grueling treatments including radiation causing the loss of twin girls during the second trimester. The cancer spread to her brain and lungs. Her five year old daughter suffered health issues including cystic fibrosis and anemia. In her early twenties she began planning for a funeral. However, Hope never had cancer, she'd never been pregnant with twin girls and her daughter didn't have cystic fibrosis.
Brittany Phillips was accused of injuring her child through medical child abuse. She enjoyed the attention she received through having a sick child. She lied about her daughter's medical history and symptoms. She withheld food and het feces into her IV line or feeding tube.
Mary Welch was charged with medical abuse of her child. She doctor shopped until she found a dr. willing to do surgery on her son, and she treated him with medications. The boy had several surgeries: placed an intracranial monitor in his skull, inserted a spinal fluid drain, put a shut in his brain, did surgery on his esophagus and inserted a feeding tube. She also had the boy placed in a special school for autism.
Wild Dark Shore
Charlotte McConaghy
Flatiron Books
https://www.flatironbooks.com
9781250827951, $28.99 Hardback, $14.99 Ebook
https://www.amazon.com/Wild-Dark-Shore-Charlotte-McConaghy/dp/1250827957
The Salts live on a tiny island close to Antarctica. Shearwater is home to the world's largest seed bank. At one time the island was full of research scientists, but the sea levels are rising, and the researchers all deserted the island. Dominic Salt and his three children are the only inhabitants. The Salts are packing the seeds before they are transported to safer ground. Shearwater is a beautiful wild island, but it is also a lonely place. Raff is eighteen years old and after his heart is broken, he is usually found at his punching bag. Fen is seventeen years old; she spends most of her nights on the beach with the seals. Orly is nine years old and obsessed with botany.
A storm sweeps the island, one of the worse storms the Salts have ever seen. A woman is washed ashore. The family nurses, Rowan, the woman back to health. At first they are suspicious of the woman but they soon become attached to her. Rowan finds herself growing close to the Salts. But Rowan has a secret which she doesn't want to share. But Domonic has secrets too. Can they trust each other and can they protect their precious seeds.
This tale is character driven and yet plot driven. There is a lot of action in this book. The characters are all likable.
The Deathly Grimm
Kathryn Purdie
https://kathrynpurdie.com
Wednesday Books
https://wednesdaybooks.com
9781250873026, $24.00 Hardback, $14.00 Paperback, $9.99 Ebook
https://www.amazon.com/Deathly-Grimm-Forest-duology/dp/1250873029
This is the second book in The Forest Grimm Duology. In Book 1 The Forest Grimm we met seventeen-year-old Clara. She ignored her grandmother's instructions and entered the dangerous forest to retrieve Sortes Fortunae, an enchanted book with the power to life the curse plaguing her village and maybe even save her mother. For years the villagers used the Sortes Fortunae to obtain their deepest desires---until someone used it to kill. In book 1 we are inspired by Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty among others.
The Deathly Grimm (The Forest Grimm duology Book 2). Clara and Axel have no choice; they must return to the forest and its monsters if they have any hope of finally breaking the curse on their village. When Clar and Axel escaped the forest, they returned to their village. They thought they would finally be safe. There is a page missing from Sortes Fortunae, the Book of Fortunes. The forest begins luring villagers into the dark forest. There was a deeper, darker and more dangerous presence lurking there. Clara and Axel must once again face an evil in the forest. This evil is different than the one they faced previously, this was a greater evil.
In book 2 we are inspired by Jack and the Bean Stalk, Rumpelstiltskin, Snow White and the Princess and the Frog. I enjoyed this book; I'm a great fan of fairy tales especially when told from a different point of view.
Debra Gaynor, Reviewer
www.hancockclarion.com
www.facebook.com/bookreviewsbydebra
Fred Siegmund's Bookshelf
South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
Imani Perry
Ecco
c/o HarperCollins
https://www.harpercollins.com/pages/ecco
9780062977373, $19.99 pbk / $15.49 Kindle
https://www.amazon.com/South-America-Journey-Mason-Dixon-Understand/dp/0062977377
Imani Perry teaches a variety of courses in gender, law, public affairs and jazz studies as a professor of African American Studies at Princeton University. Her book South to America has elements of a memoir, black history, black culture and a travelogue. Travelogue applies given section and chapter titles have the names of regions, states and cities she visited and writes about: Section I. just below the Mason-Dixon line, Section II. the mid-south, Section III. the south along the water including Cuba and the Bahamas.
In Appalachia, Perry visits Harper's Ferry where she narrates the history of John Brown's raid. The raid, its failure, and Brown's execution are familiar to many, but Perry fills in some lessor known details like the participation of two black men, Shields Green and John Copeland, executed for their part in the raid. Readers learn freedman built a one room school house at Harper's Ferry in 1866. The school became Storer college, a historic black college. In 1906, the Niagara Movement for racial justice met there with W.E.B. Dubois and William Monroe Trotter in attendance. Perry writes the story of this conference. To them John Brown was a hero that made it possible for blacks to envision freedom.
Perry shifts to narrating a walk about Harpers Ferry and along the Shenandoah River. During her walk she encounters a Civil War re-enactor on the Confederate side taking the day off from his job in Washington, D.C. She dubs him Bob and describes their hour or so of cautious conversation before reflecting on the search for identity for Appalachia and the black people that live there. Commentary ranges widely such as a midnight walk through an Appalachian Walmart, comments on Appalachia by Washington Irving and Edgar Allen Poe, a discussion of Appalachian coal mining, strikes and violence that brought momentary black and white class solidarity and a lengthy discussion of the Highlander School.
This Appalachian chapter has the characteristics of all the chapters. It has stories related to the chapter's region and the black community there. She writes varied commentary of her visits with family, friends or the strangers she meets, which she reflects on as a black woman born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1972 and raised in the south. The chapters are sprinkled with a variety of seldom mentioned black accomplishments. I learned that a black jockey, Issac Burns Murphy, won the Kentucky Derby three times and that two black bartenders invented the recipe for the mint julep. She reflects on the music of Chuck Berry and James Brown and their seldom recognized influence on the music of Elvis Presley.
Stories and reflections come with reminders that race and class figure prominently in American history and contradict our ideals such as the Virginia chapter where Perry quotes a seldom quoted part of Thomas Jefferson's biography: his racist views of black people. Many know of the Dred Scott case, but not his life on an Alabama plantation or what happened to his children after they were separated. That 380 acre plantation became Oakwood University and might be the site of their remains, but Perry reflects it does not matter "there are gallons of sorrow in the soil."
Some of Perry's stories reveal someone wrestling with class and its relation with race as it plays out today. Remember southern white boys fought and died by the thousands to save slavery for wealthy plantation owners, but those well-to-do plantation owners offered only one reward: whites could be above black people in the social class hierarchy. Trump reminds us that insistence remains in the United States of 2024, as Professor Perry so well knows.
As an educated member of the professional class Perry tells a story of attending a writing retreat in Louisville, Kentucky with a group of black women professors. "By the external measure, we were a group of Black women who had scaled the heights.... Some of us could trace our ancestries back to the plantations here, others to plantations in the Caribbean.... Some came from elite families, most from struggling ones, all from people who eked out from under the race and gender rules. The past for us was something sorrowful and beautiful at once."
At the end of their retreat, they took a tour of distilleries; Perry called it a bourbon tour. "I loved it. The science, the aging process, the history. The scent was intoxicating."...But then, she relates "In retrospect, knowing what I know now, and reflecting on the sensory and social pleasure of that visit, I feel uncomfortable." On the tour she learned these Kentucky distilleries emerged during slavery and depended on slave labor. "Don't we always need to look round the back to see what made all this happen? Should I have reveled so easily in the bourgeois luxury?... "This is a bit of navel-gazing, but if you gaze anywhere with a critical eye, you do have to look at your own belly, too."
The narrative has lots of navel-gazing, or as I would call it, reflecting on race relations in a personal way, as an insider. In more navel-gazing Perry reflects on a trip to the Bahamas and the gulf between her and the black women that worked at her hotel. "It is an uncomfortable feeling. Being an African-American, even an upper-middle class African American, often insulates you from the guilt of empire. After all, 'we,' in any collective sense, have never been the ruling class. ...But the truth is that relaxing in a multinational hotel makes me a part of the problem that people like [the maid for my room] have to manage, and for too small a compensation. I became her monster and she is mine, though she is blameless. Because just a generation ago, my people were her. I've laid claim to a heritage that includes women situated just as she is, yet here I am one of her exploiters."
The book coheres as a memoir because so much of the narrative covers Perry's personal feelings and includes commentary of her experience and of her family's experience as part of the black community, and on writers, composers, and activists connected to black history and culture. She quotes from, and comments on, people both black and white like W.E.B. Dubois, Ida B. Wells, H. L. Mencken, Langston Hughes, Ernest Hemingway, June Jordan, Flannery O'Connor, Toni Morrison and many more. There are no footnotes, no bibliography, as would be required of academic writing, and no "academize" to burden the reader.
The book's narrative stays below the Mason-Dixon line as the subtitle, A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation, suggests it will. Readers will find dozens of stories of white, mostly male, discrimination against blacks. Some are mid length; some are short. Some come from long ago; some are more current. Among recent cases include discussion and comments on the murderer of Trayvon Martin, the Duke Lacrosse rape case, and the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor: "Our hearts broke for Breonna." While the book has no obvious thesis if what Perry narrates of the south applies to the soul of the nation, then America continues to be racist.
