By Peter Hassebroek on August 25, 2011
Writing about what you know and have experienced can be a great tonic to exorcise one’s demons while remaining authoritative at the same time. It can also turn into a self-serving rant. Thomas Thonson is a veteran of the Hollywood film industry and the theme of his unpretentious collection, You Don’t Die of Love, is Hollywood and its people, particularly Harry Dare, an old time actor of Westerns whose private life was more dramatic than his cinematic one.
Posted in Fiction, Literary, Reviews | Tagged book review, collection, Fiction, hollywood, short story, thomas thonson |
By Peter Hassebroek on August 12, 2011
Collectively, Inklings (Very short stories and other babies born of ink) by Aparna Warrier, is shorter than a conventional short story. Undoubtedly the shortest book I’ve ever read without pictures.
Posted in Fiction, Literary, Reviews | Tagged aparna warrier, book review, collection, Fiction, flash fiction, short story |
By LK Gardner-Griffie on August 5, 2011
A book’s cover is its calling card and this cover is gorgeous. A lot of times I’ll read a book and go back and look at the cover and realize how the cover didn’t quite capture the story, or how there are bits of the cover which don’t quite fit with the tale inside. But in this case, I couldn’t imagine a more perfect showcase for The Devil’s Garden.
Posted in Literary, LK Gardner-Griffie, Science Fiction/Fantasy | Tagged adult, Carina Press, corruption, courtesan, devils, fantasy, Fiction, gods, Jane Kindred, LK Gardner-Griffie, magic, politics, romance, The Devil's Garden |
By Peter Hassebroek on July 8, 2011
Collected stories, like songs on LPs, often share a theme or tone related to its title. In that sense, the title of Wade Alan Steele’s collection, A Sudden Dominance of Shadows, correlates to the opaqueness of many of its stories that delve into the murky psyches of its protagonists. Otherwise, though, the disparate styles and quality of the stories makes this book more like a collection of B-Sides.
Posted in Fiction, Literary, Peter Hassebroek, Reviews | Tagged book review, dominance, Fiction, shadows, short story collection, sudden, wade alan steele |
By Peter Hassebroek on March 14, 2011
I can’t say I fully grasp why the title Past; Tense was chosen for the second story, let alone the entire collection. A double-, triple-, or even quadruple-entendre I imagine, involving grammatical tenses, emotional tension, and chronology. Its phonetic awkwardness does foreshadow Joe Harding’s collection as literary fiction; yet these ten well-written, well-edited stories, narrated in ten unique voices, are surprisingly accessible.
Posted in Fiction, Literary, Peter Hassebroek, Reviews | Tagged book review, British, collection, Fiction, joe harding, literary, short story |
By Shannon Yarbrough on January 1, 2011
It’s hard sometimes to decide where a review should start, especially when I’ve read a good book and I’m yearning to tell someone all about it. The book encompasses so much, and I don’t want to leave anything out, but I don’t want to give the good parts away either. That’s exactly how I feel about Will Entrekin’s new novel, Meets Girl.
Posted in Experimental/Narrative, Literary, Mainstream/Nostalgia, Shannon Yarbrough | Tagged entrekin, meets girl, will entrekin |
By Shannon Yarbrough on December 13, 2010
Mitch Quillen has been receiving phone calls from his estranged father, Jim, who Mitch hasn’t visited since he was a boy. With his marriage on the rocks and his lackluster job failing, his wife encourages him to get away and to find out exactly why his father keeps calling. The two haven’t seen eye to eye since the last summer Mitch spent with him as a boy, and even back then their father/son relationship was tepid at best.
Posted in Family Drama, Fiction, Literary, Shannon Yarbrough | Tagged amazonencore, Craig Lancaster, the summer son |
