Good Things I Wish You is Manette Ansay‘s eighth book and arguably her most ambitious. Ansay originally conceived it as a historical novel, but it evolved into a story that, she says, “leans backwards out of the present world and into the 1860s.”
When an author establishes a stellar reputation for one kind of book, he takes a risk if he turns to new subjects, as Howard Bahr has done in Pelican Road. A former professor of English at Motlow State College in Tullahoma, Bahr acquired a slew of excellent reviews and awards for his first three novels, each featuring characters haunted by the horrors of the Civil War, particularly the vicious Battle of Franklin. So fans may be apprehensive to learn that his new book skips ahead seventy-five years and portrays not soldiers but men who rode the rails in the golden age of steam.
Caroline Gordon
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
368 pages
$15
“[Caroline Gordon] is great on getting things there so concretely that they can’t possibly escape. … That is real masterly doing, and nobody does it any better than Caroline. You walk through her stories like you are walking in a complete real world. And watch how the meaning comes from the things themselves and not from her imposing anything.”
Flannery O’Connor, from The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor
River Jordan
WaterBrook Press
352 pages
$13.99
“River Jordan’s Saints in Limbo is a compelling story of the mysteries of existence and, especially, the mysteries of the human heart.”
Ron Rash, author of Serena
Jennie Bentley
Berkley Prime Crime
309 pages
$6.99
“A great whodunit … Fans will enjoy this fine cozy.”
Midwest Book Review
Susan Gregg Gilmore
Three Rivers Press
304 pages
$14
“If I had to make a comparison, I would compare Susan Gregg Gilmore to Fannie Flagg, but Gilmore more than holds her own. This is an unusually engaging novel by a very fine writer who knows exactly what she is doing.”
Lee Smith, author of The Last Girls