Even so there are quite a few millions of white people who have, or had, black classmates as students, have black colleagues at work, and more and more have black neighbors. These whites can feel accepting, respectful and friendly toward the black people they know, even as they avoid thinking about white racist misconduct. Let me suggest the moderate tone in her writing and naval-gazing brings an optimistic note to the end of the book, and an invitation for whites to rethink what should be the soul of the nation.
Fred Siegmund, Reviewer
www.Americanjobmarket.blogspot.com
Jack Mason's Bookshelf
Roman Decorative Stone Collections in the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology
J. Clayton Fant, Leah E. Long, and Lynley J. McAlpine, authors
University of Michigan Press
www.press.umich.edu
9780472131952, $80.00, HC, 282pp
https://www.amazon.com/Decorative-Collections-Kelsey-Archaeology-Studies/dp/0472131958
Synopsis: At the turn of the twentieth century, Francis W. Kelsey began to amass a large collection of artifacts from ancient sites across the Mediterranean, with an emphasis on Imperial Rome, to broaden the teaching of antiquity at the University of Michigan.
Among the objects now housed in the museum that bears his name is a collection of seven hundred colorful stones dating to the Roman period, one of the largest and most varied collections of Roman decorative stones outside Europe. These pieces were obtained as archaeological artifacts, mostly architectural, with many deriving from well-known ancient buildings, such as the Baths of Diocletian in Rome and the Palace of Herod in Jericho, allowing for new interpretations of their architectural decoration and design. Individual chapters trace the formation of the collection, study the archaeology of the artifacts, and detail the history of each stone and its study with a comprehensive bibliography.
Co-authored by J. Clayton Fant, Leah E. Long, Lynley J. McAlpine, and in keeping with the nature of the collection, "Roman Decorative Stone Collections in the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology" focuses on archaeological contexts and object biographies, from the stones' first use to their eventual display in the Kelsey Museum. The entries are accompanied by rich photographs detailing the stones' appearances, environmental factors, and their collectors.
This fully illustrated catalog includes essays deriving from Kelsey's original notes on sources, buildings, sites, and dealers. As the first formal catalog of these items, "Roman Decorative Stone Collections in the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology" is an accessible resource of Roman archaeology, antiquities, and the decorative arts.
Critique; A unique and prized compendium dedicated to decorative stones used in Ancient Rome for decorative and memorial purposes, "Roman Decorative Stone Collections in the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology" is exceptional informative and thoroughly reader/student friendly in organization and presentation. A welcome and impressively informative collections, this large format (8.5 x 1.1 x 11 inches, 2.9 pounds) hardcover edition of "Roman Decorative Stone Collections in the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology" is a core and unreservedly recommended addition to personal, professional, community, and college/university library Roman Archaeology/History collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists.
Editorial Note #1: J. Clayton Fant is Professor Emeritus of Classical Studies at the University of Akron. (https://www.uakron.edu/history/faculty-staff/bio-detail.dot?u=cfant)
Editorial Note #2: Leah E. Long teaches Latin and Art History at Mercersburg Academy. (https://press.umich.edu/Contributors/L/Long-Leah-E)
Editorial Note #3: Lynley J. McAlpine is Associate Curator of Provenance Research at the San Antonio Museum of Art. (https://samuseum.academia.edu/LynleyMcAlpine/CurriculumVitae)
Whispers in the Echo Chamber
Jesse A. Fivecoate, editor
Andrea Kitta, editor
University of Wisconsin Press
www.uwpress.wisc.edu
9780299350604, $79.95, HC, 294pp
https://www.amazon.com/Whispers-Echo-Chamber-Conspiracy-Contemporary/dp/0299350606
Synopsis: Expertly compiled and co-edited by the team of Professors Jesse A. Fivecoate and Andrea Kitta, "Whispers in the Echo Chamber: Folklore and the Role of Conspiracy Theory in Contemporary Society" is a collection by a number of contributors making the case that conspiracy theories are fundamentally a folklore genre, akin to and often involving other belief narratives like rumor and legend.
The editors and contributors show that studying conspiracy theories using the tools of folkloristics is a fruitful and necessary analytical exercise.
The volume's three parts lay out folkloristic approaches to conspiracy theories; ways folkloristics can help us understand how conspiracy theories are constructed; and how the genre of conspiracy theories interacts with particular, contemporary political contexts.
A timely volume of complemented studies from political science, sociology, psychology, history, and more, "Whispers in the Echo Chamber" also crucially calls for the field of folklore studies to engage more assertively with conspiracy theories as a genre. Focusing on modern iterations of sometimes quite ancient conspiracy motifs and themes, the editors and contributors forcibly illustrate the crucial relevance of this prevalent and influential form of folklore in today's interconnected world.
Critique: A seminal and groundbreaking study, "Whispers in the Echo Chamber: Folklore and the Role of Conspiracy Theory in Contemporary Society" is features 'Conspiracy Theory: A Folkloristic Introduction by the editors, and is comprised of eleven eloquent, insightful, thoughtful and thought-provoking essays by erudite contributors which are deftly organized into three major sections (Folkloric Approaches; (De)Constructing Conspiracy Theories; Circulation and Political Contexts). Offering much needed explanations and understandings behind today's deluge of conspiring theories on the political left and the political right which, with ubiquitous disinformation/misinformation campaigns, threaten to tear down our Amerian style democracy and replace it with an authoritarian regime based on unfounded conspiracies. Essential and unreservedly recommended pick for the personal reading lists of students, academia, political activists, governmental policy makers, and non-specialist general readers with an interest in the subject, it is also a critically important addition to professional, community, and college/university library Folklore/Mythology, Contemporary Popular Culture, and Political Science collections and supplemental Communication/Media Studies reading lists.
Editorial Note #1: Jesse A. Fivecoate (https://jessefivecoate.com) is a folklorist and sociocultural anthropologist with a PhD from Indiana University. He studies the use of communal belief narratives that circulate within a group as a way of remembering and discussing episodes of conflict and crisis. He is a co-editor of Advancing Folkloristics.
Editorial Note #2: Andrea Kitta (https://english.ecu.edu/people/faculty/andrea-kitta) is a folklorist and a professor of multicultural and transnational literature in the Department of English at East Carolina University. She is the author of Vaccinations and Public Concern in History: Legend, Rumor, and Risk Perception and The Kiss of Death: Contamination, Contagion, and Folklore as well as a coeditor of Diagnosing Folklore: Perspectives on Health, Trauma, and Disability.
Editorial Note: The contributors include: Matthew D. Atkinson, John Bodner, Ian Brodie, Darin DeWitt, Bill Ellis, Jesse A. Fivecoate, Sandra Grady, David Guignion, Pavan Holur, Andrea Kitta, Afsane Rezaei, Vwani Roychowdhury, Lisa M. Ruch, Shadi Shahsavari, Timothy R. Tangherlini, Jeannie Banks Thomas, and Anika Wilson.
Jack Mason
Reviewer
John Burroughs' Bookshelf
Les Normaux: Volume 1
Janine Janssen, author
S. Al Sabado, illustrator
Avon Books
c/o HarperCollins Publishers
www.harpercollins.com
9780063429840, $28.99, HC, 336pp
https://www.amazon.com/Normaux-Forbidden-Perfect-Halloween-Supernatural/dp/0063429845
Synopsis: Sebastien is a young man who recently moved to supernatural Paris hoping to get away from his troubles at home and live a peaceful life learning magic. But what are you going to do when the really hot vampire you made out with last night to forget your troubles turns out to be your new neighbor?
Sebastien (a demisexual boy with "main character hair" and a bunny named Pierre), meet Elia (a hot, supermodel, vampire neighbor and crush).
Critique: In the first volume of a planned graphic novel series by author/storyteller Janine Janssen and artist/illustrator S. Al Sabado, "Les Normaux" is an original and creative take on vampires and the vampire community that will have readers thoroughly enjoying being introduced to Elia, Sebastien and their assorted crew of wonderful (and magical) friends, as they come to grips with dating between vampires and mortals (even mortals with magic) in a groundbreaking paranormal love story. A fun read from cover to cover, "Les Normaux" is unique and unreservedly recommended pick for highschool and community library graphic novel and fantasy romance collections. It should be noted for personal reading lists of vampire enthusiasts and graphic novel fans that this hardcover edition of "Les Normaux" from Avon Books is also readily available in paperback (9780063414679, $22.99) and in a digital book format (Kindle, $11.99).
Editorial Note #1: Janine Janssen (aka J.J.) has been drawing ever since she could hold a pencil, resulting in a BA in illustration and MA in animation. She loves telling stories about oddballs in society, and has been sharing them online as webcomics since 2013. She lives in the south of the Netherlands.
Editorial Note #2: S. Al Sabado is a teaching artist from O'ahu, Hawai'i, with a background in graphic design that allows him to do most of the lettering and typography found in Les Normaux (in fact, the main font was designed by him!)
The Wonder and Complexity of the 1904 World's Fair
Missouri Historical Society
The Missouri State Historical Press
https://mohistory.org/publications
9798985571646, $30.00, PB, 152pp
https://www.amazon.com/Wonder-Complexity-1904-Worlds-Fair/dp/B0CW97S2B5
Synopsis: The St. Louis 1904 World's Fair was a complex, fascinating event that continues to evoke a range of emotions. It was grand. It was shameful. It was full of fun and full of indignity.
