Book Reviews

Lost Literacies: Experiments in the Nineteenth-Century US Comic Strips  By Alex Berringer  The Ohio State University Press, 2024 Paper, $36.95 Genre: Nonfiction Reviewed by Bill Plott When The Birmingham News announced its impending abandonment of print editions, two concerns expressed most by readers were the loss of obituaries and the loss of comic strips. Fortunately, there are internet presences such as GoComics.com and ComicsKingdom.com that provide fans with unlimited access to the latter at reasonable costs. That scenario hints at the importance [...]

Lights, Camera, Bones By Carolyn Haines Minotaur Books, 2024 Hardcover with dust jacket: $28.00  Genre: Fiction/Mystery & Detective/Cozy Reviewed by Lisa Harrison Bestselling author Carolyn Haines, perennial favorite of cozy-paranormal mystery readers, conjures up another delightful whodunit in Lights, Camera, Bones, a Sarah Booth Delaney mystery.  Prospects appear bright for the riverside town of Greenville, Mississippi, when a movie production company arrives to film an epic about the 1927 flood that submerged a large section of the area. The crew’s presence [...]

The Vanishing Woman By Kelly Dean Jolley Meryton Press, 2023 Paper, $9.99 Genre: Mystery Reviewed by Lisa Harrison In his novel The Vanishing Woman, Kelly Dean Jolley joins the seemingly-impossible-occurrence mystery genre by posing the question of where a woman who disappears from the locked cabin on a moving train might be. If she is on the train, is she hiding, or is she being hidden? Is foul play involved, and if so, who might be the culprit? Protagonist Tad Fowler [...]

The Marshmallow Show Is Cancelled By Debby Regan Outcast Press, 2023 Paper, $12.99 Genre: Fiction Reviewed by Danny Gamble What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas—unless it happens in the satirical romp through pop culture, The Marshmallow Show Is Cancelled. Debby Regan has conjured up a zany desert town inhabited by Marshmallow, a benign bunny puppet with its own kids TV show; Findley Luker, Marshmallow’s puppeteer after his father Kevin dies and a fledgling actor turned international movie star; Andrea Rizzo, [...]

Searching for Home Waters: A Brook Trout Pilgrimage By Michael K. Steinberg University of Georgia Press, 2023 Hardcover: $39.95 Genre: Travel Memoir, Ecology and Environment, Trout Fishing Reviewed by Edward Journey the cover of Searching for Home Waters features two trout, facing opposite directions “Poetics of place” is a phrase used by Michael K. Steinberg in his captivating book, Searching for Home Waters: A Brook Trout Pilgrimage. The phrase references a morning spent on Vermont’s Robert Frost Interpretive Trail, [...]

Entwined  By Carolyn DeMeritt and Pinky/MM Bass Hardback; $59 Genre: Art/Photography Reviewed by Ray Wetzel While Entwined is a book for lovers of contemporary art, it is more than decoration for your coffee table. The collection of images, taken by photographer Carolyn DeMeritt of model and collaborator Pinky Bass, does much more than offer lip service and platitudes to try to sell you on a specific thought about a work. This book is a true work of art, At first glance, [...]

Tell It True By Tim Lockette  Seven Stories Press, 2021 Paper: $18.95 Genre: Young Adult Reviewed by Judy Sheppard In this fast-moving, powerful novel about journalism, highly respected reporter Tim Lockette flawlessly channels a whip-smart, smart-mouthed 15-year-old Lisa Rives as she morphs from jester to reporter, from editor of a high school newspaper to witness to an execution. Tell It True is an apt title, calling up Emily Dickinson's plea to "tell all the truth, but tell it slant," and journalism's [...]

Silent Cavalry: How Union Soldiers from Alabama Helped Sherman Burn Atlanta—and Then Got Written Out of History By Howell Raines  Crown/Penguin Random House, 2023 Hardcover, $36  Genre: History/Family History Reviewed by Richard Kent Evans The idea to write Silent Cavalry first occurred to Howell Raines when he was a boy in the 1950s. His grandmother, Martha Jane Best Raines, was relaying to her grandson tales of the “hillbilly rivalries” that occupied the closing decades of the nineteenth century. To Howell’s surprise, [...]

