Book Reviews

Stubby’s War  By Diane R. Weber    Pint Bottle Press, 2023   Paperback: $10.99   Genre: Children’s Middle Grade  Review by Emma C. Fox  How does an orphaned mutt become one of the most famous dogs in history? Mostly, as Diane R. Weber shows, by loyally serving his comrades and doing the next right thing.  In Stubby's War, a wonderful book for middle-grade readers on up, Weber chronicles the adventures of the brave, beloved pit bull terrier who fought alongside his human companions in [...]

More Poems for Hungry Minds  By Highland Avenue Poets  Edited by Steve Coleman  Highland Avenue Poets Publishing, 2024  Paperback: $11.95  Genre: Poetry  Reviewed by Foster Dickson  My first thought on seeing the cover of More Poems for Hungry Minds was that this was a follow-up to an earlier publication. My hunch was correct. Here, the Highland Avenue Poets in Birmingham offer a third anthology from the group’s members, the second being Poems for Hungry Minds. This collection opens with a preface [...]

Villages  By Robert Inman  Livingston Press, 2025  Trade Paper: $19.95  Genre: Fiction   Reviewed by Frye Gaillard  In this taut and beautifully crafted novel, Alabama native Robert Inman weaves a tale of surprises and secrets in a small Southern town, revealed by the homecoming of 21-year-old Jonas Boulware from the terrors of war in Afghanistan.   Jonas suffers from PTSD, having returned to the familiar confines of Copernicus, a rural village where he now feels both welcome and estranged. As his story unfolds, [...]

The Tensaw River: Alabama’s Hidden Heritage Corridor  By Mike Bunn  Series: Alabama: The Forge of History  University of Alabama Press, 2024  Paper: $24.95  Genre: Nonfiction, Natural History, History   Reviewed by Bill Plott  Alabama: The Forge of History is a University of Alabama Press richly illustrated series of guidebooks to some of Alabama’s premier historical sites. Previous releases have featured such diverse topics as Moundville, Birmingham’s iron and steel industry, and Civil Rights heritage. Lavishly illustrated with more than 40 historical maps [...]

Deep Water, Dark Horizons  By Suzanne Hudson  Livingston Press, 2025  Paperback: $22.00  Genre: Short Fiction, Essays  Reviewed by Edward Journey  Sometimes, the stories in Deep Water, Dark Horizons, Suzanne Hudson’s “Truman Capote collection” of stories and essays, take place in raked dirt front yards and sleazy dive bar parking lots, probing the lower depths of desperation. Occasionally, the setting might be the well-appointed home of a social striver. In these somehow familiar stories, strivers are everywhere, each clawing, often recklessly, to [...]

Bent but Not Broken  By Mary Monroe  Dafina, 2025  Paperback: $28.00  Genre: Historical Fiction  Reviewed by Charlotte C. Teague  With Bent but Not Broken, New York Times bestselling author Mary Monroe has produced another intriguing work of fiction set in rural Alabama in the early 1900s. Tackling themes of domestic violence, racism, infidelity, and religious hypocrisy, Monroe crafts a plot full of deception, tragedy, and murder against a backdrop of the Great Depression. This is Monroe’s fifth book in the Lexington, [...]

We Don’t Push in Fairhope  By Leslie Anne Tarabella  Liberty Blue Press, 2024  Hardcover: $29.99  Genre: Nonfiction, Travel   Reviewed by Suzanne Hudson  If election season left you pessimistic and deflated by so much snark, name-calling, us-against-them angst, and mean spiritedness; if seemingly hopeless division has you considering anti-depressants—or maybe even electroshock therapy; if you have the urge to put your fingers in your ears to “la-la-la-la-la-la” away all the noise, then look no further than Leslie Anne Tarabella’s delightfully Southern-Comforty confection [...]