Now, 120 years after the Fair opened in St. Louis, a new exhibit at the Missouri History Museum is reintroducing the Fair and re-examining its legacy. It will re-examine the complexity of the Fair in ways that will make this story feel new again.
A companion book to the exhibit, "The Wonder and Complexity of the 1904 World's Fair" will go much deeper than the well-worn stories about the Ferris wheel and ice cream cones to explore topics including the Fair's visual culture, technology, and international reach.
This memorial volume will also cover more challenging aspects, such as the Filipino people who were brought to St. Louis to be placed on display, the African Americans who were refused service, and the Chinese people who faced prejudice and arrest.
Compelling images and artifacts from the Missouri Historical Society's rich collections will further enhance these stories throughout this illustrated history, and additional images will comprise a small catalog at the end of the volume.
Critique: This large format (8 x 0.6 x 10 inches, 1 pounds) paperback edition of "The Wonder and Complexity of the 1904 World's Fair" includes an informative Foreword by Sharon Smith, and a contribution by Dr. Arthelda Busch-Williams. A fascinating compendium of captioned historical photos augmenting an eloquent commentary, "The Wonder and Complexity of the 1904 World's Fair" is especially and unreservedly recommended for personal, professional, community, and college/university library American Regional History and World Fair History collections.
Editorial Note: The Missouri Historical Society (MHS) exposes readers to perspectives of St. Louis and Missouri not usually introduced in simple history lessons. MHS publications offer readers of all backgrounds the chance to explore the historical and contemporary cultural, social, and political issues of the region -- and discover the shared heritage of those who call it home.
John Burroughs
Reviewer
Julie Summers' Bookshelf
Simple Paper Flowers: 25 Beautiful Projects to Make
Paula Milner
The GMC Group
www.gmcbooks.com
9781784946883, $26.99, PB, 168pp
https://www.amazon.com/Simple-Paper-Flowers-Beautiful-Projects/dp/1784946885
Synopsis: From festive holly to delicate primroses and golden marigolds, these paper flowers showcased in Paula Milner's 'how-to' instructional guide, "Simple Paper Flowers: 25 Beautiful Projects to Make" are astonishing in how realistic they look, how versatile they are, how fun to make they are.
Each individual project (including Poppy, Sunflower, Lily, Rose, Dandelion, and twenty more!) is broken down into simple, step-by-step instruction paired with detailed photography making each project approachable and easy to make
These beautiful flowers can be used in bouquets, buttonholes, garlands and many other ways. Mainly constructed from floristry wire, crepe paper and card stock, few materials are required. They are perfect for beginners but will also attract experienced crafters who can put their own imprint on the finished bloms.
Critique: Offering a wealth of DIY creative fun, this large format (7.95 x 0.55 x 9.92 inches, 1.35 pounds) paperback edition of Paula Milner's "Simple Paper Flowers: 25 Beautiful Projects to Make" from GMC Publications is an ideal and enduringly welcome pick for personal, professional, and community library Recreational Paper Craft/Nature Craft collections.
Editorial Note: Paula Milner (https://www.thecraftylass.com) is a blogger, tutor, illustrator and fabric designer. Her fabric ranges with the Craft Cotton Co can be found in shops across the UK! She enjoys drawing, sewing, quilting and paper flower making. She is also a brand ambassador for Brother Sewing Machines, a Cricut Ambassador and Design Space Contributing Artist and her aim is to make craft accessible to all. She wants people to get making, creating, and inspiring themselves and others.
Character Drawing with Alcohol Markers
Linda Cambon, author
Blue Star Press
https://bluestarpress.com
9781958803349, $22.95, PB, 160pp
https://www.amazon.com/Character-Drawing-Alcohol-Markers-Manga-Inspired/dp/1958803340
Synopsis: Through her signature ethereal and feminine style, with the publication of "Character Drawing with Alcohol Markers: How to Draw Manga-Inspired Illustrations for Beginners", popular artist Lidia Cambon shares the ins-and-outs of creating cute manga-inspired characters with alcohol markers, a type of permanent marker that allows artists to blend vibrant colors easily with little to no smearing.
"Character Drawing with Alcohol Markers" from Blue Star Press is comprised of beginner-friendly lessons, example illustrations, and practice pages, which will prove indispensable for learning fundamental character drawing techniques like:
The basics of color theory, and how it can be used thoughtfully to create unique characters.
Techniques for blending and shading with your markers, and how you can avoid streaks and splotches.
How to draw hair, facial expressions, and other human characteristics to add realism to your characters.
Choosing the right materials to make your illustrations pop
...and many more drawing techniques!
Whether new to drawing or an experienced illustrator, Lidia Cambon's expert guidance will show you how to make your ideas come to life and create colorful, endearing character illustrations.
Critique: This large format (8.54 x 0.57 x 10.96 inches, 1.4 pounds) paperback edition of "Character Drawing with Alcohol Markers: How to Draw Manga-Inspired Illustrations for Beginners" is an ideal DIY step-by-step instructional guide that will hold a special value and appeal for art students wanting to create manga-style illustrations and artwork. Throughly 'art student friendly' in organization and presentation, Lidia Cambon's "Character Drawing with Alcohol Markers: How to Draw Manga-Inspired Illustrations for Beginners" is especially and unreservedly recommended for personal, professional, and art school Art Instruction reference collections.
Editorial Note: After finishing art school in Spain, Lidia Cambon (known online as MSSHANH) became a freelance illustrator as well as a UX/UI designer. Her colorful and feminine works are inspired by '90s media and fantasy characters, with a little touch of melancholy. (https://msshanh.tumblr.com)
Julie Summers
Reviewer
Kirkus Reviews
Frail Blood
Edward Stanton
https://www.edwardstanton.com
Waterside Productions
https://www.waterside.com
9781962984492 $16.95 print, 343pp
9781962984508 $TBA ebook
https://www.edwardstanton.com/frail-blood
In Stanton's thriller, an American falls for an Argentine woman whose dark family secrets may prove deadly.
In 1990, Los Angeles newspaper journalist Robert Wells catches a flight to Buenos Aires. On the day he lands, he meets Gabriela Roca Dafiume, a 20-something doctor who immediately helps him forget his recent divorce. She lives with her parents and her younger brother and is largely secretive; she doesn't answer all of Robert's questions and seems intent on keeping him away from her home.
Things take a startling turn when Robert receives friendly warnings to avoid Gabriela's family and full-on threats are left at his hotel. But the couple's romance only deepens, both physically and emotionally. They can't hide their relationship from her father, Cesar Roca Steele, whom Gabriela describes as "possessive." There's a chance he already knows about them, as he likely has people following Robert and Gabriela.
If it's true Cesar had something to do with one of Gabriela's past lovers disappearing, then Robert is in serious danger.
Stanton's slow-burn story develops an absorbing romance. The couple's shared scenes gradually intensify, and it's easy to understand why Robert doesn't hightail it back to L.A. A sinister tone pervades the narrative; Cesar always seems to know where Robert is or what he's up to, making Robert's plan to unearth proof of wrongdoing all the more unnerving.
Further reinforcing the novel's suspense is a mystery surrounding the generally tight-lipped Roca family involving Gabriela and her brother, a priest. Throughout the narrative, the author aptly details Buenos Aires and its people. One passage memorably evoking life outside the lovers' bedroom describes "aromas of coffee, tucos or tomato sauces, chitterlings and churrascos from the neighbors' kitchens" and "windblown fig leaves rubbing like sandpaper against the balcony."
An unforgiving past becomes a present-day menace in this gripping romantic thriller.
Kirkus Reviews
https://www.kirkusreviews.com
Margaret Lane's Bookshelf
The Stars and Their Light
Olivia Hawker
https://www.hawkerbooks.com
Lake Union Publishing
c/o Amazon Publishing
9781662511066, $28.99, HC, 381pp
https://www.amazon.com/Stars-Their-Light-Novel/dp/166251106X
Synopsis: It's 1947 when Sister Mary Agnes arrives in New Mexico. Her mission is to establish a monastery in the town of Roswell, where weeks before rumors of the crash landing of an unidentified craft have triggered a crisis of faith. Residents are drifting away from the divine, awed no longer by the heavens but rather the stars.
In service to the frightened and confused, Sister Mary Agnes soon befriends Betty Campbell, a teenager marked both physically and psychically by the inexplicable event. Mary Agnes is also unsettlingly drawn to Harvey, an attentive handyman refurbishing the monastery -- and a firsthand witness to the crash. But as Mary Agnes tries to guide her wayward friends back to the church, it's the fantastic and the forbidden that begin to loom large in her imagination.
Thrown into her own crisis of doubt, Mary Agnes must choose whether to uphold the order in which she came of age or embrace the truth she feels in her heart, despite its terrifying complexity.
Critique: A simply fascinating, eloquent, and engaging read from start to finish, "The Stars And Their Light" by author Olivia Hawker is a compelling and original novel told that raises this work of biographical fiction to an impressive level of literary excellence. Deftly compelling, skillfully written, "The Stars And Their Light" will prove a welcome and enduringly popular pick for community library Literary Fiction collections. It should be noted for personal reading lists that this hardcover edition of "The Stars And Their Light" from Lake Union Publishing is also readily available in paperback (9781662511059, $16.99) and in a digital book format (Kindle, $4.99).
