Book Reviews

Eric and the Anti-Tankers  By Joe Taylor  Nat 1 Publishing, 2024  Paperback: $7.99  Genre: Dystopian Fiction, Satire  Reviewed by Suzanne Hudson   Full disclosure: Joe Taylor is one of my favorite publishers—and people—on the planet.  That said, I believe the synapses in Joe’s brain fire in dances of offbeat associations—one neuron to another—in a way unlike most human creatures. His imagination is otherworldly, “out there,” that whole “different drummer” vibe. This is not to convey madness, but maybe “mad scientist” (as he [...]

The Tears of Things  By Catherine Hamrick  Madville Publishing, 2025  Paperback: $19.95  Genre: Poetry  Reviewed by Jennifer Horne  Catherine Hamrick draws her book’s title from classical literature: a phrase in Homer’s Aeneid that, translated by Seamus Heaney, reads, “there are tears at the heart of things.” A more recent version of that sentiment occurs in the television show The Good Place, when the character Eleanor Shellstrop tells an immortal being horrified by the idea of death, “All humans are aware of [...]

The Witch’s Daughter by Orenda Fink Gallery Books, 2024 Paper: $28.99 Genre: Memoir Reviewed by Katharine Armbrester  A song can express seemingly inexpressible emotions, replete with yearning music and tidily wrapped up in three minutes. A powerful memoir can likewise provide a reader with the language needed to evaluate their own life and memories and give permission to say: “Wait, I was not the only one with this kind of childhood? And I have the right to write about it?” In [...]

The Filling Station   By Vanessa Miller  Thomas Nelson, 2025  Hardcover: $27.94, Paperback: $15.19  Genre: Historical fiction   Reviewed by Monique Jones  Two sisters’ lives are changed forever during the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre in Vanessa Miller’s The Filling Station.   The main characters, Margaret and Evelyn Justice, sisters and daughters to an influential man in Greenwood, Tulsa’s prosperous Black district, have their lives torn apart once the massacre breaks out, leaving them without a home and in search of their father. They find [...]

Two-Step Devil  By Jamie Quatro  Grove Press; 2024  Hardcover: $27.00  Genre: Fiction  Reviewed by Edward Journey  “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” That verse from Hebrews 11 became a refrain in my mind while reading Jamie Quatro’s metafiction novel, Two-Step Devil. A stream-of-consciousness passage of a troubled young girl’s travel brought Faulkner to mind. And a Christian theological discussion in play-form in what is essentially the “third act” of the novel made [...]

Heroes and Other Mortals: Stories of Our Better Angels  By Frye Gaillard  Foreword by Cynthia Tucker  NewSouth Books, 2025  Paperback: $29.95  Genre: Nonfiction Essays, History   Reviewed by Patricia Foster   What often calms my psyche in this troubled period of the American story is to sit quietly in my room on a comfortable sofa and read a book. Luckily, there is a new book by 2025 Alabama Writers Hall of Fame inductee Frye Gaillard – Heroes and Other Mortals: Stories of Our [...]

The Mystery of the Crooked Man  By Tom Spencer  Pushkin Vertigo, 2025  Paperback: $18.95  Genre: Mystery   Reviewed by Joe Cuhaj     Tom Spencer’s new book, The Mystery of the Crooked Man, is not your typical cozy mystery. It straddles the fine line between the cozy genre and the dark side of traditional mysteries brilliantly, a balancing act that makes this a read you can’t put down.  Our sleuth, Agatha Dorn, is an archivist extraordinaire. Or at least that is how she fancies [...]

A War of Sections: How Deep South Political Suppression Shaped Voting Rights in America  By Steve Suitts  NewSouth Books, an imprint of the University of Georgia Press, 2024  Hardcover: $120.95; Paperback: $36.95; eBook: $36.95  Genre: Alabama History  Reviewed by Edward Journey  In the early 2000s, I heard an interview with the U.S. Congressman from the Seventh District of Alabama, representing Alabama’s Black Belt. According to this congressman, if Alabama’s Black Belt counties were removed from the statistical data, Alabama would rank [...]

Untethered  By Angela Jackson-Brown  Harper Muse, 2024  Paper: $18.99  Genre: Historical Fiction  Reviewed by Charlotte C. Teague  The word tether is defined as “to tie or restrict.” As is Katia Daniels, who is tied to behaviors and expectations of herself and others that are restricting her from living her best life. Tackling themes connected to womanhood and the complexities of personal and family tensions, Alabama author Angela Jackson-Brown gives readers a protagonist in her newest novel, Untethered, struggling to break free [...]

Everything is Tuberculosis  By John Green   Crash Course Books, 2025  Hardcover: $28.00  Genre: Nonfiction, Science & Technology Reviewed by Stephen W. Russell, MD   On a pre-pandemic visit to a hospital in Sierra Lone, a bright-eyed boy named Henry gave novelist John Green a tour through the facility, an experience that would change the course of his writing career. “My son Henry was nine then,” Green wrote, “and this Henry looked about the same age.” But this Henry wasn’t nine. He was [...]

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.” [...]