Book Reviews

Slaughterhouse for Old Wives’ Tales  By Hannah V. Warren  Sundress Publications, 2024   Paper: 16.00  Genre:  poetry, speculative fiction  Reviewed by Laura Secord    Hannah V. Warren’s Slaughterhouse for Old Wives' Tales, winner of the 2024 Whirling Prize, is speculative poetry at its richest. Spanning millennia, Warren's book uses lyricism, research, and imagination to create a brave, beautiful, and disturbing connection through time.    In her “note to the reader,” Warren asks us, “What do you invent when your bulbous flesh melts deep into swamp water?” Then she takes us on a journey through time, evolution, extinction, and transformation. Sci-fi and paleontology fans will latch onto this book in identification.    Voiced by an elementary-aged girl [...]

Junie  By Erin Crosby Eckstine  Ballantine Books, 2025   Hardcover: $30.00    Genre: Historical Fiction /Coming of Age/Magical Realism   Reviewed by Dr. Candice N. Hale  As William Faulkner reminds us, “The past is never dead. It's not even past.” His enduring truth reverberates throughout Erin Crosby Eckstine’s powerful debut novel, Junie, urging readers to open themselves up to both unlearning and understanding. From Eckstine’s compelling storytelling, we learn how sixteen-year-old Junie navigates trauma, grief, and loss during her enslavement  in pre-Civil War Alabama. Let me be clear, Junie is more than a [...]

Everybody Wants to Rule the World   By Ace Atkins  William Morrow Large Print, 2025  Hardcover: $27.95  Genre: Crime, Thriller, Suspense  Reviewed by Lesa Carnes Shaul   When I interviewed Ace Atkins for First Draft in August of this year, he reflected on what it means to be a Southern writer in the twenty-first century:  I think the thing about being a Southern writer is that we’re always steeped in this idea that when you write about the South, it has to be the South of Flannery O’Connor and [...]

Unmasking Authentic Black Female Identity: The Power of Self-Defining and Shattering Stereotypes  By Idrissa N. Snider   Lexington Books, 2024  Hardback: $100  Genre: Nonfiction  ISBN: 978-1-66695-348-0  Reviewed by Charlotte C. Teague    In her new book, Unmasking Authentic Black Female Identity: The Power of Self-Defining and Shattering Stereotypes, womanist scholar Idrissa Snider offers a poignant perspective on harmful, negative, and controversial stereotypes that persist about Black women in American culture. Snider argues that through dynamic self-definition, Black women can triumph over external forces and reclaim their authentic selves.   Using Sojourner Truth as a symbol of strong Black women’s pursuit of survival, Snider shares a personal reflection and then elaborates on how Black women must [...]

The Book of Outcasts  By Matt Nagin  Strange Rebel Press, 2024  Paper: $14.99  Genre: Fiction  Reviewed by Nelson Sims  Matt Nagin’s The Book of Outcasts is a strange little collection of strange little stories. It’s bleak. It’s bone-dry. But it’s weirdly and sneakily absurd. These are stories about men on the outskirts of society, but not in the cool, misunderstood genius kind of way. No, these are the quietly unraveling types – men who drift through life like discarded receipts, wrinkled and unread. They are not, as one reviewer suggested, “behaving badly” so much as they are existing badly. And Nagin, to his credit, [...]

A Field Guide to North American Trees  by Garrett Ashley  Good Printed Things & Loblolly Press, 2025  Paper: $14.00  Genre: Poetry  Reviewed by Jason Gordy Walker  Alabama’s forests, and the many individual trees that constitute them—pine, oak, hickory, cottonwood, magnolia, birch, sycamore, and on and on—offer a colorful splendor stretching over 70 percent of the state. We ought to revere such a plethora of wooden beings, if not for their upright personalities than for their gift of sweet oxygen, a resource [...]

If I Could Choose a Best Day: Poems of Possibility   By Charles Waters and Irene Latham, Illustrated by Olivia Sua  Candlewick, 2025  Hardcover: $19.99  Genre: Poetry, Children’s Books  Reviewed by Barbara Barcellona Smith    Irene Latham and Charles Waters are back with another inspiring anthology of children’s poetry with If I Could Choose a Best Day: Poems of Possibility. No ifs, ands, or buts about it, this imaginative collection of thirty-one galvanizing poems motivates children to “imagine the possibilities the gift [...]