Editorial Note: Olivia Hawker (www.hawkerbooks.com) writes historical "book club" fiction. She is also the author of the novel One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow.
Something Cheeky
Thien-Kim Lam
Avon Books
c/o HarperCollins Publishers
www.harpercollins.com
9780063237384. $18.99, PB, 336pp
https://www.amazon.com/Something-Cheeky-Novel-Thien-Kim-Lam/dp/0063237385
Synopsis: Zoe Tran is living her best life, designing plus-size lingerie at her own award-winning clothing boutique, when suddenly her college best friend reenters her life. Derek Bui is offering a tantalizing chance to recapture a forgotten dream: designing costumes for the musical they created together years ago.
Derek has loved Zoe since freshman year but never had the guts to confess his true feelings. Now he's directing the Vietnamese Cinderella rock musical they dreamed up in college. The stakes are high: it's the first production with an all-Asian cast and creative team at Washington, D.C.'s largest theatre and if they can make it work, they'll head to Broadway. But his real goal: get Zoe back in his life.
A proud demisexual, Zoe only ever saw Derek as her best friend, but working on their dream production together brings them closer than ever. Sparks ignite under the hot spotlights. But when the theatre's artistic director pressures Derek to make the musical "less Asian," he and Zoe clash on whether to stay true to their vision or compromise to keep the production alive.
Will Zoe and Derek finally let love take center stage or will their creative differences close the curtains on them forever?
Critique: "Something Cheeky" is an original, fun and fascinating read from start to finish that will prove especially attractive to readers with an interest in contemporary Asian American multi-cultural and interracial romance. Author Thien-Kim Lam has a distinctive and effective storytelling style that raises this deftly crafted work of Asian/Vietnamese romance to an impressive level of literary excellence. An extraordinary and unreservedly recommended addition to community library Contemporary Romance Fiction collections, it should be noted for personal reading lists that this paperback edition of "Something Cheeky" from Avon Books is also readily available in a digital book format (Kindle, $12.99) and as a complete and unabridged audio book (HarperCollins, 9798874876401, $45.95, CD) co-narrated/performed by VyVy Nguyen and David Lee Huynh
Editorial Note: Thien-Kim Lam writes stories about Vietnamese characters who smash stereotypes and find their happy endings. A recovering Type-Asian, she makes art and bakes her feelings to stay sane. Thien-Kim is also the founder of Bawdy Bookworms, a subscription box that pairs sexy romances with erotic toys. She's been featured on NPR, BBC America, and NBC. (https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/thien-kim-lam)
Editorial Note #2: VyVy Nguyen is a Vietnamese American actress based in Los Angeles. She graduated from USC's School of Dramatic Arts and specializes in narrating books by authors of the Vietnamese diaspora.
Editorial Note #3: David Lee Huynh is an actor based in New York City. He has appeared onstage Off-Broadway and across the country as well as on film and television.
Margaret Lane
Reviewer
Mark Zvonkovic's Bookshelf
Tough Luck
Sandra Dallas
St. Martin's Press
c/o Macmillan Publishers
https://us.macmillan.com/stmartinspress
9781250352309, $29.00 HB
https://www.amazon.com/Tough-Luck-Novel-Sandra-Dallas/dp/1250352304
The resilience of a young woman determined to find her father in the gold crazed Colorado territory.
Tough Luck is not at all about Luck, or the lack thereof. The story is one of a fourteen year old girl named Mary Haidie Richards who with her ten year old brother named Boots sets off in 1863 from an orphanage in Illinois to find a father who'd abandoned them four years earlier to strike it rich prospecting for gold in Colorado. They embark upon an adventure that starts with an escape from their orphanage, includes a rigorous crossing of the heartland on a mule train, and culminates with a high stakes mission to recover for their father a gold mine out of which he was cheated by an unsavory banker.
The plot of Tough Luck is designed to develop the character of the teen aged girl Haidie, who narrates the story. After her mother dies, Haidie's older brother Cheet sells their farm and puts Haidie and Boots into an orphanage, lying that he is on his way to the seminary to become a priest. Evidently lying is in the genes, because Haidie is an accomplished liar also. She cons her way through an escape from the orphanage with Boots, and then, posing as a boy, convinces a freighter named Jacob Crowfoot to take them aboard their mule wagon to Nebraska. By the time they reach Omaha, they've joined forces with a gambler named Corny and with his help overcome an attack by robbers. From Omaha, Haidie and Boots join a wagon train headed for Denver, a journey that tests Haidie's determination and hones her lying skills, while presenting more life threatening events, including an attack by Indians.
Western stories abound with young men overcoming seemingly unsurmountable odds to reach a heroic end. What is brilliant about Tough Luck is that the hero is a young woman. Sandra Dallas brilliantly depicts Haidie's character, making her at one moment headstrong, at another endearing, and, finally, resilient. Most importantly, the author never lets the reader forget that Haidie is a young woman. Half way through the story, Haidie reflects on her circumstances: "Sometimes I almost forgot I was a girl. When we reached Omaha with Jake, I could have put on a dress, since nobody was looking for runaway orphans anymore. But . . . being a boy was more fun. Nobody told me to mind my manners or keep to the wagons or that young ladies shouldn't run across the prairie the way I did." Haidie's continuing perspective about the state she is in insures that a reader will keep turning the pages. And her adaptation to her circumstances makes Haidie heroic.
As with all Sandra Dallas novels, the story is about the characters. Of course, there a plot full of intrigue and thrill. Indian attacks, horse thieving, and all kinds of trickery. But the people embedded in these actions are colorful and paint an excellent picture for the hard times that existed in the Colorado Territory at the time. To name a few, there are Jacob, Teresa, Corny, Ben Bondurant, Emily Tappan, the sisters, Miss Arvilla and Miss Lizzie, their brother Edwin, and even Haidie's horse, old Outlaw. And there are plenty of evil people as well, particularly Joel Thacker. The author cleverly weaves them into a plot that leads to a finale a reader will be unable to forget.
What may be the best attribute about Tough Luck is its paucity of moralizing. No homage is made to gender identity. No fault is found with Haidie's lying, particularly her pretending to be a boy. She refuses at the end to analyze her actions from a social perspective, and even though "defrocked" and willingly attending the "fancy academy" for girls, she continues to embrace what she learned about herself on her journey. She did what she had to do. She succeeded. No luck needed.
Mark Zvonkovic, Reviewer
https://www.markzvonkovic.com
Matthew McCarty's Bookshelf
Reconstruction Quest: A Neurodivergent Journey
John F. Gerrard
John F. Gerrard Publishing
https://www.johnfgerrard.com
9781778050138, $13.99 paperback / $4.99 Kindle
https://www.amazon.com/Reconstruction-Quest-Neurodivergent-John-Gerrard/dp/1778050131
Mental illness is rapidly becoming a major public health crisis. Adults and youngsters suffer from increased anxiety, stress, and other mental illness related problems. These problems can manifest themselves in physical maladies that can impact work and school performance as well as home lives. Author John F. Gerrard has written a gripping and transparent memoir about his struggles with mental illness. Reconstruction Quest: A Neurodivergent Journey is a little volume about Gerrard's quest to understand his mental illness. He writes with an honesty that can only be found in someone who is a genuine sufferer and survivor of mental illness.
Gerrard describes his battles with mental illness in terms that the general reader can identify with and understand. He is not dramatic in his writing, but rather is simply describing his journey. Reconstruction Quest outlines how treatment impacted Gerrard and how he had to take control of his treatment to keep from becoming a proverbial zombie. He was brave enough to tell his doctor at one point to take him off of a medication that was leaving him lethargic and confused. The issues with medication rapidly become an underlying theme in Gerrard's journey to wellness.
Reconstruction Quest is an excellent autobiography. Gerrard has chosen to tell his story with a kindness and consideration for others who may be suffering from mental illness and their family members who are affected by this disease. It reads more like a fast-paced novel than a typical nonfiction work. Anyone who is interested in how to support someone with mental illness should get a copy of Reconstruction Quest. The inspiration will work magic.
Matthew W. McCarty, EdD
Reviewer
Michael Carson's Bookshelf
Cracka Willie: A Wannabe Nigga...!
James W. Haddad
Commonwealth Books Inc.
https://commonwealthbooks.blackwidowpress.com
9781892986542, $26.99, HC, 186pp
https://www.amazon.com/Cracka-Willie-Wannabe-Nigga-Arabic/dp/189298654X
Synopsis: Ten-year-old Cracka Willie is an American-born Lebanese boy who, after many attempts to integrate within white society is rejected time and again, tormenting him with loneliness.
After a long and arduous journey to find his place in life, he realizes the African-American community is his best bets. Although he is immediately welcomed within their fold, he must first pass their initiation process. After many fistfights he loses, beatings he endures, and deaths he witnesses, he is surprisingly still alive and makes it.
Despite the pleadings of his father to stay with his own kind, he decides to live among the Blacks in the Miami District of Liberty City, aka, Pork 'n Beans, the most violent and deadly square mile of Miami. He blends with them in perfect harmony and considers himself African but as time passes, he obliviously falls into disfavor with them and is eventually perceived as an intruder on their turf.
Then disaster strikes and his father mourns...
