Book of the Day Roundup: June 2-6, 2025
Family and Other Calamities
Leslie Gray Streeter
Lake Union Publishing
Softcover $16.99 (255pp)
978-1-66252-762-3
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop)
Family, loyalty, and forgiveness are at the center of Leslie Gray Streeter’s humorous novel Family and Other Calamities.
Dawn, a self-made Black journalist, is the founder of the online entertainment publication Glitter. Her hard work as a publication entrepreneur pays off when she scores an interview with musical diva Miss Vivi, bringing Glitter to the next level.
After her interview with Miss Vivi, Dawn travels to her native Baltimore, carrying the urn with the ashes of her adored late husband, Dale, with her for final interment, though it’s been years since his death. On the plane, Dawn spots Joe, who sabotaged her career by stealing her story when they were both starting out as beat reporters. When Dawn learns that Joe is prepared to announce that he is turning the stolen story into a Hollywood movie, she crashes Joe’s press conference and accuses him of theft. Joe retaliates and sues Dawn for slander.
The fight is on. Dawn teams up with her sister Tonya, who is a whistle-blower; with her brother-in-law, Brent, a lawyer; and with Bria, a scrappy reporter with questionable ethics. They work to set the record straight and bring Joe down. Also rallying around Dawn are her mother, her aunts, and Miss Vivi.
The narrative is unpredictable and the prose is distinctive, making use of entertaining gossip throughout. Despite her feminism, though, Dawn’s reactions to women are often negative. She hates Bria; she dislikes her sister-in-law; and she despises Susan, a former colleague. She also adores Joe until he betrays her, and her relationship with Eddie, her colleague and mentor, sparks with sexual tension.
Moving with speed toward a satisfying ending, Family and Other Calamities is an entertaining novel about family, self-love, and professional integrity.
ERIKA HARLITZ KERN (April 21, 2025)
The Rainbow Sheep
David Hayward
Beaming Books
Hardcover $17.99 (32pp)
978-1-5064-9836-2
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop)
A sheep, Rainbow, brings challenge and change to a conformist flock in this whimsical picture book about delighting in differences. Ricky has always wanted to play and have fun, but the rest of her flock discourages being different. When Rainbow arrives, Ricky finds the courage to go against the grain and be herself; in time, the rest of the flock breaks from the herd, too. Nods to the rainbow and transgender pride flags complete this warmhearted picture book.
DANIELLE BALLANTYNE (April 21, 2025)
The Chosen Queen
A Novel of the Pendragon Prophecy
Sam Davey
Diversion Books
Hardcover $28.99 (352pp)
979-889515039-9
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop)
Attending to gaps in the Arthurian legends with care, Sam Davey’s captivating fantasy novel The Chosen Queen delves into the dangerous web of politics, religion, and magic that led to the birth of King Arthur.
Through the machinations of Druid and royal advisor Merlin and Vivian, the High Priestess of Avalon, King Uther is convinced that Igraine must become his wife. But Igraine is already married to Duke Gorlois and is the mother of his two daughters, Morguase and Morgan. The resultant war between Uther and his once-trusted warlord brings to the fore the growing divide between those who follow the old religion of the goddess and those who follow a new religion, Christianity.
Elegant and intricate, the novel fills a recent void for feminist fantasy audiences, fleshing out Igraine beyond her traditional role as a mere vessel for Arthur’s birth and refreshing the timeless atmosphere of Tintagel with everyday details. Herein, Igraine’s loyalties are divided, but she still remains focused on leading her people and deciding her own destiny. Though her husband begins to follow Christianity, she insists on observing the goddess traditions she was brought up within. And when Vivian and Merlin tell her that it is prophesied that she marry Uther, she refuses, choosing to follow her own heart and mind and fighting to control her own narrative. In addition, both Morgause and Morgan play significant roles in the story; they are fleshed out via details of their activities prior to their time with Arthur. Here and elsewhere, the book adds dimension to the legends.
The compelling historical fantasy novel The Chosen Queen breathes life into an overlooked figure of Arthurian legend, giving her dimension and personality.
CATHERINE THURESON (April 21, 2025)
On Book Banning
Or, How the New Censorship Consensus Trivializes Art and Undermines Democracy
Ira Wells
Biblioasis
Softcover $15.95 (184pp)
978-1-77196-663-4
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop)
Ira Wells’s searing political science text On Book Banning examines the origins and impact of literary censorship.
The book builds upon the ideals of liberal democracy and identifies literary censorship as a threat to intellectual freedom and free speech. It includes a succinct, sweeping history of book banning, analyzes the rise of contemporary book bans, and argues that censorship of any kind harms students the most. The freedom to read hostile, uncomfortable, or antidemocratic literature is itself deemed democratic.
To build this argument, the book dispels myths and misunderstandings surrounding the nature of book banning, the purpose of art, and the meaning of critical race theory (CRT). Equity-based book banners might argue against the universality of “classic” literature, for example; Wells argues that minority students can benefit from classic narratives and themes. Conservative book banners might wish to protect children from “pornography”; Wells notes that books with sexual or queer content aren’t salacious by nature. Both progressive and conservative camps are indicted:
Both ignore the cyclical nature of censorship, presuming that the new censorship apparatus won’t eventually come for them. They deceive themselves.
Contextualized by footnotes and supported by references, the book quotes authors including Ursula K. Le Guin, Angie Thomas, and C. S. Lewis; politicians including Ron DeSantis, Steve Bannon, and Benjamin Franklin; organizations including PEN America and Moms for Liberty; and legal cases including United States v. One Book Called Ulysses.
A progressive library audit in Wells’s school district frames the book and illustrates its arguments, but it repeats in the introduction and first chapter. Likewise, some of the book’s tangents are underexplored, as with a detour into Sigmund Freud’s theory of psychic censorship and the purpose of the public library. Still, On Book Banning is an expert assessment of literary censorship and a strong rebuttal to contemporary book bans.
HANNAH PEARSON (April 21, 2025)
Not Long Ago Persons Found
J. Richard Osborn
Bellevue Literary Press
Softcover $17.99 (176pp)
978-1-954276-40-6
Buy: Local Bookstore (Bookshop)
A forensic anthropologist and her partner travel abroad in search of the truth behind a boy’s brutal murder in the feverish dystopian novel Not Long Ago Persons Found.
A seven-year-old boy’s torso is found in a city’s river with foreign pollen in his lungs and the remnants of his last meal still in his stomach. His head is found elsewhere. Tasked with determining how he died, the scientist and her partner travel south, to a nation long riven by political violence. At first, they take comfort in thinking that their home is better, but evidence of collusion and similarities between powerful people in both lands are soon revealed. The dangers the boy faced now stalk the couple, too.
Noting that “our civilization is sitting on trenches and trenches of murdered people,” the narrator catalogs his experiences abroad with the distrustful woman whom he calls his wife. Back home after a harrowing escape, they report to their shadowy handler in his Office of Circumlocution—a backdoor designation that changes to reflect their country’s shift toward fascism. As the anthropologist insists on the truth, the couple become personae non gratae to the institutions that once claimed them. They are shoved out of back doors and pushed toward uncertain futures. The narrator realizes that “The police know nothing … When they look at the river, they see only water. They don’t see the old events, rising up, the unsatisfied.” Nor do he and his partner fully comprehend what’s pursuing them until it’s almost too late.
Long bonds fracture as national façades crumble and entrenched cruelties are revealed in the startling dystopian novel Not Long Ago Persons Found.
MICHELLE ANNE SCHINGLER (April 21, 2025)
Kathy Young
