March 2023 MBR The General Fiction Shelf

The General Fiction Shelf

The Bones of the World
Betsy L. Ross
https://betsylross.com
Atmosphere Press
www.atmospherepress.com
9781639886944, $18.99 Paper/$26.99 Hardcover

https://www.amazon.com/Bones-World-Betsy-L-Ross/dp/1639887423

"Here we are again. How can it be that we don't learn, that we clutch at low-hanging branches of wrongs and misunderstandings from the past, fearful always of difference? Why this continuing predisposition toward creating otherness?"

It's rare to see a novel about suffering, redemption, religious clashes, and social inspection blended with a time travel piece that tests the patterns and illusions of different cultures and peoples, but The Bones of the World speaks the language of pain and contrasts experiences ranging from Holocaust to Inquisition through Rachel's observant eyes.

The first note to make about this story is its lovely associations between myth and reality. Rachel awakens in a strange mansion, having been delivered by Harry, who may have drugged her to take her away from danger and protect her. The rich inspections and contrasts between mythical figures and the strange reality Rachel finds herself floundering in create a powerful surreal atmosphere from the start: "Inside the high stone walls, oaks just visible from Rachel's second-story window reached for the heavens, dreaming of the selfless beanstalk that gave its life to provide for Jack and his mother."

This sets the stage with a sense of place that continues to steep the novel with "you are here" immersive experiences. Characters (such as Ines, charged with honoring the Ancestors by tending their tombs, even though the Children are her latest charges) are introduced to reflect the nature of loss, survival, and ghosts that haunt the living, dead, and graveyards alike. Ross is a master of contrasts as different worlds collide: "The first time the teenaged boys, festooned in red, white, and blue, appeared on the streets of the old city with automatic rifles, Rachel had been returning from a night at the opera."

Among the astute historical and social inspections that move Rachel from past to present are thought-provoking questions about the choices her Jewish people have made to survive, and the costs they may have unwittingly incurred as a result. This gives the novel an added layer of social and philosophical reflection that will lend to book club debate as Rachel navigates Ghetto experiences, the Golems of Jewish legend and their various forms, her incarnation as Sariah, living in Portugal before the Inquisition changes her life, and disappearances that terrorize the Jewish community facing new survival tactics and choices during the Holocaust.

Rachel's legacy brings with it the mandate to decide how she will react to and live with her peoples' history of ancestral suffering. These are far from reasonable times, as Ross points out. Indeed, has reason ever guided the Jewish people to lives not infused with trouble? As Rachel's proximity to an enchanted cemetery forces her to re-examine her history and progression, readers receive a story that is thought-provoking in its contrasts of worlds and the familiar patterns seemingly disparate situations evolve.

Ross's novel is atmospheric, compelling, and thought-provoking. Ideally, The Bones of the World will not only become part of any Jewish fiction library, but will be profiled as a book club or reader group discussion option lending to revised inspections of Jewish experience and tradition as "lives are left unlived" and everything changes.

Hiking Underground
Amy Smiley
https://amysmiley.com
Atmosphere Press
www.atmospherepress.com
9781639885923, $17.99

https://www.amazon.com/Hiking-Underground-Amy-Smiley/dp/1639885927

"Was the whole world dreaming, or just one young woman?"

Hiking Underground is a novel about ordinary daily life in New York City that assumes the surreal overlay of descriptive personal experience. It opens with the chapter 'I.Alice', which poses the image of a woman who "...always walked between two worlds, so it was hard to say where one began and the other ended."

The juxtaposition of these milieus leads Alice and her readers into her past and present, from recovering from a tonsillectomy as an adult to rejecting the vapid reactions and popularity of teens in favor of an individualistic attitude that leads a boy to love her because "...it was the very thing that made her beautiful, said the first boy who ever loved her - that way she had of expressing what lived inside of her, while others seemed to rove around, staring into cyberspace as they chatted from the sides of their mouths."

From her middle-class New Jersey roots into adulthood, Alice has been stirred and shaken by the influences and tides of society and her own role as an outside observer during much of it. Between her relationship to mother Jenna, who observes her daughter with mixed pride and puzzlement, to the tides of life which wash her from past memory to present-day experiences and choices, Alice's world and conundrums come to life with simple, yet powerful reflections: "It was all she ever wanted, to love with ease and laugh with ease. To just be."

Her father Hank might also wonder about the inevitable progression of his life away from its dreams: "For all she knew, her father, Hank, was at his desk at that very moment, staring off into space and measuring the gulf between himself and the world around him, full of disgust for family, work, and all the other absurd conventions that pinned him down when what he really wanted from life was adventure. That was gone now, beaten out of him, and it was getting harder to find a reason to go on doing anything at all."

