Book Review: Minor Prophets
Minor Prophets by Blair Hurley. Ig Publishing, 2023. 286 pages. $17.95, paperback. Minor Prophets, the exciting second novel of accomplished author Blair Hurley, is one of the best books I’ve read all year. The novel tells the story of Nora, the former child-mouthpiece of a Pentecostal, doomsday-prepping cult led by her father in Michigan’s Upper...
Book Review: Magic for Martians: 49 Short Fictions
Magic for Martians: 49 Short Fictions by A. W. DeAnnuntis. Los Angeles, CA: Giant Claw, an imprint of What Books Press, 2022. 182 pages. $16.95, Paperback. From the first sentences of Magic for Martians, a particularly satisfying combination of personality traits shine through; this collection is delightfully strange, fresh, and, somehow, each piece of fanciful...
Book Review: Our Wives Under The Sea
Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield. Flatiron Books, 2022. 240 pages. $16.73, paperback. Our Wives Under The Sea is the lesbian ocean horror book I didn’t know I needed. Julia Armfield’s brilliant debut novel centers around the relationship between Miri and her wife Leah, after Leah returns from a six month deep sea...
Poetry Review: Chopping Wood in the Moonlight by Ken Letko
Chopping Wood in the Moonlight by Ken Letko. Flowstone Press. 2021. 33 Pages. Paperback. Chopping Wood in the Moonlight is Ken Letko’s tribute to nature and simple living. In these tightly crafted poems, the author utilizes his years of traveling and collected wisdom to celebrate a life lived authentically. In the title poem, Letko invokes the ancient Chinese...
Poetry Review: The Track the Whales Make by Marjorie Saiser
The Track the Whales Make: New and Selected Poems by Marjorie Saiser. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2021. 181 pages. $19.95, print. The Track the Whales Make begins with a section of new work and then features poems from Saiser’s seven previous books, starting with the most recent and then moving backwards in time. Like Saiser’s poems themselves, the book’s construction creates a sense of what is fleeting. As the...
Fiction Review: The Red-Headed Pilgrim by Kevin Maloney
The Red-Headed Pilgrim by Kevin Maloney. Columbus, OH, FORTHCOMING with Two Dollar Radio. 242 pages. $18.95, paperback. Many may fantasize about writing the Great American Novel, never working a nine-to-five job, and having constant unprotected sex without producing a child, but Kevin, the protagonist in The Red-Headed Pilgrim, fails in all of these respects. As...
Poetry Review: A Cluster of Noisy Planets
A Cluster of Noisy Planets by Charles Rafferty. Rochester, NY, BOA Editions, Ltd. 2001, 80 pages. $17.00, paperback. A Cluster of Noisy Planets by Charles Rafferty is an account of the melancholic passing of time, expressed through lovely observations of our world. Reading these prose poems aloud, one can sense the soft drumming of Rafferty’s...
Book Review: I Know What’s Best for You: Stories on Reproductive Freedom
I Know What’s Best for You: Stories on Reproductive Freedom, edited by Shelly Oria. San Francisco, California: McSweeney’s, 2022. 480 pages. $21.99, paperback. In the months since SCOTUS’s overturning of Roe v. Wade it’s been incredibly difficult to feel like the voices of women and gender minorities are being listened to. While it’s easy to...