Critique: Author James W. Haddad demonstrates an effective, deftly crafted, and narrative driven storytelling style in the pages of Cracka Willie: A Wannabe Nigga...! that make for a simply riveting read from start to finish. Vivid, emotionally engaging, populated by iconic characters and unexpected plot twists, as a novelist Haddad is able to elevate his gritty fiction to an impressive level of literary excellence, making this hardcover edition of "Cracka Willie" an especially and unreservedly recommended pick for personal reading lists as well as community and college/university library Contemporary American Literary Fiction collections.
Vanishing Daughters
Cynthia Pelayo
https://www.cynthiapelayo.com
Thomas & Mercer
c/o Amazon Publishing
9781662513930, $16.99, PB, 336pp
https://www.amazon.com/Vanishing-Daughters-Thriller-Cynthia-Pelayo/dp/1662513933
Synopsis: It started the night journalist Briar Thorne's mother died in their rambling old mansion on Chicago's South Side.
The nightmares of a woman in white pleading to come home, music switched on in locked rooms, and the panicked fear of being swallowed by the dark.
Bri has almost convinced herself that these stirrings of dread are simply manifestations of grief and not the beyond-world of ghostly impossibilities her mother believed in. And more tangible terrors still lurk outside the decaying Victorian greystone.
A serial killer has claimed the lives of fifty-one women in the Chicago area. When Bri starts researching the murders, she meets a stranger who tells her there's more to her sleepless nights than bad dreams -- they hold the key to putting ghosts to rest and stopping a killer.
But the killer has caught on and is closing in, and if Bri doesn't answer the call of the dead soon, she'll be walking among them.
Critique: A riveting read with the lights full on, "Vanishing Daughters" by novelist Cynthia Pelayo will be of immense interest to fans of gothic/horror fiction. A deftly crafted suspense thriller that will linger in the mind and memory of the reader long after the novel is finished and set back upon the shelf, "Vanishing Daughters" is especially and unreservedly recommended for community library collections. It should be noted for personal reading lists that this paperback edition of "Vanishing Daughters" from Thomas & Mercer is also readily available in a digital book format (Kindle, $3.99)
Editorial Note: Cynthia Pelayo (www.cinapelayo.com) is the Bram Stoker Award - winning author of Forgotten Sisters, Children of Chicago, and The Shoemaker's Magician. In addition to writing genre-blending novels that incorporate fairy-tale, mystery, detective, crime, and horror elements, Pelayo has written numerous short stories, including the collection Loteria, and the poetry collection Crime Scene. The recipient of the 2021 International Latino Book Award, she holds a master of fine arts in writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Michael J. Carson
Reviewer
Nicole Yurcaba's Bookshelf
Joan of Miami: A Novel of Greed and Hope, from Miami to Manhattan
Andy Parrish, author
Pam Murtaugh, author
Independently Published
9798334171237, $19.95, HC, 434pp
9798334163393, $16.00 PB, $9.95 Kindle
https://www.amazon.com/Joan-Miami-Parrish/dp/B0DBVY9BPQ
"Each time, I felt guilty again about the trailer park. I couldn't stop picturing the many poor and elderly folks being ousted from their mobile homes. What did they ever do to deserve that."
In this book, Miami is a place where culture, politics, business, profit, and social inequities collide. Jean Molk, the novel's protagonist, is a brave character whose questions about not only herself but also Miami and its inhabitants lead her on a unique quest. Informed by her family history, Jean approaches each and every conflict she encounters with self-awareness and a concern for others. Readers follow Jean as she contemplates power and its role in individuals' lives and corporations' existences. They also see how Jean contemplates what it means to influence others and what it means to make choices that alter other people's lives. Readers also meet Jean's supportive, philosophical mentor, Milo Chernak, who strives to help Jean understand not only the business world in which they thrive but also the globe where humans are more and more connected.
This is an intriguing read because it opens numerous philosophical discussions ranging from personal and corporate mindfulness, the influence one's personal history has on the present, and the evolution of the human spirit. Jean is an admirable heroine who is sure to inspire a person to strive to do better for others. Her character reminds readers that their actions have powerful reverberations throughout the community. Her experiences are also careful reminders about the importance of balance and patience. Jean is a great, inspirational guide for anyone seeking to make sense of not only the hectic business and corporate world but also the chaos of the wider one. Milo, too, is a wise sage. Readers will not quickly forget this book's cast of realistic, memorable characters.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review
Nicole Yurcaba, Reviewer
The US Review of Books
https://www.theusreview.com/reviews-1/Joan-of-Miami-by-A-Parrish.html
Pete Atkinson's Bookshelf
Night In The City
Michael McGarrity
W. W. Norton & Company
https://wwnorton.com
9781324066279, $28.99 PB, 272 pages
https://www.amazon.com/Night-City-Novel-Michael-McGarrity/dp/132406627X
This book was awesome two chapters in and I was hooked I couldn't put it down. It really transported me to old school New York City! I highly recommend it. This book will keep you guessing till the end but with enough action to demand your attention. I really enjoyed this book and I believe others will too!
Drop Dead Twice
Mark Thomas McGee
Bear Manor Media Books
Bearmanormedia.com
9798887716350, $20.00 PB, 236 pages
https://www.amazon.com/Drop-Dead-Twice-Lawson-Mystery/dp/B0DRNV2MT3
I really enjoyed this book! It was right up my alley just the right mix of action and mystery very easy read . The main character Mike Lawson is just what u want gritty, tough and a man's man! I would highly recommend this book for men who love action and a good whodunnit
Pete Atkinson
Reviewer
Robin Friedman's Bookshelf
An Emancipation of the Mind: Radical Philosophy, the War over Slavery, and the Refounding of America
Matthew Stewart, author
W.W. Norton & Company
http://www.wwnorton.com
9781324003625, $32.50, hardcover
https://www.amazon.com/Emancipation-Mind-Radical-Philosophy-Refounding/dp/1324003626
Philosophy And The Coming Of the Civil War
The Civil War remains endlessly fascinating. It rewards study from many perspectives. Matthew Stewart's book, An Emancipation of the Mind: Radical Philosophy, the War over Slavery, and the Refounding of America is a study of the Civil War through ideas and of how ideas may lead to action. It combines history, philosophy, and theology in a way that is difficult, challenging, and provocative.
Stewart is an independent philosopher and historian whose books include Nature's God[1], which explores the influence of the Enlightenment on the American Revolution. Stewart argues that Enlightenment thought was based on naturalism, science, and reason and that it rejected supernatural religion. For Stewart, the significance of the American Revolution does not lie in the overthrow of a king, but lies instead in its effort to take a transcendental deity and a claimed Revelation out of public life. The Enlightenment, for Stewart, lead to the precious values of American life, including freedom, intellectual curiosity, an openness to differing ideas, economic opportunity, and individual growth.
In The Emancipation of Mind, Stewart expands upon his earlier book to consider the Second American Revolution - the Civil War and the fight against slavery. The book explores at some length the economic basis of slavery, but its focus is on revealed religion, on transcendent standards for conduct that allegedly dictate the structure of human society, and in what Stewart finds as the complicity and support that organized Christianity provided to justify the "Peculiar Institution." Stewart discusses the Bible and passages which he finds support slavery, and he shows how many theologians of the day, both North and South, used the Bible in their extensive purported justifications of slavery.
Stewart writes with a passion for ideas, but also with polemic and with a harsh, narrow view of religion. The book consists of an introduction, "About this Book" which offers a good overview of its content followed by ten chapters, with titles derived from Lincoln's second inaugural address or from speeches by Frederick Douglass. The work concludes with an afterword, "Let us Strive On" in which Stewart offers his view of the importance of the Civil War era to contemporary American life and to the fight against racial and economic inequality, a bibliographical Appendix of sources, and extensive end notes.
The chapters move between discussions of history and philosophy and try to weave together a broad, international story. The book's most unusual aspect is its focus on German philosophy and on its influence on the United States following the failed European revolutions of 1848. Many German thinkers, including Hegel and Marx, receive attention, but Stewart gives most consideration to Ludwig Feuerbach (1804 - 1872). Feuerbach's book The Essence of Christianity (1841) maintained that God was created in man's image. Feuerbach argued against revealed religion and in favor of a study of man to promote humanism and human solidarity. Stewart offers expositions of Feuerbach's thought and works to trace its influence in the United States of the Civil War era. He was a particular influence on Frederick Douglass who read The Essence of Christianity in the summer of 1859 and had a bust of the German philosopher in his Washington, D.C. home.
In the United States, Stewart focuses upon four individuals. The central figure, and the least known, is the renegade Unitarian minister and theologian Theodore Parker (1810 - 1860). Martin Luther King Jr's famous statement: "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice," (308) is derived from Parker. Parker was a conduit for German thought in the United States. Parker's erudition, rejection of Christianity, and commitment to abolitionism and other social movements are discussed throughout the book together with his influence on Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and John Brown.
Stewart argues that Lincoln remained a religious skeptic throughout his life. He contends that Lincoln read Parker's essays, which were in his law library, and alluded to them in several important speeches. Lincoln's second inaugural address is the most important single text in this book, and Stewart gives it a naturalistic interpretation, contrary to the work of some other scholars[2]. Frederick Douglass spoke often about Parker's works "for the cause of human freedom" (170, 295). Parker was a member of the "Secret Six" which provided funds and support to John Brown's Harpers Ferry raid. Douglass also was involved. Stewart is strongly sympathetic to Brown for, in essence, beginning the Civil War and showing that activism and violence would be necessary for the overthrow of slavery.[3]
Stewart "takes for granted that ideas matter, and that they trace a visible arc through the disorder of human history." (xxi) He traces this arc through the Enlightenment and the American Revolution in his earlier book and through German philosophy and the Second American Revolution in An Emancipation of the Mind. Even if they may not be fully convinced, students of the Civil War will learn from this book.
