Nothing reveals character better than conflict, adversity and resolution. What matters even more than what a protagonist wants and the obstacles they encounter is the way they respond to those obstacles. By this process, over the course of a novel, we see that person grow and evolve. Conflict and adversity don’t always depend on body … Read more
McFalls County Sheriff Clayton Burroughs has a problem. He’s spent his entire adult life distancing himself from his violent and dysfunctional family on Bull Mountain. Into Clayton’s office walks Federal Agent Simon Holly with an interesting proposition. If Clayton can convince his older brother and last living family member, Halford, to shut down his meth … Read more
Chicago gallery owner Adam Barrow stages a gala event that he hopes will save his venture from financial ruin. He invites wealthy patrons from throughout the city. In stumbles an unwanted guest. Adam’s drunken brother, Wes, has found two letters, decades old, one from their now dead father and the other, dated November 1941 from … Read more
Every now and then, an historical novel comes along that casts a harsh light into a dark and unfamiliar corner of our past. The Hidden Light of Northern Fires is just such a work. Daren Wang’s story opens in the winter of 1861. Like any compelling story, it introduces us to complicated characters striving against … Read more
What makes a well-crafted short story is the writer’s ability to create an identifiable character, distill that character’s experience down to a couple thousand well selected words and convey an underlying theme that teaches us something about life. I met author and singer-songwriter Rod Picott at an independent bookstore a couple of years ago,. I … Read more
How do you review a non-fiction classic that generations of students and scholars have read, reread, studied and critiqued? Perhaps by looking at what it still says to us in times of individual and societal crises. Writing in 1946 following his liberation, Frankl begins with a personal account of his struggle to survive a series … Read more
Winner of four Hugo awards for best novel, Lois McMaster Bujold never disappoints. Having read Cryoburn, the most recent of her fourteen-book Vorkosigan saga, I decided to go back to the beginning. When I found the second installment, Barrayar, I read it immediately. Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan finds herself, to borrow from Robert Heinlein, a stranger … Read more
In Last Gleaming – Love and Death in the Time of Pandemic, William Wakefield, whom Parker’s readers will remember from Pronounced Ponce, is now a college freshman. He meets and falls in love with Misty Sax, whom we met in Fly Away. William is pursuing his dreams of becoming a journalist. With help from his … Read more
Published in 2019, Malcolm Gladwell’s Talking to Strangers couldn’t be timelier. Gladwell opens with the case of Sandra Bland, a young African American woman pulled over by a white police officer in a small Texas town in July 2015. Supposedly, she fails to signal a lane change. What begins as a routine traffic stop quickly … Read more