Venice is one of the most beautiful cities in the world with architecture, canals, and history that make it a prime setting for a mystery. Two favorite authors, Donna Leon and Martin Cruz Smith, have books set in Venice that take you on two very different journeys to La Serenissima.
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Interview with Allison Pitinii Davis
The author of Line Study of a Motel Clerk talks about her book, narratives and counter-narratives, the nature of poetry and confrontation, the interaction between language and the person sensing it, the relationship between the living and the dead and a lot more.
A review of Line Study of a Motel Clerk by Allison Pitinii Davis
Art, in this messy overlayering, produces “some kind of complicated, collective accuracy.” Like the best works, Line Study gives a sense of speaking to the present as if to the future. “Because the ones who wrote today’s edition,” as Davis writes in the titular and final poem, “have already written tomorrow’s.” Should we all be so lucky to actually hear Tiresias speak.
A review of Porch Light by Ivy Ireland
In the opening line, Ireland poses a question about the relationship between the individual, and a theory of everything: “If you consulted your own cipher mind (if what presents as yours could be compressed in such a lazy line), would it encircle this whole ball of string/theory/or only what lies beneath?” In the world of Porch Light, the answer is yes.
A review of The Golden Child by Wendy James
The plot moves fast, the narrative driving the reading towards its final unnerving twist. It all happens almost too quickly. James’ writing is so smooth, and the story so powerfully plotted, that its easy to miss how neatly the shifts are between the individual voices, the many delicate links between cause and effect and the parallels between adults and children as we move from one character to another, the way the reader is unwittingly drawn into the toxic culture of privilege that underpins these characters, or how subtle the thematics.
A review of Secret of Abbott’s Cave by Max Elliot Anderson
Anderson has created a high interest, action packed, easily read, adventure filled chapter book certain to please middle grade readers. While my career spanning nearly 4 decades was spent in the K 1 arena, Secret of Abbott’s Cave is a book I used during the two years I taught Osage County fourth grade in Osage County. It was a book with good appeal for both girls and boys.
We have a copy of The Book of Air by Joe Treasure to giveaway. To win, just sign up for our Free Newsletter on the right hand side of the site.
The winner will be drawn by the 1st of May from subscribers who enter via the newsletter. Good luck!
A review of Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher and Anger and the Indigo Child by dianne Lancaster
n Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher the main character is a person. And since he’s not a real person on earth that we’ll be able to find, he’s living on another earth exactly the same as ours. In fact, you are living on another earth exactly the same as ours. He earns this, as does the writing because it’s him.
A review of A Vicious Example by Michael Aiken
Through the dystopia of styrofoam cups, depleted forests, rotting garbage, and an overabundance of aggressive species – colonists or currawongs, there is still laughter, a sense of hope, and a deep, abiding love for the city. In Aiken’s world, the human is absorbed into nature as just another animal, a predator who will one day be supplanted by another species. Though that may not sound like the prettiest of visions, A Vicious Example presents a collection of great beauty, and intense reflection.
A Howl of Disenchantment: A review of Still Howling by Mary Dezember
For those who saw beneath the veneer of our country’s prosperity, “Howl” was the response of those supposedly mad or insane, observing the interior disintegration of a society enamored of materialism, steeped in religious doctrine but becoming increasing devoid of spiritual direction, still segregated and racist and generally intolerant of sexual honesty. “Howl” helped define a generation that saw beyond America’s inflated sense of progress and supremacy.