This review was posted on Emerging Civil War (ECW) on January 7, 2025 and is reprinted here with permission.
[1] Nature's God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic, Matthew W. Stewart, (W.W. Norton & Company, 2014).
[2] Lincoln's Greatest Speech: The Second Inaugural, Ronald C. White, (Simon & Schuster, 2006) offers a detailed, religiously oriented reading of the Second Inaugural Address.
[3] Decade of Disunion: How Massachusetts and South Carolina Led the Way to Civil War, 1849-1861, Robert W. Merry, (Simon & Schuster, 2024) reviewed on ECW, October 3, 2024, offers a different view of Brown and of the Secret Six. It is rewarding to compare Stewart's book with Merry's.
The Big Sky
A.K. Guthrie, Jr., author
Mariner Books
c/o HarperCollins
https://www.harpercollins.com/pages/marinerbooks
9780618154630, $19.99, paperback
https://www.amazon.com/Big-Sky-B-Guthrie-Jr/dp/0618154639
Loneliness And Freedom In The Old West
The genre of the American Western has had a long history through dime and pulp novels and magazines, radio, television, and film, and novels and stories. Although much of the genre deals in stereotypes, many Westerns are thoughtful and imaginative, including A.B. Guthrie's 1947 novel, "The Big Sky". Guthrie (1901 -- 1991) wrote a series of six novels on the settlement of the Montana territory of which "The Big Sky" is the first chronologically and in the order of writing. It is a many-layered work in its themes and characterizations. The book cuts against many stereotypes of the West; and it cuts as well against current standards and thinking, both those of today and, to a degree, those when the book was written. Today's readers will want to reject the racist language of the book, most of which is in dialogue sections. There is much to be thought about and enjoyed in this book which will challenge and inspire a sympathetic reader.
"The Big Sky" is set between 1830 -- 1843 in Kentucky, Indiana, and Missouri, along the Missouri River, and particularly in the early Montana territory. The primary character, Boone Caudill, receives a complex portrayal as both anti-hero and hero. At the age of 17, Boone runs away from his poor farming family and from his abusive father to seek a life of freedom as a trapper in the West. Boone is a violent, unsociable loner and killer. He is portrayed realistically and sharply and in many sections of the book it is difficult to feel sympathy for him. Yet, Boone also is shown as living his own life and pursuing his dreams within his own lights in a manner given to few people.
The other two major characters in the book are also mountain men. Jim Deakins, in his mid-20s, is good-natured and reflective. He becomes Boone's companion early in the story as the two head for the West. Dick Summers, a middle-aged mountain man, serves as mentor to Caudill and Deakins. Summers has had extensive experience in the West but he also has a stake in a more conventional society in his attitude and in his ownership of a small Missouri farm. The book follows the adventures and changing fortunes of Caudill, Deakins, and Summers, as they journey 2000 miles on the Missouri River on a keelboat and as they pursue the wild life of freedom in the Montana territory.
The novel is stunning in its descriptions of the river and of the large lonely places, mountains, wildlife, and seasons of the West. The book is realistic in that the author makes clear the anti-social, to say the least, characters of the individuals who would choose to pursue and who excel in such a life. The characters are violent and mean in many respects and their life is hard, fragmented and lonely. The book offers an extended and on the whole sympathetic portrayal of the Indian tribes and of their battle with the weapons of the white settlers and with their illnesses of smallpox, alcoholism, and venereal disease. The primary Indian character is a beautiful young woman, Teal Eye, with whom Boone falls in love.
With its violence and realism, "The Big Sky" is still strongly romantic. The author is clearly in love with place and has a nostalgia for a wildness which even in the late 1830s was fast disappearing. He also shares a love for his characters and for their quest for freedom which he contrasts with the life of suits and ties in jobs which lack feeling and in lives which lack passion. In many ways, the book is with Boone and his companions while recognizing their large weaknesses. In addition to its elements as a history, the book is a reflection on the nature of certain concepts of freedom and individualism which still retain their power to move people's minds and hearts. To my mind, the book probes these questions more convincingly than some more modern, much praised novels such as Jonathan Franzen's "Freedom". The book also includes a great deal of theological reflection offered by Jim Deakins which fits in well and enhances the context of this story of the old West and of freedom. The predominant tone is of secularism and humanism. "The Big Sky" is a thoughtful book as well as a yarn, a character study, and a history.
Contemporary readers will struggle with the racist language of this book and with its ideas of freedom, individuality and sex which probably will not be entirely their own. It is a virtue in a book to make the reader think and to see different perspectives, whether the perspectives come from the past or from the future. I enjoyed this Western with the grandeur of its portrait of the West and with its portrayals of a rare, flawed and wild way of life. This is a book for reflective readers of American literature and for lovers of the West.
Morte D'Urban
J.F. Powers, author
New York Review Books Classics
http://www.nyrb.com
9780140436990, $21.95, paperback
https://www.amazon.com/Morte-DUrban-Review-Books-Classics/dp/0940322234
God And Mammon In The Midwest
This unduly neglected novel by J.F. Powers (1917--1999) won the National Book Award in 1963. It is the story of Father Urban, a Catholic Priest in the little known (and fictitious) religious order of the Clementines. It takes place in Chicago, where Father Urban is headquartered as the "star" and best known speaker in the Order. He is also something of a fund-raiser with a wealthy, arrogant benefactor named Billy. Father Urban is transferred to a remote town in Minnesota, Duesterhaus, shortly after the novel begins as a result of a disagreement with the head of the Order.
This novel operates on many levels. It shows the tenacity of Father Urban in creating a role for himself in the community surrounding Duesterhaus after what was deemed to be his exile there. It is a funny, tightly-written story and the characterizations, of Father Urban's colleagues, of the Catholic hierarchy, and of the townspeople and parishioners are acute. Most important, it is a story of the difficulty of serving both God and Mammon and of the need and nature for compromise in the work of the Catholic Church in a pluralistic, materialistic, and essentially secular America. Father Urban also encounters matters which he recognizes should not be compromised.
The book includes many wonderful descriptions of scenery and people. I particularly enjoyed the discussions of train travel in the Midwest which recall an America vanished not so long ago. The book features a thoughtful introduction by Elizabeth Hardwick who describes the book as a "most valuable and lasting American novel."
This book is for you if you are interested in books about the United States, about religious experience in the United States, or in unjustly neglected American classics.
The Adventures of Augie March
Saul Bellow
Penguin Classics
https://penguinclassics.com
9780143039570, $20.00, paperback
https://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Augie-March-Penguin-Classics/dp/0143039571
Augie March
"I am an American, Chicago-born, that somber city ...and go at things as I have taught myself, freestyle, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted, sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. But a man's character is his fate, says Heraclitus, and in the end there isn't any way to disguise the nature of the knocks by acoustical work on the door or gloving the knuckles."
This, the opening paragraph of Bellow's large, sprawling, and exuberant novel, "The Adventures of Augie March" (1953) announces its themes at the outset. We have the narrator's, Augie March's, own voice, both pugnacious and reflective. First and foremost, Augie March is "an American". His story will be a reflection on the American experience, especially as it involves large cities and the Chicago where Augie March grew up. Augie, looking ahead to the story he is about to tell, describes himself as free-wheeling, and learning about things as his life impulsively proceeds. Augie is also a lover of books and learning, as witnessed by his allusion to the Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, Heraclitus who taught that "a man's character is his fate." Augie will learn and expand upon this lesson as he goes along and also will learn about many other books and ideas.
Augie's story is centered in Chicago. It begins just before the Depression, when Augie is a young boy and continues through WW II and its aftermath in the 1940's when Augie is married and living as a black marketeer in Paris, wondering where life will take him next. In between, Augie tells a long yarn full of adventure, turns and twists, difficulties, and women. Augie is also a highly reflective individual, and the boisterousness of his story is accompanied by thoughts on the course of his life and its significance.
Augie has two brothers, the ambitious and successful older brother Simon and the feeble-minded George. Augie's father abandoned the family at an early age. Augie and his brothers are raised by "Grandma Lausch" who in fact is unrelated to him and by his quiet and unassuming mother. Simon is intelligent and alive to the main chance. He graduates first in his high school, marries well, and becomes a highly successful entrepreneur.
Augie's life takes a different course and is harder to define. He partly goes where life takes him and he partly makes his own opportunities. As an adolescent he becomes involved with an entreprenurial swindler named Einhorn who becomes the first of Augie's many protectors. He takes up with a rich family in Evanston, Ill, who offer him security and who wish to adopt him. But Augie goes his own way. He has many jobs, some honest, some not, reads voraciously even though he never graduates from college, has numerous love affairs, serious, and casual, and somehow works himself through a life of ups and downs. He becomes a labor organizer, travels to Mexico training an eagle with an eccentric woman whom he loves, enlists in the Merchant Marine, where he spends days on the open sea with a crazy mate before he is rescued, and ultimately marries Stella, an actress and one of the many women from his past. With his marriage to Stella, Augie finds he learns the meaning of love, for all his shortcomings and those of his wife.