Confessions of an Ignorant Traveler: A Nomad’s Journey By Bob Corley I.B. Dog Publishing, 2022 Paperback: $9.25 Genre: Travel Memoir Reviewed by Edward Journey Bob Corley’s entertaining memoir, Confessions of an Ignorant Traveler: A Nomad’s Journey, might also be subtitled “Been There, Missed That.” Inspired by a journal the author kept during a free-wheeling backpacking trip to Europe and Israel in 1971-72 as a newly discharged army veteran, the early pages of the book detail all that Corley missed by not [...]

Collected Poems By Joseph Harrison Waywiser Press; 2024 Paper Reviewed by Steve Harrison (no relation) Poetry in the 21st century is very much alive, and here is a volume to prove it. Joseph Harrison’s Collected Poems, which will be generally available in April 2024, gathers poems from four of the poet’s previously published volumes: Someone Else’s Name (2003), Identity Theft (2008), Shakespeare’s Horse (2015), and Sometimes I Dream That I Am Not Walt Whitman (2020). Throughout the collection, Harrison delights in [...]

Built From the Fire: The Epic Story of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, America’s Black Wall Street By Victor Luckerson Random House; 2023 Hardcover: $30 Genre: Nonfiction Reviewed by Nancy Wilstach This doorstop book is really worth tackling, guaranteed to answer questions you were not even sure you had but about which you suddenly find yourself bursting with curiosity. Luckerson tackles the heart-rending story of America’s “Black Wall Street”—from its gritty origins to its heyday of glitz, glamor, and gold through its mindless [...]

Irene Teel – Psychologist, Social Worker, Fortune Teller, Witch  By Linda Rochester  48 HrBooks, 2022 Paperback: $15 Genre: Nonfiction  Reviewed by Jim Plott  For a time in the 1900s, a steady stream of vehicles, many with out-of-county and out-of-state automobile license plates, converged almost daily on the small Clay County community of Millerville. Their destination? Rena Teel.  Irene Vansandt Teel or “Miss Rena” spanned six decades with her “visionary” abilities helping people find lost children, livestock, and hunting dogs. She casually [...]

With the Devil’s Help: A True Story of Poverty, Mental Illness, and Murder By Neal Wooten Pegasus, 2022 Hardcover: $26.95 Genre: Memoir Reviewed by Cheryl Carpenter Sand Mountain, at the southern end of the inscrutable Appalachian region, is commonly associated with shape-note singers, snake handlers, and unrelenting poverty. Those who have made a home in the towns and coves of those mountains have had limited employment opportunities: coal mining, subsistence farming, working in textile mills. They are some of the ones [...]

Table Talk & Second Thoughts: A Memoir By Michael Martone Booth #19, 2024 Paper, Free with subscription to Booth magazine Reviewed by Danny Gamble Q: Does the world really need another literary memoir? A: Only if it comes from the pen of Michael Martone. But what is this text? Is it prose? Is it poetry? Is it prose poetry? Martone defines it as such. So be it. In Table Talk & Second Thoughts, Martone offers a book of memory, memory of [...]

The River Runs South By Audrey Ingram Alcove Press, 2023 Paper: $18.99 Genre: Fiction Reviewed by Lisa Harrison A rising star in a prestigious Washington, D.C., law firm confronts a personal tragedy plus familial and professional challenges that lead her to question her priorities, beliefs, and long-held animosity towards her hometown of Fairhope, Alabama, in The River Runs South, an entrancing and illuminating debut novel from Audrey Ingram. Camille Taylor’s seemingly perfect life as wife, mother, and law partner is upended [...]

