Review by Mack Hassler A beautifully-designed chapbook by Amy Hansen, Superior Stories is the product of workshopping for creative writers and chosen by chief judge Brian Gruley as the latest of this long series of chapbook winners. I have not reviewed any of the series previously, but the work of…
Reviewer: Sharon Brunner Dylan Bolander’s Until We Meow Again spun a web of supernatural heroism. The story took place in Texas, New Jersey, Marquette, Michigan, an Upper Peninsula of Michigan city (U.P.), rainbow bridges, and various realms outside of the Earth’s plane. In the story there was more than one…
Reviewer: Sharon Brunner Terri Martin’s Straw Horse was filled with intrigue, suspense and humor coupled with a blooming romance. The story took place in the Northwoods at a fictional town called Peshekee located in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (U.P.). The main characters in the book were Kat, Nikko, Sheriff…
Review by Mack Hassler One of my great literary heroes is Samuel Johnson, “…the style of a man who thinks with rigorous clarity and as the author of a dictionary has the whole language at his command.” (from the Preface to Johnson’s The History of Ressalas by Michael Lewis, professor…
Review by Mack Hassler Scott Fitzgerald published and sold to mass-market and glossy magazines that paid well in order to maintain the expensive life style that his debutante wife Zelda expected. As a major American fiction writer, he also published four financially successful novels. This substantial collection gathers 43 of…
Review by John Austin The extraordinary core of People of the Dune—a blistering, elaborate, and meticulous interrogation of the tension between modern property rights on the one hand and the obligations we owe to sacred places and the common good on the other—comes in the form of an unorthodox legal…
Review by Mack Hassler “ … upon this rock I will build my Church…. I will give you the keys to the Kingdom of heaven. Wharever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on on earth shall…
Reviewer Sharon Brunner Joshua Veith’s Dark Straits (Sudden Quiet: Book II) offered a haunting view of survival while various groups battle for regional control. The outbreak of deadly diseases led to the collapse of societal law and order. The various groups involved in the story were Rangers, Indigenous, Eco-elves, and…
Review by Sharon Brunner Raymond Luczak has captured the essence of the Deaf experience with all of its complications in his book The Language of Home: Stories, which took approximately 40 years to write. The time the stories took place varied from the 1970s to perhaps present time and it…
Review by Mack Hassler “The World was all before them , where to choose Their place of rest, and Providence their guide … hand in hand with wandering steps and slow Through Eden [they] took their solitary way.” …
Review by Sharon Brunner M.F. Erler has woven an intimate tale filled with despair, hope, and resiliency in her book An Irish Odyssey: from Despair to Hope. Maggie, Thomas, John and Mary were some of the main characters who struggled to succumb to the hardships placed upon them by the…
Review by Sharon Brunner Adam Dompierre’s Paint An Inch Thick revealed a madcap mystery in which the main character, Eddie London, encountered murder, greed, dark secrets and mind-boggling acts of deception. The story takes place in California during the 1980s. Other characters, who made multiple appearances throughout the book were…
Review by Mack Hassler “A doctor gave his patient six months to live, but he couldn’t pay his bill, so he gave him another six months.” — Henny Youngman, comic (1906-1998) Recent Yooper writers of humor that I have reviewed may or may not know Henny Youngman’s one-liners, but I…
Review by Mack Hassler “…the novel is a reflection upon its own nature” Jean-Paul Sartre, Search for a Method, 1963 Usually in good fiction there is an autobiographical impulse that may be seen in the mode of storytelling. In his later novels and stories, the great Romantic master of the…
Review by Mack Hassler “Therefore the land mourns… Together with the wild animals” Hosea 4:3 This first novel by Hinman has captured my interest so completely that I do not want to stop reading. Her editor at Superior Book Productions is Tyler Tichelaar, well-known for his own many books. In…
Review by John Austin About a hundred pages into Craig Brockman’s recent thriller Dead Silence, the reader and the complicated “hero” of the story meet the book’s most splendidly rendered character: Ma’ii, the trickster coyote spirit who eventually resolves the plot, albeit in confounding fashion, and not necessarily to everyone’s…
Reviewer: Sharon Brunner Evil forces trapped animate objects in a Misplaced Universe in M. Kelly Peach’s book The Adventures of ArgyLe Sock. The animate objects varied from articles of clothing and socks to metal items such as paper clips, scissors, and clipboards. These objects could speak, move around,d and have…
Reviewed by Sharon Brunner Mike Cronan tells a story of greed, corruption, and murder in his “Yooper Murders of Mackinac County: A Sheriff Joseph Francois LaVake Mystery.” The story takes place in St. Ignace and the surrounding areas, such as Moran and Brevort. At one time, the author lived in…