Augie learns to see himself as an individual, neither determined by his circumstances nor fully independent of them. He becomes a life-long thinker who learns from books as well as from his own experience. He tries to learn to shape himself, to the extent he can, and to take his experiences and be happy. His story is a massive commentary on being an American and on the meaning of Heraclitus's dictum that "character is fate", the themes announced as the book begins. The book rejects the themes of alienation and of being an outsider that were and remain a feature of American intellectual life and that were prominent in Bellow's first novel, "Dangling Man." Alienation gives way to activity, a commitment to the promise and value of American life, and a sense that literature, philosophy, and learning can help to better the human condition.
"The Adventures of Augie March" was the first of three of Bellow's novels that received the National Book Award. It is a rewarding but difficult read that pulls in many directions, street-wise tough and intellectually demanding, simultaneously. Bellow captures the voice of the streets of Jewish Chicago, with long, involuted sentences, passion, humor, and swagger. The book is long and diffuse and at times it flags. In its robust and energetic portrayal of a person, a city, and a nation, and in its devotion to literature and thought, "Augie March" remains an inspiring story.
A Sport and a Pastime: A Novel
James Salter
Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux
c/o Macmillan
https://us.macmillan.com/publishers/farrar-straus-giroux
9780374530501, $18.00, paperback
https://www.amazon.com/Sport-Pastime-Novel-FSG-Classics/dp/0374530505
Sexuality And Transience
"Remember that the life of this world is but a sport and a pastime". This quotation from the Koran forms the epigraph of the American writer James Salter's third novel. It captures the novel's themes and ambiguities as well as giving the book its title. Life is beautiful but transient. It is to be loved but lived with a sense of detachment. It passes. I read this book because I loved Salter's novel "Light Years", which followed "A Sport and a Pastime". Salter remains unknown to many readers. The two books I have read show Salter as the master of a lyrical, precise, and highly distinctive writing style. Salter writes of eroticism and passion tinged with sadness and with the inevitability of loss.
The book is set in France in the late 1950s and features three primary characters, two American men and a young French woman. The story is told by a nameless narrator, an American man of 34, college-educated, who is visiting old companions from school in the United States. The narrator tells something of his own story combined with the story of a young man whom he befriends during his stay, Phillip Dean. Dean, age 24, is highly intelligent but footloose. He has been touring Spain and then visits France after twice dropping out, he claims due to boredom, from Yale. Dean is the son of a wealthy American family. His father and sister are also staying in Paris. While in a bistro in Autumn, France, Dean and the narrator meet an 18-year old French shopgirl, Anne-Marie. Dean and Anne-Marie quickly begin a highly-charged and erotic love affair. The description of the affair, through the eyes of the narrator, takes up most of the book.
The narrator admits his unreliability. At the simplest level, the erotic affair between Dean and Anne-Marie, while described in the most intimate detail, mostly takes place out of sight of the narrator. The accuracy of the account is questionable. More importantly, the narrator is unlike Dean in many ways. In early middle age, the narrator, although highly literate and perceptive, has difficulty approaching women sexually. In the initial scenes of the book, the narrator is attracted to at least two young women travelling with him on the train, makes eye contact, but will not approach them. As the book progresses, he becomes highly enamored with another young woman but does not approach her. She becomes engaged. The narrator has a life of sexual frustration.
The narrator sees his friend Dean as heroic, with a self-confident swagger. Dean is a man who knows what he wants and how to get it with women. Dean also leads a life of bravado, as he recklessly drives an expensive French sports car, borrowed from a friend, and spends money, which he increasingly cadges from family and friends, with little restraint. With its recklessness and improvidence, there are many intimations in the book that Phillip Dean's life will be short. The narrator's portrayal of his friend may in part be a projection of the narrator's own felt inadequacies and his own dreams. But whether it is a projection or a factual account is largely irrelevant. The book, in the story of Annie-Marie and Phillip Dean, captures the force of erotic love, of passion, and of heartbreak. Life is both beautiful and transient.
The highly-charged language and style of this novel show a writer with a sense of mastery of what he wants to do. The novel has an explicitness in its sexual content that was unusual in a work of literature of the time and that still retains its force. Salter contrasts the fire of his Dean and Anne-Marie, with the lives of frustration and boredom of the narrator and of the book's secondary characters. Salter has an extraordinary sense of France, especially of small towns, cafes, hotels, shops, and ordinary people outside the range of tourists. He is an almost painterly writer who is taken with the surfaces of things, with sex and with fast cars, that some might find superficial. Yet there is a sense of mystery in this book, of passion, and of loss.
Among other books, "A Sport and a Pastime" reminded me of Kerouac's "On the Road." Kerouac and Salter were in fact schoolmates for a short time. Salter's writing is far more elegant and disciplined than is Kerouac's. But Phillip Dean, with his rootlessness and recklessness, love of cars, and energetic sexuality shows parallels to Kerouac's Dean Moriarty/Neal Cassady in "On the Road". So to, the narrator in Salter's novel, with his ambivalences and almost hero-worship of Dean, resembles in many ways Sal Paradise/Kerouac, the narrator of Kerouac's famous novel. Kerouac's book has achieved greater public recognition, and I would not want to judge as between the two novels. But Salter's book is far more concentrated and has a much more mannered and elaborate literary style.
It is a great pleasure to discover a writer one has not known before. Salter's "A Sport and a Pastime" and "Light Years" have brought me poetry and thought. Readers willing to explore a unique American writer will enjoy these books.
Robin Friedman
Reviewer
Susan Bethany's Bookshelf
Cosmetics, Fashion, and the Exploitation of Women
Mary-Alice Waters, author
Joseph Hansen, author
Evelyn Reed, author
Pathfinder Press
www.pathfinderpress.com
9781604881905, $15.00, PB, 212pp
https://www.amazon.com/Cosmetics-Fashion-Exploitation-Mary-Alice-Waters/dp/1604881909
Synopsis: Now in a newly expanded second edition, "Cosmetics, Fashion, and the Exploitation of Women" by co-authors Mary-Alice Waters, Joseph Hansen and Evelyn Reed, offers a 2024 preface and a new opening chapter.
The focus of "Cosmetics, Fashion, and the Exploitation of Women" is on:
How do capitalism's cosmetics and fashion "industries" play on the emotional, sexual, and economic insecurities of women and adolescents to generate profits?
Why are the ever-changing dominant standards of "beauty" always those of the ruling class?
How did women become "the second sex," and how can this product of class-divided society be ended?
How has the entire structure of oppression been weakened by the accelerated integration of women into the workforce worldwide?
In the early 1950s, a lively debate on these issues was sparked by an article in the US socialist newsweekly the Militant exposing the ruthless profit drive of the giant cosmetics monopolies. Today this exchange, "Cosmetics, Fashion, and the Exploitation of Women", is recognized as a classic of Marxism, providing an introduction to the origins of the oppression of women -- and the road toward their emancipation.
Critique: Thoughtful and thought-provoking, exceptionally well written, organized and presented, this new edition of "Cosmetics, Fashion, and the Exploitation of Women" from Pathfinder Press is an extraordinary contribution to the role of the cosmetic industry with the cultural, political, social, and economic restrictions imposed upon women -- and what can be done about it. Eloquent, original, and unreservedly recommended for personal, professional, community, and college/university library Women's Studies collections, it should be noted as especially relevant reading for students, academia, political activists, and non-specialist general readers with an interest in the subject.
Editorial Note #1: Mary-Alice Waters (1942 - ) is a member of the Socialist Workers Party National Committee since 1967, is president of Pathfinder Press and editor of New International magazine. She joined the Young Socialist Alliance in 1962 and Socialist Workers Party in 1964. She has helped lead the SWP's work nationally and internationally, especially in defense of the Cuban Revolution as well as the fight for women's liberation. She has edited more than thirty-five books on the Cuban Revolution as well as more than a dozen other titles. Her works include: In Defense of the US Working Class (2019) and Is Socialist Revolution in the US Possible? (2016).
Editorial Note #2: Joseph Hansen (1910 - 1979) was a longtime leader of the Socialist Workers Party and a member of its National Committee from 1940 to 1975. Editor of the Militant, International Socialist Review, and Intercontinental Press. Hansen joined the Communist movement in 1934 and served as secretary to Leon Trotsky in Mexico 1937 - 40. His writings include Maoism vs. Bolshevism (1998) and Dynamics of the Cuban Revolution: A Marxist Appreciation (1978).
Editorial Note #3: Evelyn Reed (1905 - 1979) joined the communist movement in 1940 and remained a leading member of the Socialist Workers Party until her death. An active participant in the women's liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s, she was a founding member of the Women's National Abortion Action Coalition and spoke on women's rights in cities around the world. She is the author of many works on the origins of the oppression of women and the fight for their emancipation. These include Woman's Evolution (1975), which has been translated into six languages.
Sacred Ceremony for a Sacred Earth
Aniwa Council of Elders
Fair Winds Press
c/o Quarto Publishing Group USA
www.quartoknows.com
9780760392126, $39.99, HC, 224pp
https://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Ceremony-Earth-Indigenous-Transformation/dp/0760392129
Synopsis: Aniwa's Council of Elders includes some of the globe's most renowned Indigenous Wisdom Keepers. In a time fraught with ecological, social, political, and mental health crises, they share a mission to unite people of all races, colors, and creeds to promote healing and a deeper reciprocal relationship with our planet. Sacred Ceremony for a Sacred Earth brings together their profound teachings, stories, sacred ceremonies, and healing practices, amplifying the voices of Indigenous healers from diverse traditions.