A Hard Rain: America in the 1960s, Our Decade of Hope, Possibility, and Innocence Lost  By Frye Gaillard University of Georgia (NewSouth Books Imprint), 2023 Hardback: $35.00; Paperback: $29.95 Genre: American History Reviewed by Edward Journey I was seven years old in 1962 when the Cuban Missile Crisis happened. I did not quite understand what was going on, but I was aware of the somber tones of the newscasters, the hushed tones of the grown-ups, and the tension around me. In [...]

AWF is pleased to post Books in Brief, a compendium of titles recently received in the office. Full-length reviews will often be forthcoming, but we hope BIB provides a quick peek at new works in time for your next bookstore or library visit. So many good things to share!

Ghosts Over the Boiler: Voices from Alabama's Death Row by Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty Edited by Katie Owens-Murphy Vanderbilt University Press, 2023 Paperback, $24.95; Web PDF, $19.95 Reviewed by Holly Genovese   On January 25, 2024, Kenneth Smith was the first person to be executed via nitrogen hypoxia in the United States. Though his art and writing were not featured in the anthology, Kenny Smith (as he was known to his friends) is mentioned repeatedly in Ghosts Over the Boiler: Voices [...]

Crocodile Tears Didn’t Cause the Flood: Stories By Bradley Sides Montag Press, Feb. 2024 Paper: $14.95; eBook: $2.99 Genre: Short Fiction Reviewed by Edward Journey Something is always falling from the sky in Bradley Sides’s audacious collection of short stories, Crocodile Tears Didn’t Cause the Flood. Stars fall, ashes fall, snow falls, kites fall, robotic body parts fall, while gases sometimes leak into closed spaces. People disappear, or transform, and mythically proportioned monsters become proxies for those who are lost, abandoned [...]

Coming Home: A Roadmap from Fearful to Fully Alive By Layla Palmer Bethany House Publishers, 2023 Trade cloth: $29.99 Genre: Christian Living/Personal Growth Reviewed by Lisa Harrison If your New Year’s resolutions include embracing a cozier lifestyle, you will enjoy Coming Home: A Roadmap from Fearful to Fully Alive by popular decorating and lifestyle blogger Layla Palmer. Part scrapbook, part journal, part commonplace book, Coming Home is a compendium of self-care practices rooted in the author’s Alabama upbringing with its focus [...]

Odyssey of a Wandering Mind: The Strange Tale of Sara Mayfield, Author By Jennifer Horne The University of Alabama Press; 2024 Hardcover: $120.00; Paperback and eBook: $34.95 Genre: Biography, History Reviewed by Edward Journey Sara Mayfield (1905-1979), an Alabama writer, journalist, and inventor, grew up in a privileged Southern family, forged a career in writing and reporting, and spent seventeen years in a state mental institution. After being released from the mental hospital, at age sixty, she hit the ground running [...]

Circulation By Ken Autrey Dos Madres Press, 2023 Paperback: $21.00 Genre: Poetry Reviewed by Edward Journey In his poem “Mnemonist,” Ken Autrey evokes a man “whose mind / will not forget,” even as the words of the very poem he is writing “now flatten into precision, / holding me in relentless thrall.” That poem seems to be a fitting guidepost for Autrey’s new collection, Circulation, and its poems of memory, loss, and discovery. In a poem like “Expedition,” Autrey’s description of [...]

AWF is pleased to post Books in Brief, a compendium of titles recently received in the office. Full-length reviews will often be forthcoming, but we hope BIB provides a quick peek at new works in time for your next bookstore or library visit. So many good things to share! Bringing Home the White House: The Hidden History of Women Who Shaped the Presidency in the Twentieth Century By Melissa Estes Blair University of Georgia Press; 2023 In Bringing Home the White [...]

William Wright, Series Editor Taylor Byas, J. Bruce Fuller, and Adam Vines, Volume Editors TRP: The University Press of Sam Houston State University; 2023 Paperback: $29.95 Genre: Poetry Review by Ken Autrey  The recently published tenth volume of The Southern Poetry Anthology features poets of Alabama. This ambitious series began back in 2005 when Stephen Gardner and William Wright agreed to embark on a project to edit collections of poetry from each southern state. The initial volume appeared in 2007 and [...]