When, in 1932, Rudolph Fisher’s The Conjure-Man Dies was published, the journal Opportunity called the mystery “startling in its cleverness,” predicting the protagonist, a Harlem doctor with a detective’s eye, would reappear. That year, Agathie Christie spun her investigative hero, Hercule Poirot, into a seventh book and William Faulkner’s Light in August reflected the weight […]
Jeff Danielian is back with his fourth volume of poetry (to go along with four works of non-fiction geared toward educating youth), featuring his introduction, 56 poems and what he describes as “a short non-fiction adventure.” Danielian doesn’t pull any surprises with his writing style, keeping things humble and to the point. My favorite poem […]
Senior year of high school can be a defining moment in a person’s life — it’s both a jumpstart into the future and a further sculpting of the previous 17 years. In Mark Binder’s novel The Groston Rules, Isaac Cohen and his six friends who make up “Team Bombshelter” appeared to have a more memorable […]
My Best Friend’s Exorcism, by Grady Hendrix: When Abby’s best friend is possessed by a demon, she seeks to free her friend with the help of an evangelical Christian exorcist/ bodybuilder. Described as Beaches meets The Exorcist, this is as much a tribute to female friendship as it is a horrifying tale of demonic possession, […]
Dr. Joseph Chazan, like the character Billy Pilgrim in the novel Slaughterhouse-Five, is unstuck in time. The phenomenon is localized in a new graphic novel Chazan! Unfiltered, which takes a here-there-and-back-again approach to his personal and professional life story. Rhode Island’s own Dr. Chazan is a nephrologist (in layman’s terms, a kidney doctor), and while […]
Some people will feel safe venturing out to the old haunts of last summer, while others will continue to be cautious and stay close to home. Here are some book options by local authors to add to your summer reading list, regardless of where you plan to read them: Dispatches From the Fort, by Jeff […]
It’s a popular social media trend, lists of book recommendations dealing with anti-racism. You’re probably familiar with their contents, The Color of Law, White Fragility, Audre Lorde, Ta Neesi-Coates, with some fiction by Zora Neale Huston or Toni Morrison for good measure. I’m male and pale, so I can’t speak to whether a list of […]
There is no shortage of books about diseases through human history, but a few have become definitive classics. I’ve curated an admittedly highly opinionated selection of the best. Some books that arguably would have qualified have been left off simply because they are too old, and medicine changes so rapidly that it could be misleading […]
I discovered the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, while wandering through Atlas Obscura one evening. Vintage dioramas on a 1:12 scale? Of mysterious death scenes? By the first female police captain? I was on my way to Baltimore. Witnessing these tiny, unique worlds in all of their macabre glory, I met the curator and guardian […]
After coronavirus (COVID-19) concerns caused What Cheer Writers Club (whatcheerclub.org) to close its co-working space and podcasting studio in downtown PVD and to cancel in-person events beginning on Monday, March 16, program manager Jodie Noel Vinson contacted members to encourage the community of writers to support each other and continue to share their work through […]
