Briefly Noted

“In Francine Howard’s stunning debut, Page from a Tennessee Journal, rural Tennessee of 1913 remains an unforgiving place for two couples—one black, the other white—who stumble against the rigid boundaries separating their worlds. When white farmer Alexander McNaughton falters into forbidden love with Annalaura Welles he discovers that he has much more to fear than the wrath of her returning gun-toting husband. Alexander’s wife—flinty and pragmatic Eula Mae—wages her own battle against the stoicism demanded of white women of her time and social standing. Former sharecropper John Welles, flush with cash from his year’s sojourn working the poker tables in ‘the second best colored whorehouse in all of Nashville,’ wrestles with his devils as he struggles to assign blame for his wife’s relationship with a white man. The convergence of the lives and choices of these fascinating characters—made from fear, pride, determination, spite, nobility and revenge—leads to a heart-pounding and heartbreaking climax that feels at once original, audacious and inevitable.”

“[McInerney’s] talent for capturing the nuances and idiosyncrasies of our culture is even more powerful evident in Story of My Life … Underneath Alison’s hip, party-girl exterior and flippant vernacular is McInerney’s disturbing depiction or a young woman caught in the traumatic reality of her times.”

“When a serial killer tortures, dismembers, and dumps eight women in eight weeks in Tennessee and adjacent states, Noah Bishop, head of the FBI’s Special Crimes Unit, gets on the case, along with Noah’s touch-telepath and seer wife, Miranda, and special agent Hollis Templeton, a profiler-in-training and medium who can self-heal and see auras. Hollis and special investigator Diana Brisco, also a medium and healer, travel to the gray time, a corridor between life and death where a young spirit, Brooke, helps them connect the killings to a past threat. Series fans and newcomers alike will appreciate the appendixes, which include bios of Special Crime Unit agents and definitions of their various paranormal abilities.”