Jeffrey Penn May

From off-beat business ventures to run-down mobile homes and the struggle to “be better,” Mary Troy’s In the Sky Lord deftly entangles the lives of complex characters deeply rooted in the Midwest, near the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. These ten short stories feature waitresses, widows, erotic dancers, orphans, recurrent toy dolls, abandoned dogs, “potato lake” marine owners – a dizzying array of relatives, friends, and communities. The owner of Dew Drop Inn … Continue reading →

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In Tarot Life Lessons, Julia Gordon-Bramer deftly intertwines the complexities of Tarot with her personal experience. You don’t need to know anything about Tarot to enjoy this book, but you will inevitably come away with some basic understanding and a new appreciation for the multifaceted interplay between Tarot reader and client. Gordon-Bramer convincingly debunks the idea that Tarot is nothing more than a parlor game. When the cards are read with knowledge, honestly, empathy, and … Continue reading →

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While I had some difficulty aligning myself with Lankford’s style, and am no fan of copying and pasting Facebook pages into a book, overall this was a compelling read. Also, I have great admiration for her outdoor accomplishments. (I know how difficult and exhilarating they can be.) Trail of the Lost is a tale of often uplifting herculean efforts that provide a realistic warning about venturing into the wilderness. Share on Facebook

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While often repetitious, Max Fischer provides a searing commentary on the outsized influence of social media to benefit the bottom line of billionaires. It’s all about time spent online, the product, clicks for money. He makes a very convincing case that Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Google have had an alarmingly negative effect and asserts that tech giants, with no moral compass, ignored the glaring results of leading “regular” people into extremist “rabbit holes.” Share on … Continue reading →

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James Salter’s writing almost always makes me feel on the edge of eternal sadness, a biting realism that won’t go away until we all rest in peace. His characters all seem to suffer from a stoicism forged by war, a detachment that keeps them from fully living. In All That Is, his last novel, he delineates razor sharp corners that differentiate his generation, the required detachment taking its toll over a lifetime. Share on Facebook

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The writing is so exquisite in this family saga that occasionally I stopped reading just to admire a sentence. Some may think in narratively dense, but each word seems crafted for a specific purpose and the story itself floats on the force of Napolitano’s writing. Share on Facebook

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The Wager is a harrowing nonfiction tale of shipwreck and survival that reads like a great suspense novel and culminates in a very crisp, clear rendering of a murky resolution. Having read his previous books, The Lost City of Z and Killers of the Flower Moon, I anticipated this being a good story, but it surpasses the others. Highly recommend this book. Share on Facebook

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The Silent Patient was an easy, intriguing read, well-paced with significant twists. For me, the manipulation of narratives, especially the timeframe, didn’t adequately set up the ending; however, this book is well worth a read. Share on Facebook

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Most of this novel is filled with inane repetitive dialogue that does nothing to move the story forward, designed solely to show that his mother and others played an important role in World War II. And, by the way, they all had their menstrual cycles at the same time. He writes about women from the viewpoint of a man writing about women. He seemed to have an uncanny ability to make possibly true events sound … Continue reading →

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The Nazi Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill by Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch These brilliant historians dig through the rubble of the past trying to piece together “what really happened” in a probable assassination attempt of the Big Three allied leaders of WWII, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. The Nazi Conspiracy was a fast easy read, and many of the anecdotes were fascinating, especially Hitler’s rescue of Mussolini. However, the very … Continue reading →

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