The paradox of the thesaurus is that you can use it only to find words that you already know. Plucking an unfamiliar word from a list of synonyms practically ensures misusage. Now and then I consult a thesaurus to remember a word that has slipped my mind, and the one I reach for most often […]
In Miseerere Caren J. Werlinger has written an historical novel that weaves together narratives from two periods: the mid-1960s dominated by the Civil Rights Movement and the mid-1800s that saw the Civil War and the end of legalized slavery in America. The story centers on the descendants of Caitríona Ní Faolain, an Irish girl brought to […]
Kirsten Mortensen’s Loose Dogs is a wonderful novel, full of comedy without ignoring life’s sadness and cruelty. The characters are deftly drawn. The author gives them individuality even when they’re recognizable types. The story unfolds at a satisfying pace that kept me reading from start to finish. Paige Newbury, the narrator and protagonist, works as an […]
I could never get into zombies. Sad reanimated corpses, mindless and sexless, they shuffle along dropping rotted body parts in their wake, pausing occasionally to gnaw living human flesh. Horrifying, sure. Funny in a grisly kind of way. But mostly boring. Certainly not figures that evoke empathy. I’ve enjoyed a few zombie movies—George Romero’s classic […]
My cousin Deon doesn’t email often, so when a message from her lands in my mailbox, I open it with curiosity. Some time ago Deon wrote to recommend a book. Knowing I read about serial killers, she thought I might enjoy David Rose’s The Big Eddy Club: The Stocking Stranglings and Southern Justice. The stocking […]
In his legal thriller Defending Elton, TJ Cooke takes on formidable challenges. First, his protagonist is a British solicitor who sets out to frame a mentally challenged client, Elton, for a murder that he himself committed. How can readers sympathize with a guy like that? Yet Cooke succeeds in evoking not just a grudging understanding […]
Thirty years ago Joe and I lived in a beautiful house overlooking a lake. It was his second year of teaching at Eastern Illinois University. Uncertain whether we would settle permanently in Charleston, we leased the place from a professor on sabbatical. The house had an unpaved driveway that wound steeply downward to a gravel […]
I get too many ideas for stories, more than I have time to write. How to choose among them? I take the ones that call to both my head and my heart. An unusual premise might interest me, but unless it comes with a character I care about or moves toward some kind of emotional […]
I read Sherwin B. Nuland’s How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter while doing research for my novel TALION. I’d never seen anyone die—not yet, anyway—and I needed a clinical account of the process. Nuland explains what happens in the body as life ends. In each chapter he covers a different manner of death: heart […]
An entrepreneur at heart, my father owned and operated more than a dozen small businesses in his lifetime, two or three at a time. Since he liked spending money and always needed more, he also sold cars for various dealerships in Heber, Utah, where he lived. He was a terrific saleman. He won national prizes […]
The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.” — Oscar Wilde My husband, the always perceptive Joe Heumann, recently pointed to an alarming pattern in my TV obsessions. The shows that hook me have disturbing elements in common. Crime and violence. Lots and lots of violence. A lead character who […]
Don’t miss Rachelle Ayala’s latest book, Hidden Under her Heart (A Story of Abortion and Courage), available for a short time at the introductory price of $0.99. About the novel Maryanne Torres is a compassionate nurse who fails at relationships. After a string of losers, she swears off premarital sex, hoping to land a marrying […]