Every Speck: The Mythology of a Southern Poet, A Memoir in Poetry and Prose  By Bonnie Roberts   Archway Publishing, 2025   Paper $30.99, E-Book $3.99   Mixed Genre: Memoir, Poetry   Reviewed by Harry Moore  Henry James advised young writers, “Be one on whom nothing is lost.” Distinguished poet, teacher, publisher, and mentor Bonnie Roberts is not young—in her seventies—but her memoir Every Speck: The Mythology of a Southern Poet models a life of sustained attention and deep memory. In a kind of [...]

The Old Breed… The Complete Story Revealed  By W. Henry Sledge  Knox Press; 2025  Hardcover: $35.00  Genre: World War II History, Memoir  Reviewed by Edward Journey    Eugene Sledge’s With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa (1981) has been called “one of the finest memoirs to emerge from any war” and has been compared to The Red Badge of Courage and All Quiet on the Western Front. Sledge, a Mobile native, worked on the book as a young professor at [...]

My Perfect Husband  By Georgina Cross   Bookouture, 2025   Trade paper: $10.99  Genre: Psychological thriller  Reviewed by Lisa Harrison     With her newest release, My Perfect Husband, Georgina Cross cements her place as a must-read emerging new author of psychological thrillers. With the tag line “My sister is dead. Did I marry her killer?” Cross crafts a mesmerizing literary bolero, gradually increasing the pace, details, and clues. The mystery begins amid the quotidian details of a happily married couple’s charming life in [...]

Secret Histories: A New Era in Constance Fenimore Woolson Scholarship Edited by Kathleen Diffley, Caroline Gebhard, and Cheryl Torsney University of Georgia Press, 2025 Paper: $29.95 Genre: Essays Reviewed by Katharine Armbrester Secret Histories: A New Era in Constance Fenimore Woolson Scholarship is a much-needed collection of critical essays about the overlooked Victorian writer and contains a fascinating essay by Alabama’s own Dr. Caroline Gebhard. If you are accustomed to reading literary nonfiction or biographies, “woman in the shadow of a [...]

Chase Harlem   By Elise Burke Brown   Rising Action, 2025  Trade Paperback: $17.99  Genre: Mystery & Detective   Reviewed by Tom Spencer   Joanna Harlem is a private investigator in New Orleans, although she tells us, “my friends call me Chase” and “my clients [...] call me P.I. Harlem.” This strikes me as a bit weird. I’ve read a lot of mysteries, but I’ve never read one where “P.I.” is used as an honorific before – though her client gamely employs it throughout, saying [...]

An Apprehension of Splendor: A Biography in Photographs of F. Scott Fitzgerald and His Family   By Shawn Sudia-Skehan  University of Alabama Press, 2025  Hardcover, $49.95  Genre:   Arts & Photography  Photo Essays  Reviewed by Alaina M. Doten, Ph.D.    An Apprehension of Splendor: A Biography in Photographs of F. Scott Fitzgerald and His Family, by Shawn Sudia-Skehan, is a new visual journey into the lives of F. Scott Fitzgerald, his wife Zelda, and their daughter, Scottie. Published in 2025 by the University [...]

Bones at the Crossroads  By LaDarrion Williams  Penguin Random House, 2025  Hardback: $20.99  Genre: Contemporary Fantasy / Young Adult  Reviewed by Dr. Candice N. Hale  In Bones at the Crossroads, the rousing sequel to Blood at the Root, LaDarrion Williams brings readers back to Caiman University for a story wielding  more secrets and betrayals than Malik Barron can handle. Although Malik is continuing his studies as a budding Black conjurer at his HBCU, he cannot release the abandonment, hurt, and trauma [...]

Smaller Versions  By Katherine D. Perry   Bottlecap Press, 2024  Chapbook: $10.00  Reviewed by H. M. Cotton  Katherine D. Perry, who previously published Long Alabama Summer in 2017, returns with a power-packed chapbook, Smaller Versions, from Bottlecap Press. In 16 poems, she leads readers through a variety of voices that speak of hardships, from hurricanes and COVID-19 to girlhood in the South. The running line through each encapsulation is persistence—a way to make it through when times get tough, as in “On [...]

A Wallflower’s Guide to Viscounts and Vice  By Manda Collins   Forever, 2025  Trade Paperback: $17.99  Genre: Historical Romance, Mystery   Reviewed by Lisa Harrison  It is a truth universally acknowledged that a peer in want of a great fortune must be in need of a wealthy bride. Thus, in 1874, William, Viscount Gilford, finds himself in a bit of a pickle. The steward of the estate Gilford recently inherited has absconded with the bulk of the money, and William’s man of business [...]