The Story She Left Behind  By Patti Callahan Henry  Atria Books, 2025  Genre: Fiction  Reviewed by Donna Estill  Inspired by the real-life disappearance of child prodigy writer Barbara Newhall Follett at age 25, Patti Callahan Henry’s The Story She Left Behind is a mystery, a tale of seemingly random connections that draws characters and stories together. The book opens in 1927 with Bronwyn Newcastle Fordham slipping away into the night, both literally and figuratively.  Bronwyn is a wife and mother who [...]

born 2 Black hippies  By Daryl Ramon Thomas, Jr.   Orange Box Media, 2024  Paper: $7.50  Genre: Poetry   Reviewed by Tania De’Shawn Russell   Daryl Ramon Thomas' debut poetry collection, born 2 Black hippies, serves as a powerful exploration of Black boyhood, masculinity, and the quest for self-actualization. Rooted in the realities of familial love, societal pressures, and personal growth, Thomas examines whether Black boys possess the necessary tools to craft their own triumphant narratives or if they are weighed down by a [...]

The Sky Was Once a Dark Blanket   By Kinsale Drake, Selected by Jacqueline Allen Trimble  The National Poetry Series  The University of Georgia Press, 2024  Paper: $19.95  Genre: Poetry  Reviewed by Kwoya Fagin Maples    With her remarkable debut, Kinsale Drake’s collection, selected by Jacqueline Allen Trimble, offers intimate poems rich in voice and emotional resonance. Drake's poems are aesthetically and musically pleasing, in turns somber, playful, reverent, and bold. The beauty and complex nature of Drake's work reflects her cultural [...]

Persephone’s Escalator  By Joe Taylor  Sley House Publishing, 2024  Paper: $16.99  Genre: Fiction, Supernatural  Reviewed by Nelson Sims  It’s not every day you pick up a novel that reads like American Horror Story: Coven sharing an elaborate feast with Stephen King, while dinner guests like Thomas Mann and James Joyce linger in the background. Joe Taylor’s Persephone’s Escalator is just that: a wild, hilariously unsettling ride into the supernatural, the existential, and the downright weird.  Taylor, a seasoned novelist with no [...]

What We Are Becoming: 2024 Southern Prize & State Fellowships for Literary Arts  By Various Authors; Introduction by John T. Edge  South Arts, Hub City Press; 2024  Softcover: $17.95  Genre: Short Fiction  Reviewed by Edward Journey    It is good news that South Arts, which has been supporting Southern arts in some form or another for almost half a century (it was previously Southern Arts Federation), now has a literary arts component under its far-reaching umbrella. It has kicked that new [...]

What Good Is Heaven  by Raye Hendrix  Texas Review Press, 2024  Paper: $21.95  Genre: Poetry  Reviewed by Jason Gordy Walker  Born in Birmingham and raised in Pinson, Alabama, Raye Hendrix, a poet and disability scholar, has penned a debut collection chock-full of Southern poems that buck against societal, familial, religious, and gender norms. Hendrix’s previous work includes two chapbooks—Every Journal is a Plague Journal and Fire Sermons, both published in 2021—plus short stories and nonfiction pieces online. Selected for The TRP [...]

Don’t Let the Devil Ride  By Ace Atkins  William Morrow, an imprint of Harper Collins; 2024  Hardcover: $30.00; Paperback: $18.99; eBook: $12.99  Genre: Crime Fiction  Reviewed by Edward Journey  If an international heist is planned and local thieves, headed up by an aging former drag queen named Miss Ricky, beat the foreigners to the loot by a couple of hours, the local denizens of Ace Atkins’s latest novel, Don’t Let the Devil Ride, might sum it up in one word: “Memphis.” [...]

Werewolf Hamlet  By Kerry Madden-Lunsford   Charlesbridge Moves, 2025  Hardcover: $18.99  Genre: Children’s Middle Grade Books,   Review by Emma C. Fox  Angus Gettlefinger has a problem—his big brother Liam might be a werewolf. What other explanation could there be for Liam’s increasing scruffiness, meanness, and sneaky nocturnal escapes from their Los Angeles home?  But Angus also has a brilliant plan. He and Liam share something in common: a passion for Golden Age Hollywood films and Shakespearean insults. And Angus’s fifth-grade “legacy project” [...]

Stinger  By Robert McCammon   Open Road Integrated Media, Inc., 2024  Paperback: $21.99  Genre: Science Fiction   Reviewed by Julian Jones  Last year’s Peacock original series, Teacup, became a must-watch for sci-fi horror fans. However, the inspiration behind the hit series is a masterpiece of science-fiction and horror that is engrossing and captivating. Written by New York Times Bestselling Author and Birmingham native Robert McCammon, Stinger is a third-person science-fiction thriller with the timeless theme of how extraterrestrial contact forces humans to overcome [...]

