Flaming June – Lord Frederic Leighton Kissed by Venus is the only magazine I ever take time to read, from it’s always-arresting front cover through to the back, where Botticelli’s delectable Venus suggestively anticpates the next issue.  Front to back, every contribution merits praise, far too much to post in a comment box. “Flaming June” – A perfectly prescient cover for this late, burning-summer release. …

I knew there had to be good, independently published, literary fiction somewhere out there in cyberspace. I found it in Thea Atkinson! The novel opens in Faulknerian style with a dying father, murder of crows, the taking of a sadistic lover, the main character’s return home, and the lover then lying dead on the compost heap – all eerie foreshadowing …

I don’t mind romance in a novel but I don’t like romance novels. Unless the novel is Tracey Richardson’s No Rules of Engagement. In a military hospital at Kandahar Air Force Base, we are introduced to the eponymous Major Logan Sharp, a keen, confident doctor, unflappable in the most urgent of situations. Until photojournalist Jillian Knight arrives at KAF on a …

You’ve all heard the joke about what lesbians do on their second date, right? Buy wedding rings? So help me out. Is this true?   I keep reading lesbian novels in which the protagonist and new love interest fall IMMEDIATELY and MADLY in love. Is that how it works in real life, or is this just a literary device? I …

First novel I’ve read of Bradshaw’s. Her protagonist, Rainey Bell, is an FBI Special Agent on whom Bradshaw clearly did her homework. Having written mysteries/police procedurals I know it’s a fine line between too much professional detail and not enough to sound authentic. Bradshaw gets it just right. Her writing is sound and well-paced. I read this on my Nook …

Fascinating. 73°F at twelve noon. In July. Average temperature for the middle of July, here, is about 107°F. Chickens scratching in the dirt, hammock swinging in the breeze, “Credo’s Hope” waiting on my Nook…what’s a girl to do? Seems a waste of a gorgeous, god-given day to lock myself inside the house and stare at a computer. Sounds unnatural. Don’t writer’s …

Girl cops, plenty of bad guys, handsome hunks and sexy ladies (including a mysterious female Mafia boss), lots of food, and dogs. What more could you want out of a police procedural? A tight plot, lots of good-natured humor, fast pace, and a satisfying end? “Credo’s Hope” delivers it all. An ex-cop, Holt is a PG-13, female Wambaugh. The first …

 I’m getting restless. Got a Frank brewing in my brain. Something spooky…I want to be a writer for a while, not just a self-promoter.   Feels like there’s not enough time to do both. And work fulltime. And have a homelife. And a home. And social life. And community obligations. Not to mention reading, playing with the dogs, exercising, cooking… No wonder …

England. 1690. A woman of the land, a healer, tells her daughter, “Go! North-west. Before the men come!” On a stolen mare the child flees to the Scottish Highlands, a lawless, wild land of rogues and reivers, where maybe Corrag, a “witch” won’t be noticed. For a time she is not. Until the day soldiers come in coats red like …

Salem West at Rainbow Reader recommended I try “Appalachian Justice.” Thank you, Salem! It was love at first paragraph. My favorite books as a kid were My Side of the Mountain (Puffin Modern Classics) and Island of the Blue Dolphins (Illustrated) so how could I not be immediately drawn to Billy Mae’s Appalachian hermitage? Though the setting grabbed me right …