We have two copies of Visits and Other Passages by Carol Smallwood to giveaway.
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Instead of anthropomorphizing animals, in this collection, people act like animals. There’s a closeness explored between humans and animals, sometimes wild, sometimes their pets. In one story about a young mother addicted to Oxy, she turns her face from her boyfriend’s meanness, “like I’d do with a wild dog, like if I avoided the eyes, that alone would keep it from lunging into me, snapping me at the neck and shaking me dead” (134).
It takes courage to decide to live and share ones most intimate and authentic self. Osayande’s poems are personal glimpses into his life. Collectively they are viewed by the author as bizarre, beautiful and tragic. Relationships, loving and life can be complex and present as a compilation of these.
Judith Skillman’s poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart, Best of the Web, the UK Kit Award, and is included in Best Indie Verse of New England to mention just a few honors of this prominent American poet and translator. Her work has appeared in many anthologies and journals and her work as an artist has also attracted notice. In this interview she talks about her latest collection Came Home to Winter, about the impact of nature and Washington state on her work, and lots more.
Colin Thiele evokes strong emotions from the reader because he writes the right things at the right moments. He also has action after action, so the storyline doesn’t get boring. He creates intriguing characters, and how he describes them so well and how much emotion he puts into it really catches me.
Readers attracted by the Kennedy name will find that, of the two novels,Kick Kennedy’s Secret Diary by Susan Braudy is the more risque and sensational. Readers who want a love story should choose Kerri Maher’s The Kennedy Debutante. Those seeking an historical novel about a woman breaking free of convention and achieving things through her own hard work should look elsewhere.
Though Reichs’ style of writing is more simplistic than others I’ve read previously, he compensates for this by having a crazy storyline, packed with twists and turns, and changing alliances. In Nemesis, strangers join together in order to survive and friends turn on one another. Betrayal, intrigue and mystery keep the reader turning pages like a maniac.
One of the things that worked really well in Throne of Glass was the change of perspectives of characters. One minute I was reading about Celaena’s perspective of a fight she’s in, and then the next paragraph would swap to Dorian’s view of the fight. This helped the reader engage more deeply with the characters and created a better understanding of the bonds between characters and the way each character is feeling about each other during these moments.
Set in the late 1800s in England, the story follows Tessa Grey, a young American girl who has arrived in London, as she discovers the many secrets of the Shadow World which Clare has created with exquisite detail and imagery. Along the way, Tessa discovers Downworld and the supernatural creatures who belong to it including vampires, warlocks and other paranormal beings.
The one topic that all our storytellers weigh in on is the concept of home. What does “home” mean to them? About half the writers say that America is now their home; the other half claims the land of their birth. It is always the last segment of the teller’s tale, a summing up, and the logic each writer uses to make their decision is always compelling.