Never Can Say Goodbye
On the topic of grief, Becca Stevens is wise, ruthless, mystified, and tender. Story after story supports the arc of her impossibly simple message: we are never alone. Love beats death every time.
Book Reviews
Hot Popcorn, Cold War
The 1950s was a scary time, full of drop drills, McCarthyism, and Soviet boasts. It was also the golden age of horror movies. Aliens, mutants, zombies, and werewolves filled theater screens. Coincidence? Not in Ronald Kidd‘s The Year of the Bomb, a young-adult novel that explores the angst of growing up surrounded by real and imagined horror.
A Tennessee Literary Lion Roars Again
Peter Taylor (1917-1994) is usually referred to as a writer of place; his settings are most often the lower Ohio Valley and, as he called it, “the long green hinterland that is Tennessee.” But Taylor’s themes—change, evil, and political and private morality—are universal. A new edition of The Collected Stories of Peter Taylor, first published in 1969, reminds us of the author’s position in the pantheon of American short story writers and makes a powerful argument for his continued relevance in a changing world where relationships, both to place and to people, are more complex than they seem.
In Praise of Doubt
David Dark—a schoolteacher, scholar and evangelical gadfly—urges his readers to question everything, including the whole of orthodox religion and even their belief in God. Consequently, although his new book was clearly conceived with a Christian audience in mind, Dark’s thoughtful iconoclasm invites anyone to, as he puts it, “submit everything we’re up to, at work and at play, to the discipline of sacred questioning.”
Good Clean Crime
Michael Sims is a longtime fan of early crime fiction, with a particular taste for caper stories told from the criminal’s point of view. His new book features a dozen colorful miscreants, including little-known creations by O. Henry and Sinclair Lewis, along with background material and author profiles.
