Random House, 2023 “Shivers of lust passed through his elytra as he found her scent grow stronger,” and there we are, in the head of an Elm Bark beetle, one of many POVs in the thoroughly enchanting novel North Woods by Daniel Mason. The beetle had been deposited in this wooded piece of land in …
Sharon J. Wishnow’s debut novel, The Pelican Tide—set on Grand Isle, Louisiana, in 2010, just before the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill—is both an intense environmental disaster story and a heartwarming story of a family finding their way back to one another after a series of devastating events. Josie Babineaux is a chef, mother, newly …
The title card at the end of Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman, a classic of the New Queer Cinema film movement, reads “Sometimes you have to create your own history.” In the instance of The Watermelon Woman, Dunye creates the fictitious historical narrative of a lesbian filmmaker and her actress lover. Yamashita takes a similar …
There is a conversation, repeated several times, during the powerful novella Of Cattle and Men by Paula Maia, translated by Zoë Perry: “Like they say in these parts: as long as there’s a cow in this world, there will be a man keen to kill it.”“And another keen to eat it,” concludes Edgar Wilson. Edgar …
By Bob Katz To an event organizer, Bob Katz’s novel, Waiting For Al Gore, will read like a horror story, but for those worried about how we will organize ourselves in time to save the planet, this book might, just might, offer a glimmer of hope. In a remote corner of Vermont, EarthKare’s climate conference …
As we enter 2024, here is a brief recap of the most-viewed book reviews in 2023:
This is the eighth year that we’ve gathered together a list of our favorite books from the past 12 months. Seeing this list makes me appreciate what EcoLit Books has accomplished over the years — drawing attention to authors and presses you might not read about in the more mainstream publications. But that’s what we’re …
Ray Keifetz is author of two poetry collections, the second published this month: Museum Beasts. Of the collection Richard Peabody, editor of Gargoyle Magazine writes: “Ray Keifetz’s new poetic myths are a mash-up of Oz, del Toro, and trippy end of the world nightmare vibes. Come down these barbed wire boulevards filled with graves, ghosts, …
We can’t review every book we receive. But that doesn’t stop us from highlighting them. Here is a selection of new titles worth checking out… Horse Show By Jess Bowers “From the tale of Lady, the mare who read a Duke University psychologist’ s mind, to television palomino Mr. Ed’ s hypnotic hold over Wilbur …
by Céline Keating Review by JoeAnn Hart The Stark Beauty of Last Things, a novel by Céline Keating The driving force of this touching novel, The Stark Beauty of Last Things, is the question of what to do with the last unspoiled parcel of land in the coastal community of Montauk, Long Island. In Céline …
The narrator of Henry Hoke’s slender, evocative novel Open Throat begins their story with, “I’ve never eaten a person but today I might.” Described by the book’s publisher as a “lonely, lovable, queer mountain lion” whose pronouns are they/them, the lion shares their journey from an urban park to a suburban home to a busy Los Angeles …
So many new and exciting novels and books of nonfiction and poetry have come across our desks and inboxes as of late. Here are just a handful that caught our eyes… B/RDS Beatrice Szymkowiak B/RDS endeavors to dismantle discourses that create an artificial distinction between nature and humanity through a subversive erasure of an iconic work …
By Tom Comitta Coffee House Press, 2023 Reviewed by JoeAnn Hart “No words of my own can be added anywhere in the novel,” writes The Nature Book’s author, Tom Comitta, with a nod to the Oulipo group[1] and a whiff of Sol LeWitt[2], as he defines the constraints and rules of this extraordinary novel. Every …
A tRaum Press and Night Beats book, 2023 Reviewed by JoeAnn Hart Query, a Novel, is snack-sized, but it took me a while to read because I kept laughing coffee out of my nose and onto the page, the best recommendation I can give for a book. When I wasn’t cleaning up coffee or phlegm, …
Note: Readers hoping to avoid spoilers may wish to skip this review. Julie Carrick Dalton’s novel The Last Beekeeper, set in a world that has “come undone,” is the story of a young woman trying to understand her puzzling past as she navigates an uncertain future. Four years after aging out of the state care facility …