Amy Smiley draws this family's disparate individuals and their dreams together with the deftness of a tightly-knitted emotional quilt of dreams. She captures, within this overlay, a sense of life's changes and the unexpected influences that both attract and pull apart individuals, families, and relationships. Her close attention builds atmospheric detail, philosophical and psychological reflection, and close inspection other characters' lives (such as Emma, who tackles the challenges of motherhood with an attention to detail that belays any insufficiencies in traditional approaches). Son Adam reflects part of his mother's fluid fascination with life's realities and demands.

As mother and son move through urban and nature worlds, the paintings and metamorphosis that links Emma, Adam, and Alice become evocative dances that move through seemingly disparate personalities to make deft connections. The result is a novel that reaches out and grasps the heart of life's progression and the family relationships that form, break away, then rejoin in unexpected ways.

Libraries looking for powerful stories of everyday life juxtaposed against the undercurrent of extraordinary abilities and observations will find the descriptions and connections of Hiking Underground a surreal, compelling attraction.

Holy Water
Robert Schwab
https://robertschwab.com
Warren Publishing
www.warrenpublishing.net
9781957723648, $18.95

https://www.amazon.com/Holy-Water-Robert-Schwab/dp/1957723645

Holy Water is the coming-of-age story of new adult (and would-be doctor) Landon Ratliff, who has come to New Orleans to pursue his passion for healing people. Instead of immersing himself in traditional medicine, he confronts the passion and purposes that brought him to this point and profession, encountering alternative ideas in the process.

The first note to make about Holy Water is its astute examination of not just a career, but life's meaning. Landon is an impressionable young man new to the wider world, and New Orleans culture offers not just opportunity, but insights into the diverse and changing nature of that world -- and his place in it.

From the story's opening lines, it's evident that young Landon is not your typical staid medical student, but holds the uncommon ability to see life in a very different way: "If you tattooed a map of the United States onto the tanned, toned back of a pretty girl in a skimpy top, the Mississippi River would coincide roughly with the course of her spine." Anatomy never looked so good -- and neither has the story of an aspiring doctor.

The time is 1993 - the perfect setting for a journey of discovery. This sense of extraordinary events to come emerges even during a plane trip and the observation of the map of America that lies below him which is, here, compared to the opportunities offered by the opposite sex. This literary descriptive tone lends an inviting aura to a story that sashays through medical and social challenges alike, steeping Landon's world in an added New Orleans flavor that pulls him away from preconceived notions of his training to become a doctor.

As he is forced to confront memories that he's kept hidden, Landon finds his future is at stake. His long-time mentor Kiki confronts the forces changing his relationship with Landon as he moves into a love entanglement that also introduces currents of change.

Robert Schwab builds an exquisite, delicate tension from Landon's life that at times demonstrates flowery, compelling language and at others assumes the languid flow of daily life and realizations of growth: "There was a girl and music and a place to learn who he was and what he could become." People are entitled to their secrets. Even doctors. What Landon experiences in the course of immersing himself both in medicine and in the culture of New Orleans becomes a lesson in love, complex entanglements, and the introduction of fate and fortune that leads him on an unexpected journey.

With its troubled waters that are stirred by new revelations and unexpected chance encounters, Landon's world comes alive through metaphor and experience to reach out and grasp a wide audience: "...he needed an anchor, something to remind him who he was. It seemed as if everything had changed. Even the river, so golden and beautiful at sunset last night, was an angry mess now, belching trash and tree parts into the gaps between the rocks guarding the levee."

Libraries and readers looking for novels replete in New Orleans flavors that follow a blossoming young man from his career ambitions to personal success will find Holy Water an evocative read.

The Judges
Eric J. Matluck
Next Exit Press
9798986425306, $22.95 Hardcover/$16.99 Paper/$3.99 ebook

https://www.amazon.com/Judges-Eric-J-Matluck/dp/B0BS2FT5YQ

The Judges shows how much life can alter when a simple task prompts transformation. It tells of acclaimed pianist Mary Sorabi, who wins First Prize in the Graffman International Piano Competition in Philadelphia at age thirty, and finds her world changed because of this achievement.

The judges who award her this honor open the ceremony by stating that their decision was fraught with challenge. Mary's response is simple: "Bullshit, Mary thought. No decision is ever difficult. What's difficult is rationalizing it, especially when you have to rationalize it to someone else. And whose benefit is that line for? The winner is going to think he or she didn't really win by that much, and the loser is going to kick himself or herself for having come so close but not quite making it. Losing by a single point is as ridiculous and cruel as being told by a doctor that he could have saved you had you seen him yesterday."

While these opening events might portend a foray into musical territory, Eric J. Matluck's novel takes quite a different turn, because Mary's world isn't altered by her win so much as by the presence of a different judging panel that appears in her home to assess her life. They aren't there temporarily. They are assigned to judge various experiences as Mary works through controversy and achievement, only to find her every choice rated on a different scale than she's ever known.