Leviathan: A Matthew Corbett Novel  By Robert McCammon  Lividian Publications, 2024  Hardcover: $39.95; eBook: $17.99  Genre: Historical Fiction, Horror, Suspense Thriller  Reviewed by Edward Journey  Leviathan, the tenth and final volume of Robert McCammon’s Matthew Corbett series, was recently released to much anticipation. The ebb and flow of Robert McCammon’s macabre and fascinating fiction is hard to resist. In the saga of Matthew Corbett novels and a volume of short fiction, McCammon follows the clever and charismatic “problem solver” Corbett, “the [...]

Long After We Are Gone  By Terah Shelton Harris  Sourcebooks, 2024  Paperback  Genre: Fiction  Reviewed by Charlotte C. Teague    The word “family” denotes strength, love, hope, memories, and often misunderstandings and pain. In Long After We Are Gone, author Terah Shelton Harris expounds on the meaning of this common word by sharing a story of four siblings struggling to battle their own personal demons against the backdrop of their father’s last words, “Don’t let the white man take the house.”   [...]

Once Upon a Magic City  By Salaam Green, Inaugural Poet Laureate, City of Birmingham  Cover Art by Micah Althea  An Initiative of the Poet Laureate of Birmingham, 2024  Paper and PDF: No Charge  Genre: Poetry  Reviewed by Michelle Dacus  As someone who has lived in nine of these United States, in well over a dozen cities—four in Alabama alone—I can attest that home is far more than the place we’re born or have roots in. A lot depends on what we [...]

The Carver and the Queen   By Emma C. Fox  Owl’s Nest Publishers, 2023  Hardcover: $20.99  Paperback: $12.99  Genre: Historical Fantasy, Young Adult  Reviewed by Lynn Lamere  Emma C. Fox’s The Carver and the Queen is reminiscent of a classic medieval fairy tale yet amplified with plot twists and intriguing characters.   Right away, fifteen-year-old orphan Petr finds himself facing a public whipping in a new village for losing three of the master’s cows while shepherding the herd. However, Petr is an exceptional boy, [...]

The Literary Legacy of Jimmy Carter: Essays on the President’s Books  Edited by Mark I. West and Frye Gaillard  Rowman and Littlefield, 2024  Hardback: $120.00; eBook: $50.00  Genre: Essays, History, Literary Criticism  Reviewed by Edward Journey  During the recent state funeral for President Jimmy Carter, his White House domestic policy advisor, Stu Eisenstat, declared his intention to “lay to rest the myth that his greatest achievements came only as a former president.” As we ponder the impressive and lasting accomplishments Carter [...]

The Life of Herod the Great  By Zora Neale Hurston and Introduction by Deborah G. Plant  Amistad, 2025  Hardback: $28.99  Genre: African American Fiction, Historical Fiction  Reviewed by Sharony Green  Zora Neale Hurston, the African American anthropologist-folklorist-novelist best known for being a core member of the Harlem Renaissance, was fixated on one thing in her final years: writing a book about Herod the Great. The general public, at last, has a chance to read her novel about this Biblical character. Scholar [...]

Blue Christmas Bones  By Carolyn Haines  Minotaur Books, 2024  Hardcover with dust jacket: $28.00  Genre: Fiction/Mystery & Detective/Cozy  Reviewed by Abby McGinn  Bestselling author Carolyn Haines offers a delightful novel full of Christmas and paranormal spirit in this recent addition to the Sarah Booth Delaney Mystery series.  Detective Sarah Booth Delaney, along with her agency partner Tinkie Bellchase Richmond and their friends Cece Dee Falcon and Millie Roberts, travel to Tupelo, Mississippi, for the annual Elvis Festival. The group of women [...]

Listen to the Land: Creating a Southern Woodland Garden  By Louise Agee Wrinkle  Design Books, 2024  Hardback: $40  Genre: Gardening, memoir  Reviewed by Jay Lamar  Garden books obsess me. Books on trees, hardy perennials, how to attract wildlife, planting in shade, planting in full sun, famous gardens of the British Isles, white gardens, and native plant gardens, to name a few, take up space on furniture and floors, at arms’ reach for a spark of inspiration or a moment’s meditation on [...]