Beware the bewitching book cover. That’s just one of the lessons of The Devil’s Oracle Tom F. Dodd’s deeply engrossing and often genuinely terrifying murder-mystery. The cover suggests monsters sorcery and catacombs—and indeed... Read More

William Snow would be supremely interesting to chat with over a nice dinner. or perhaps to take a cruise with out on the open sea. As presented by MacArthur he’s got a smart-as-a-whip mind yet hardly wears it on his sleeve. Snow is... Read More

Some of the terminologies once considered common regarding television are now quaint parlance of another era. Who for one still complains about their “rabbit ears”? Just imagine how Lawrence H. Rogers II who began his long and... Read More

To be reminded that the qualities of precision and exactitude can also be funny is a little bit like being surprised that Albert Einstein had a wicked sense of humor. So if there is something a little cool, a little calibrated, about... Read More

Writing a military memoir is like marching across a field of land mines without detection equipment. For one thing there’s the impulse to romanticize the hate-driven drama that brews armed conflict to begin with. Depending on when the... Read More

At a national optimism convention Marion S. Freed might not fit in—especially if she toted her elegantly constructed rarely predictable yet ultimately pessimistic collection of four short stories. However calculated however painstaking... Read More

Johnny Verliebt epitomizes the lost boy. Mildly antisocial perpetually detached from those around him attracted to men the central character in Mark Lee Kirchmeier’s three-part short novel is first described sitting in a tree... Read More