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 […]
Either by choice or not, we all will be spending a lot of time indoors. Even after lying in bed contemplating our mortality, raiding the fridge and fighting over toilet paper, our schedules will still be open enough for us to take a look at our infinitely expanding watchlist. Art imitates life and a lot […]
After converting a 30-year-old Chevy G20 van into the Twenty Stories bookmobile in 2017, Alexa Trembly and Emory Harkins drove around Los Angeles sweltering through summer highs, some days struggling to sell as many as three books. While relocating in 2018 to Rhode Island, where Harkins grew up, their van broke down in the desert […]
During October 1918, the Providence Public Library closed for three weeks on account of the influenza pandemic, known as the Spanish flu. That year, the outbreak claimed the lives of 941 Providence residents, and another 1,365 people across Rhode Island. In The Providence Journal, the city’s health superintendent suggested: “Keep at arm’s length from everybody,” […]