Another Land of My Body  By Rodney Terich Leonard   Four Way Books, 2024  Paperback: $17.95  Genre: Poetry, Black and African American Poetry,  LGBTQ+ Poetry  Reviewed by Jason McCall     To live in Alabama is to live with death as a next-door neighbor. Among the states, only West Virginia and Mississippi rank below Alabama in life expectancy, and only Arkansas and Mississippi have higher infant mortality rates. The statistics for Alabama relating to standards like poverty and healthcare are similarly bleak. These [...]

The Education of Asa Paxton  By Gary S. Minder  RubyeGay Publishing, 2025  Paperback: $14.95  Genre: Historical Fiction, Young Adult Fiction   Reviewed by Carrie Dalby  “Don’t judge a book by its cover” is good advice to remember when it comes to The Education of Asa Paxton. What looks like a sweet coming-of-age historical novel is laced with enough Southern Gothic atmosphere to make William Faulkner proud. While the story starts off in 1932 Chicago with a twelve-year-old Asa Paxton and his family, [...]

Miracle Strip   By Matthew Layne   Brick Road Poetry Press, 2023  Paperback: $16.95  Genre: Poetry   Reviewed by Jason Gordy Walker  Matthew Layne’s poetry has received much recognition in the Alabama literary scene since the release of Miracle Strip, his debut collection totaling fifty-seven poems, in 2023. The Alabama State Poetry Society named the collection its 2024 Book of the Year, and Layne also received the 2025 Alabama Author Award for Poetry from the Alabama Library Association. A founding member of the controversial [...]

Something to Look Forward To  By Fannie Flagg  Random House, 2025  Hardcover, $29  Genre: Short fiction  Reviewed by Jay Lamar   What do Velma Ruth Vanderhoff, a lifelong resident of Cottonwood, KS, and a “sweet-looking apple dumpling of a lady,” and Special Agent William Frawley, recently deployed to Earth by his boss, the “chief galactic observer on Planet 8676,” have in common? Well, for one thing, they both spring from the vivid imagination of one of Alabama’s most beloved writers, Fannie Flagg. [...]

Poisoning the Well: How Forever Chemicals Contaminated America  By Sharon Udasin and Rachel Frazin  Island Press, 2025  Hardcover: $32.00  Genre: Nonfiction, Environmental Policy, Nature Conservation   Reviewed by Stephen W. Russell   For those who call Alabama home, state pride runs deep. Even when Alabama folk cannot agree on their football affiliations or their favorite barbecue, the Southern sense of home binds those born here. But in the new book, Poisoning the Well: How Forever Chemicals Contaminated America, investigative reporters Sharon Udasin and [...]

The Tiger and the Cage: A Memoir of a Body in Crisis  By Emma Bolden   Soft Skull Press, 2022  Paperback: $17.95  Genre: Memoir  Reviewed by Sarah Cheshire  In 1900, a teenage Viennese girl, known pseudonymously as “Dora,” was sent by her father to see Dr. Sigmund Freud after experiencing years of “unilateral headaches… [resulting] from attacks of nervous coughing,” which had been written off by her family physician as “purely nervous.”1 After months of psychoanalysis, including a deep dive into Dora’s [...]

Blessings and Disasters: A Story of Alabama   By Alexis Okeowo   Henry Holt and Co., 2025    Hardcover: $28.99   Genre: Memoir   Reviewed by Edward Journey     In June, I read an article titled “What Happened to the Women of #MeToo?” by Alexis Okeowo, a New Yorker staff writer. It focuses on Tina Johnson, one of the Alabama women who accused Judge Roy Moore of sexual assault during his 2017 U.S. Senate campaign. It was one of those stories that I found myself [...]

My Heresies  By Alina Stefanescu  Sarabande Books, 2025  Paperback: $17.95  Genre: Poetry  Reviewed by Laura Secord  Alina Stefanescu's collection, My Heresies, is wrapped with birds and sky and filled with loss, accusations, beauty, and betrayal. It broke my heart and left me returning again and again for a deeper understanding of its questions and its answers.  Stefanescu’s initial poem, “Byline, Be Sky,” is a teaser for her telling through poetic forms and musical language:  Through bears and blackbirds, under linden trees [...]