In their world view, we are all children of Mother Earth, destined to return to her embrace. "Sacred Ceremony for a Sacred Earth: Indigenous Wisdom for Healing and Transformation" is extraordinary volume that serves as a guiding light, beckoning humanity back to ancestral wisdom and restoring forgotten bonds with nature and self through ceremonies and practices.
Readers will embark on a journey of self-discovery, unveiling the purpose of their soul and reclaiming their intrinsic relationship with Mother Earth, through ancient practices such as:
Use of Feathers to Bless Yourself and Relieve Pain
Pagamento for Trees
Hopi Message of Comfort to Say Good-Bye to Loved Ones Who Have Passed
Practices for Conscious Conception
Create a Spiritual House for Your Inner Child
The Feagaiga (Sacred Promise or Covenant) with Mother Earth
Connect with Your Ancestors
"Sacred Ceremony for a Sacred Earth" also calls upon us to awaken and rekindle the flame of connection with our roots and the natural world. Let the eternal wisdom of elders guide you toward healing, growth, and a profound reconnection with nature.
Critique: This large format (8.25 x 0.81 x 10.25 inches, 2.2 pounds) hardcover edition of "Sacred Ceremony for a Sacred Earth: Indigenous Wisdom for Healing and Transformation" by the Aniwa Council of Elders will have a strong appeal and value for students and practitioners of Shamanism, as well as those with an interest in an indigenous people's approach to health, fitness, diet, the cultural/spiritual role of tobacco, indigenous spirituality, metaphysics, as well as understanding the elements and our planet Earth. Beautifully and profusely illustrated throughout with full color photography of indigenous people, rituals, events, "Sacred Ceremony for a Sacred Earth" is informative, fascinating, insightful, and unreservedly recommended for personal, professional, community, and college/university library Native American/Indigenous Peoples history and cultural collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists. It should be noted for students, academia, and non-specialist general readers with an interest in the subject that this hardcover edition of "Sacred Ceremony for a Sacred Earth" from Fair Winds Press is also readily available in a digital book format (Kindle, $37.99).
Editorial Note: The Aniwa Council of Elders (https://www.aniwa.co) includes some of the world's most renowned and respected Indigenous Wisdom Keepers. Aniwa is a prayer for a profound convergence of cultures and wisdom manifested as an online platform, annual gathering, and now this ceremony book, each amplifying the voices of Indigenous elders worldwide from diverse traditions as they share teachings, stories, sacred ceremonies, and healing practices. Aniwa's mission is to unite people of all races, colors, creeds to promote healing and a deeper reciprocal relationship with the Earth by creating a transformative space where seekers from all walks of life can connect, learn, and heal together. Aniwa honors and preserves ancestral wisdom, promotes environmental stewardship, and cultivates a deeper understanding of our shared mission as humanity while striving to inspire a collective commitment to living in harmony with nature and each other, ensuring that the timeless wisdom of Indigenous peoples continues to guide future generations.
Susan Bethany
Reviewer
Willis Buhle's Bookshelf
Low Vision Matters: A Practical Guide to Living With Low Vision & Blindness
Laura Stevens MSci, author
Thomas Blackman, author
Square One Publishers
www.squareonepublishers.com
9780757005343, $21.95, PB, 368pp
https://www.amazon.com/Vision-Matters-Laura-Stevens-MSci/dp/0757005349
Synopsis: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), over seven million people in the US alone suffer from severe vision loss or blindness. In the past, low vision was truly a life-altering condition. Those seemingly everyday tasks that were once so simple instead became difficult -- whether one had to work, cook, read, drive, go out to shop, or even turn on a light switch, one's world had been completely turned upside down.
Today, however, things have begun to change. With the revolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) already underway, many of the major barriers caused by diminished or fully lost vision have been lessened or completely eliminated. With the publication of "Low Vision Matters: A Practical Guide to Living With Low Vision & Blindness, co-authors Laura Stevens and Thomas Blackman provide a comprehensive guide to all the aids and equipment now available (along with important practical advice) to those who are vision-challenged.
"Low Vision Matters" is divided into two parts. Part One focuses on the day-to-day activities that low vision can affect -- from safety in your home or traveling outside, to the handling of finances or one's home entertainment system. It discusses the latest technologies that can enable a person with eyesight problems to turn on a light, start a dishwasher, or even answer a phone through the use of oral commands -- and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Part Two of "Low Vision Matters" then provides a breakdown of the various kinds of helpful vision-aid products now available. Because the authors understand the costs involved in purchasing such equipment, they include the names of those organizations and associations in an extensive Resources section along with various other crucial contacts about which those with low vision and their loved ones and caretakers need to know.
Times have changed. Medical technology marches on. "Low Vision Matters" provides a wealth of information that can vastly improve the daily life of a person living with vision loss or blindness.
Critique: Ideal for the non-specialist general reader seeking reliable information on dealing with low vision issues, "Low Vision Matters: A Practical Guide to Living With Low Vision & Blindness" by the team of Laura Stevens and Thomas Blackman, is exceptionally well written and thoroughly 'reader friendly' in organization and presentation. This large format (8 x 0.6 x 10 inches, 1.46 pounds) paperback edition of "Low Vision Matters: A Practical Guide to Living With Low Vision & Blindness" from Square One Publishers is especially and unreservedly recommended for personal, professional, community, senior citizen center, and college/university library Vision Health/Medicine collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists.
Editorial Note #1: Laura Stevens, MSci, received her master's degree in nutrition science from the Department of Nutrition Science at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Since graduation, she had worked at Purdue as a researcher who investigated the relationship between diet and health disorders. As an author of nine successful books on diet, behavior, and allergies, Laura now deals with low vision issues herself.
Editorial Note #2: Thomas Blackman, MHA, received a Master's degree in Blind Rehabilitation from Western Michigan University. Thomas provided Orientation & Mobility instruction at Bosma Enterprises in Indianapolis for several years. He then served as Founder and Director of the Assistive Technology program at Easter Seals Crossroads beginning in 1988. In 1998, he formed EYE Can See, Inc. in Indianapolis, which continues to provide adaptive hardware and software products for blind and low vision customers in Indiana and Kentucky.
The Author's Guide to Murder
Beatriz Williams, author
Lauren Willig, author
Karen White, author
William Morrow & Company
c/o HarperCollins Publishers
www.harpercollins.com
9780063259867, $30.00, HC, 416pp
https://www.amazon.com/Authors-Guide-Murder-Novel/dp/0063259869
Synopsis: There's been a sensational murder at historic Castle Kinloch, a gothic fantasy of grey granite on a remote island in the Highlands of Scotland. Literary superstar Brett Saffron Presley has been found dead (and under bizarre circumstances) in the castle tower's book-lined study. Years ago, Presley purchased the castle as a showpiece for his brand and to lure paying guests with a taste for writerly glamour. Now it seems, the castle has done him in... or, possibly, one of the castle's guests has. Detective Chief Inspector Euan McIntosh, a local with no love for literary Americans, finds himself with the unenviable task of extracting statements from three American lady novelists.
The prime suspects are Kat de Noir, a slinky erotica writer; Cassie Pringle, a Southern mom of six juggling multiple cozy mystery series; and Emma Endicott, a New England blue blood and author of critically acclaimed historical fiction. The women claim to be best friends writing a book together, but the authors' stories about how they know Brett Saffron Presley don't quite line up, and the detective is getting increasingly suspicious.
Why did the authors really come to Castle Kinloch? And what really happened the night of the great Kinloch Ceilidh, when Brett Saffron Presley skipped the folk dancing for a rendezvous with death?
A crafty locked-room mystery, a pointed satire about the literary world, and a tale of unexpected friendship and romance ''The Author's Guide to Murder", expertly co-authored by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig, and Karen White, has it all, as only these three seasoned and award-wining murder mystery authors can tell it!
Critique: An absolutely fascinating, impressive original, fully engaging, and a fun read from start to finish, "The Author's Guide to Murder" will prove to be an immediate and enduringly popular pick for the personal reading lists of all dedicated 'whodunnit' fans and community library Contemporary Mystery/Suspense collections. Original, deftly crafted, and simply riveting from first page to last, it should be noted that this hardcover edition of "The Author's Guide to Murder" from William Morrow is also readily available in paperback (9780063259874, $19.99) and in a digital book format (Kindle, $12.99).
Editorial Note #1: Beatriz Williams (https://beatrizwilliams.com) is the author of over a dozen novels, including The Beach at Summerly, Our Woman in Moscow, and The Summer Wives, as well as four other novels co-written with Lauren Willig and Karen White.
Editorial Note #2: Lauren Willig (https://laurenwillig.com) is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. An alumna of Yale University, she has a graduate degree in history from Harvard and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.
Editorial Note #3: Karen White (https://www.karen-white.com) is the author of twenty-five novels, including Dreams of Falling and The House on Prytania, as well as the Tradd Street mystery series. She currently writes what she refers to as "grit lit" -- Southern women's fiction.
Willis M. Buhle
Reviewer
James A. Cox
Editor-in-Chief
Midwest Book Review
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