Noir Bar: Cocktails Inspired by the World of Film Noir by Eddie Muller

Running Press Review by George Yatchisin Not every book can help you fill your Nick and Nora coupes and your evening’s film-watching playlist, but Noir Bar does both with elan.…

Biography of X by Catherine Lacey

Farrar Straus and Giroux Review by Jinny Webber “There will be time, there will be time / to prepare to meet the faces that you meet,” but what a different…

The Wonder Paradox: Embracing the Weirdness of Existence and the Poetry of Our Lives by Jennifer Michael Hecht

Farrar, Straus & Giroux Review by George Yatchisin It’s not every self-helpish book that asks you to create your own poetry anthology, but The Wonder Paradox is sui generis. As…

A Place in the World by Frances Mayes

Crown Review by Linda Lappin In her new memoir,  A Place in the World: Finding the Meaning of Home,  Frances Mayes, now in her eighties, looks back on the houses,…

The Guest Lecture by Martin Riker

Black Cat Review by Walter Cummins In its opening section Martin Riker’s The Guest Lecture appears to be a critical study in disguise, a consideration of John Maynard Keynes based…

Bored in Arcane Cursive Under Lodgepole Bark by H. L. Hix

Middle Creek Review by Walter Cummins In yet another of life’s serendipitous coincidences I happened to read Mark Hillringhouse’s 1982 interview with Howard Moss, the New Yorker’s long-time poetry editor,…

Putting Word to Something for Which There Are No Words: An Interview with Cynthia Hogue

H. L. Hix In this conversation, H. L. Hix asks after poet Cynthia Hogue’s most recent collections, Contain (Tram Editions, 2022) and instead, it is dark (Red Hen, 2023). H.…

General Release from the Beginning of the World by Donna Spruijt-Metz

Parlor Review by Catherine Abbey Hodges I can’t remember when I last read a book of poems that I’d call suspenseful. Donna Spruijt-Metz’s new poetry collection, General Release from the…

Coolest American Stories 2023 Edited by Mark Wish and Elizabeth Coffey

Coolest Stories Press Review by Jack Smith Coolest American Stories 2023 is the second in a series of anthologized short stories, edited by Mark Wish and Elizabeth Coffey.  In numerous…

Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hope by Sarah Bakewell

Penguin Review by Walter Cummins Sarah Bakewell begins Humanly Possible by delineating the characteristics of humanism and then goes on to describe how these ideas emerged and were developed through…