A Storm in the Stars by Don Zancanella

Review by Walter Cummins The presence of Mary Godwin Shelley opens and closes Don Zancanella’s intimate portrayal of the circle around Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Storm in the Stars. The…

Code of Silence: Sexual Misconduct by Federal Judges, the System that Protects Them, and the Women Who Blew the Whistle by Lise Olsen

Review by Walter Cummins The lengthy subtitle to Lise Olsen’s exposé explains what the book is all about but doesn’t reveal the outcome of the long process that followed the…

Fire Island: A Century in the Life of an American Paradise by Jack Parlett

Review Essay by Walter Cummins Jack Parlett made his initial visit to the gay village of Cherry Grove on Fire Island in 2017 with his friend Celine by walking a…

Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape by Cal Flynn

Review by Linda Lappin Combining exquisite lyrical prose, a gripping travel narrative, and meticulous scientific research in the fields of botany, biology, chemistry, genetics – investigative journalist, Cal Flynn, takes…

Blank Pages and Other Stories by Bernard MacLaverty

Review by Walter Cummins Bernard MacLaverty’s latest story collection, his sixth, builds a thematic connection around its title story, “Blank Pages.” Frank, a writer, has been blocked since the death…

Rooting Interests: A Roger Angell Appreciation

By George Yatchisin I can be assured I’ve been reading Roger Angell for nearly 45 years, as my copy of his Five Seasons, is inscribed 1978 and “Merry Christmas” from…

Queer Ducks (and Other Animals): The Natural World of Animal Sexuality by Eliot Schrefer

Review by Walter Cummins Eliot Schrefer’s Queer Ducks is a revolutionary book, one that upends longstanding assumptions about the nature and purpose of sex in the animal kingdom, with implications…

Our Little World by Karen Winn

Review by Walter Cummins Our Little World is in several ways a deceptive novel, cleverly constructed. The opening chapters told from the perspective of pre-teen Bee—the nickname she prefers over…

The Ninth Decade: An Octogenarian’s Chronicle by Carl H. Klaus

Review by George Yatchisin I like to think of Carl Klaus as a journal-ist. No, he didn’t write for newspapers, but his series of nonfiction books all were certainly journals,…

What Do I Know? by Jack Remick

Review by Jack Smith Jack Remick, novelist, poet, and nonfiction writer, arranges his current book according to calendar dates, beginning with January 5 and ending on June 16—or, beginning in…