Books

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Book Review: ‘When Katie Met Cassidy’ by Camille Perri

Block an afternoon out of your schedule, grab a copy of Camille Perri’s new novel, When Katie Met Cassidy, and get ready to laugh, cry, and rediscover your faith in romance. This romantic comedy follows twenty-something Katie—a born and bred Kentuckian now living in New York City whose hipster fiancé has just left her for her closest friend—and Cassidy, a suave native New Yorker—as they meet, resist each other, and eventually, succumb to love’s spell. Here’s the catch: Katie is straight (or is she?) Katie and Cassidy are both attorneys, and they meet as opposing counsel during a closing, but […]

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Book Review: ‘Read by Strangers: Stories’ by Philip Dean Walker

It’s challenging to write prose that’s truly unique without crossing the line into the unduly abstract and esoteric. To write something that challenges convention without confusing the reader. Making the reader think, but still entertaining and providing artistic sustenance. Philip Dean Walker fulfills the early promise of his debut collection of short fiction, At Danceteria and Other Stories, in this, his sophomore effort. Read by Strangers is another completely unique effort by Walker drawing on an imagination rich in fully fleshed, finely drawn characters. In this volume, however, he doesn’t draw them from times past, only a vivid present and, in […]

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Book Review: ‘How to Write an Autobiographical Novel’ by Alexander Chee

Fiction writers learn to expect certain questions: “Where do you get your ideas?” and “How much of your work is autobiographical?” Both questions aim for the same information: both probe the relationship between fiction and nonfiction, the created work and lived experience. In How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, Alexander Chee, author of two previous novels The Queen of the Night and Edinburgh, addresses this relationship in a series of sixteen essays. As the title suggests, the result is partly a “how to” guide–a book that sits comfortably alongside recent works on craft like Benjamin Percy’s Thrill Me: Essays on […]

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Book Review: ‘Wild Beauty’ by Anna-Marie McLemore

Each generation of Nomeolvides women have been blessed with incredible powers. For decades, this family has overseen the gorgeous garden estate of La Pradera, where their extraordinary powers enable them to perform wonders—they can bring fields of blossoms to life in just seconds. But with their powers comes a curse, a painful mystical legacy: if they fall too much in love, the subject of their adoration will disappear. This is the world of Wild Beauty, the new magical fable from Anna-Marie McLemore, award-winning author of When the Moon was Ours. The story follows Estrella and her cousins—Azaela, Calla, Dalia, and Glora—all of whom […]

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Book Review: ‘Bachelor Girl’ by Kim Van Alkemade

Bachelor Girl by Kim Van Alkemade is a deep dive into New York City history that spans decades. Pulled from a compelling headline over a century old, it follows fictional heiress Helen Winthrope after the death of her mysterious benefactor, who left her his entire estate, taking her from spinster and Bachelor Girl to millionaire. Colonel Ruppert—a real historical figure, most known for signing Babe Ruth to the Yankees in the early 20th Century—takes a keen interest in Helen as she’s in her early twenties; he’d always been a periphery figure in her life, after the death of Helen’s father […]

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Book Review: ‘Love at Cooper’s Creek’ by Missouri Vaun

Shaw Daily is soul searching. In her late thirties, she’s a successful, jet-setting marketing guru, who finds herself questioning her job and her life. While on a business trip to Tokyo, a new clarity forms and she announces she’s going home before her business meeting is completed. However, home is not in San Francisco, where she currently resides: it’s Cooper’s Creek, where she spent delightful summers with her grandparents. Kate Elkins has left her job as a first-grade teacher to move back to her mother’s house now that her ailing mom can’t be left alone for long periods of time. […]

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Book Review: ‘Vacationland’ by Susan X Meagher

Maine’s wilderness is part of Devin Savary’s DNA, bringing her joy in a way that nothing else can. She loves her isolated cabin without electricity or running water, and ice skating her way to work in the winter. Devin is also one of the best guides in the state for hiking, hunting, camping, or fishing trips, any time of year. She knows that the only way to survive harsh winter conditions is to respect them and be prepared, which is why she prefers to plan the excursions she’s hired to lead. Devin isn’t happy when she’s brought in at the […]

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Judith Katz and Hilary Zaid on Inheritance, Influence, and the State of the 21st Century Lesbian Novel

Judith Katz is the author of two published novels, The Escape Artist and Running Fiercely Toward a High Thin Sound, which won the 1992 Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Fiction and has been reissued in its 25th anniversary edition by Bywater Books. A 2017 Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Hilary Zaid is the author of numerous works of short fiction, including “My Triple X Valentine’s at the Far Point Senior Villas” (Day One) and the Pushcart-nominated “For Non-Speakers of the Mother Tongue” (The Tahoma Review). Her debut novel, Paper is White, was released in March from […]

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Book Review: ‘Winter Kept Us Warm’ by Anne Raeff

 She didn’t understand it, this love for him, but it was there, and if seven o’clock passed, then eight, then nine, the only way she could calm herself was to remember the bomb shelter, the waiting, the silence, the planes overhead, the buildings crashing down around her. I am safe, she repeated to herself, over and over again. —Winter Kept Us Warm We may never stop writing about post-war fragmentation. After all, it takes generations to get out of a single family, and we as writers are many families. And perhaps it’s even worth venturing to say that that is […]

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Book Review: ‘Getting Off’ by Erica Garza

Erica Garza is not the sex addict we’re used to seeing. She’s not Harvey Weinstein or Kevin Spacey, seemingly clinging to a label as an excuse for being a monster. She’s a decent person, a bisexual, a POC and a woman, with a problem that began in childhood. “From watching soft-core on cable TV at twelve, to downloading photos at a snail’s pace on AOL at fourteen, to tuning in to streaming sites with broadband forever after, my habit became more immediate, more intense, and harder to escape,” she writes. The book opens on an average night for her, the […]

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