Thirty-six hours after the event, workers pull from the rubble 42-year-old Anthony Carter, an unemployed biracial schoolteacher and recovering coke addict. In the days—and daze—that follows, he doesn’t find religion as much as it finds him in the form of a female prophet. Targeting him with her “raging aviary of disembodied howls and shouts,” she […]
Texas author Meacham began writing novels in retirement; this last was completed before her death in 2021 at age 83. Her heroine, Kathryn Walker, is the put-together, 40-something wife of a successful orthopedic surgeon; both have come a long way from their impoverished, almost Dickensian backgrounds. Now their daughter is at college in Boulder and […]
Followers of Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and other Frankfurt School luminaries do not typically associate Naples with Critical Theory or any part of its genesis. But as Mittelmeier shows, “that sulfurous, chaotic [and] exhausting city,” along with the neighboring island of Capri, likely played a far greater role both in the intellectual formation of Frankfurt […]
“Everybody in Ireland knows that banshees are supernatural harbingers of doom.” Referred to as bansheenies when they are young, these fairies grow in pods. Each banshee forms an unshakable link with the first human they see until one day, the banshee bursts forth to “howl the banshee’s howl at them”—a sign that the human is […]
The author, a self-described “semi-retired world traveler,” recounts his quest to visit all the obelisks—slender, tall, four-sided monoliths tapering to a pyramidal cap—that were quarried from Aswan granite in Upper Egypt, commissioned by pharaohs in the second millennium BCE, among them Queen Hatshepsut and Ramesses II. Ciccone saw 11 such monoliths in Egypt, but he […]
This anthology, composed of stand-alone entries, spans multiple genres, including realistic fiction, fabulism, and fantasy. Readers meet middle school girls who are dealing with universal issues, such as family expectations, grief and loss, friendship troubles, bullying, and fear of rejection, plus some that are specific to being a Black girl. The stories overwhelmingly refute monolithic […]
Just six months past her divorce, Meg Bloomberg decides to channel her self-pity in a different, more useful direction: playing pickleball. Actually, her friend Annie Yoon cajoled her into it, but after just a few volleys Meg can’t help but admit that playing pickleball is kind of fun. Meg joins Annie’s Lakeview pickleball league, which […]
Vivian and Brandy Borne are antique dealers with a sideline in solving mysteries and annoying many people along the way, especially Brandy’s fiance, local police chief Tony Cassato. Everyone in their household, including Sushi the dog, relies on legal drugs to deal with the vicissitudes of life. As their Mississippi River hometown of Serenity busies […]
Rising senior Ethan Granger lives a comfortable life in a gated community in Ottawa. He has a fickle girlfriend, Nora, whom he considers worth the heartache. The fact that his father is a self-described “smooth talker”—or, Ethan admits to himself, a liar—is brought home again when he sees his dad with some men in a […]
Two years before writing this book, the author, an avid runner, completed the 2022 New York City Marathon at the age of 51. The race was grueling, she says, but far shorter and easier than her lengthy and often discouraging struggle to have children. Her first pregnancy in the late 1990s was difficult; she experienced […]