The story begins in medias res, with Roland Baines, in his home in Clapham, waking from a nightmare about his boyhood piano lessons, and realizing that he is now a grown man taking care of his infant son, Lawrence. Roland is “the baby’s bed and his god.” Alissa, Roland’s wife, has vanished, leaving a note telling him not to find her. “I have been living the wrong life. Please try to forgive me,” she wrote.
Category: Literary Fiction Reviews
Great new giveaway
We have a copy of Black Foam by Haji Jabi to give away!
To win, sign up for our Free Newsletter on the right-hand side of the site and enter via the newsletter. Winner will be chosen by the end of March from subscribers who enter via the newsletter. Good luck!
A review of The Return by Aaron Paul Lazar
The book is fast paced, drawing you in from the first chapter, and progressing with exciting turns in a way that the book is always pleasurable and satisfying, and even the worst antagonists are treated with empathy. It’s hard not to like Gus, who is always ready to lend a helping hand or a basket of fresh picked zucchinis and corn. Lazar is a master craftsman and pays careful attention to language, plot, pacing and character so that all of the elements tie together neatly and seamlessly, description charged with rich nostalgia
A review of Beauty in the Beast by Emily-Jane Hills Orford
In the original folktale, when the young woman learns to love the beast, she is surprised by his transformation. In Orford’s novel, Priya is manipulated by a male being for whom she felt an attraction, so her happy ending is not the conventional one. Instead, it arises naturally from Orford’s novel and is suitable for the 21st century.
A review of Pipette by Kim Chinquee
According to the Oxford American Dictionary, a pipette is “a slender tube used in a lab for transferring or measuring small quantities of liquids.” In Kim Chinquee’s slim, debut novel Pipette, the author examines a large mixture of themes through the eyes of Elle, a part-time lab technician working in the early days of COVID.
New giveaway!
We have an exclusive numbered ebook autographed via Apple Pencil of The Alphabet According to Several Strange Creatures by Simon Nader to giveaway!
To win, sign up for our Free Newsletter on the right-hand side of the site and enter via the newsletter. Winner will be chosen by the end of January from subscribers who enter via the newsletter. Good luck!
To win, sign up for our Free Newsletter on the right-hand side of the site and enter via the newsletter. Winner will be chosen by the end of January from subscribers who enter via the newsletter. Good luck!
A review of Sapphic Touch – Sappho – Poetry Forum for Queers 2021 Anthology
I was touched in heart and mind by the many serried stories included in this anthology, to me so crisp and with an everlasting contrast of lightness and darkness in your moments of LGBTIQA life and your ethical existence.
A review of Almost Deadly, Almost Good by Alice Kaltman
Almost Deadly, Almost Good is a complex web of sins and virtues that presents a wider, more multidimensional world. The stories are fantastic melodrama and human emotion and demonstrate the nature of humanity in more than black and white terms.
New giveaway!
We have a copy of Dissection by Dr. Cristina LePort to give away!
To win, sign up for our Free Newsletter on the right-hand side of the site and enter via the newsletter. Winner will be chosen by the end of December from subscribers who enter via the newsletter. Good luck!
A Cottonmouth with a Laptop: A review of Stay Gone Days by Steve Yarbrough
Some forty years ago, in Jackson, not far Loring, a similar bottle of Four Roses was opened. It’s a significant detail in this story of the Cole sisters, that ends where it began, that comes full circle, with many detours along the way. Individuals, with marked differences, both sisters are resilient, vulnerable, and passionate, characters so life-like a reader feels “the air making contact with their skin.”