Matluck's novel embraces spiritual, psychological, and social perspectives from the viewpoint of a nameless observer who narrates the affairs that change Mary's trajectory. This multifaceted examination lends the novel a metaphysical feel that will attract thinking readers interested in a foray into musical circles and higher-level considerations of their impact on ordinary audiences. Mary is prompted to do much self-examination about her life purpose, art, and her impact on the world. This (and the presence of the mysterious judges) leads to different inspections of her life purpose. As an artist, a critic, and a self-examiner, Mary finds within her new music program and accompanying judgments about it the courage to reconsider her life's accomplishments.

Matluck injects wry humor into these inspections, but the real meat of the story lies in its philosophical and artistic connections between and reflections of music and life, which create astute and thought-provoking passages of revelation to draw readers on different levels: "...she realized that she never could and never would know what Schumann was thinking, not because she never knew him but because she never was him. You can know someone as intimately as you like, but you'll never really know what's running through his or her mind, because everybody's thoughts are locked away; cloistered. So she started going through her own thoughts, letting the music conjure memories of people and places she knew and remembered, and by doing so the music started to reveal itself, with certain phrases and certain passages evoking images from her past that meant a lot to her. And finally, she realized, Kreisleriana did touch her and did move her, and that was when she understood the magic of how music communicates."

The result is a powerful story that cultivates musical notes to interweave artist, composer, and judge, expanding the subject into the greater issues of life. Libraries looking for thought-provoking stories of artistic and personal transformation will find The Judges an astute reflection of the power and nature of right, wrong, and those who would define and influence both.

Send Her Back and Other Stories
Munashe Kaseke
www.munashekaseke.com
Mukana Press
https://mukanapress.com
9780578323589, $26.89, HC, 204pp

https://www.amazon.com/Send-Her-Back-Other-Stories/dp/0578323583

Synopsis: With the publication of "Send Her Back and Other Stories", author Munashe Kaseke offers an impressively intimate and fresh telling of the immigrant experience of Black women in the United States.

Equally awash with the joys of exploring a new world as well as a myriad of challenges, her complicated, and often tangled, female Zimbabwean protagonists navigate issues of identity, microaggressions, and sexism in vibrant, indelible settings. Yet again, these are not only stories of navigating an at times tense US political climate, they are also marked by characters who rise to the top of their professional fields, seize the American dream, and travel the world in glee.

As an author, Kaseke deftly peels back on the inner wranglings of characters caught between two worlds, be it by stories of dating outside one's culture and race or failing to assimilate upon returning home after spending time abroad.

Critique: Comprised of seventeen superbly crafted short stories that are all the more impressive when considering that "Send Her Back and Other Stories" is Munaskhe Kaseke's debut as a writer and clearly showcases her genuine flair for thought- provoking originality. A fun and thought-provoking read from cover to cover, "Send Her Back and Other Stories" is one of those short story collections that will linger in the mind and memory long after the book itself has been finished and set back upon the shelf. While also available for personal reading lists in a paperback edition (9780578353128, $17.95) and in a digital book format (Kindle, $6.99), "Send Her Back and Other Stories" is especially and unreservedly recommended for community and academic library Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Literary Fictions collections.

Editorial Note: Munashe Kaseke (www.munashekaseke.com) was born and raised in Harare, Zimbabwe. She migrated to the United States of America at age nineteen when she received a scholarship to study at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. She holds Doctor of Pharmacy and Master of Public Administration degrees.

An Old Woman Walks Into a Bar
Deborah Shouse
https://www.deborahshousewrites.com
Independently Published
9798805315603, $12.95, PB, 269pp

https://www.amazon.com/Old-Woman-Walks-Into-Bar/dp/B0B4PBHBRB

Synopsis: Nursing a beer at a local bar in the middle of the day, Grace wonders if she has anything left in the tank at age 78. Widowed and retired from teaching, she discovers renewed purpose by spearheading a free community preschool. But when she's ousted from the project by a younger superstar fundraiser with a dark secret, Grace faces another quandary. Should she be true to herself or do whatever it takes to reach her goal? Before she can answer that question, she's off catching a thief, riding a motorcycle, becoming a YouTube sensation, and maybe, just maybe, falling in love again. Grace puts a new twist on an ageless joke: Who knows what will happen when an old woman walks into a bar?

Critique: Unique, compelling, deftly crafted, and all the more impressive when considering that is the author's debut as a novelist, "An Old Woman Walks Into a Bar" by Deborah Shouse (who is 73 years young) is a singular literary work that will have a very special appeal to readers with an interest in Women & Family Life fiction. One of those novels that will linger in the mind and memory of the reader long after the book itself is finished and set back upon the shelf, "An Old Woman Walks Into a Bar" is unreservedly recommended for both community and academic library Contemporary Women's Fiction collections. It should be noted for personal reading lists that "An Old Woman Walks Into a Bar" is also readily available in a digital book format (Kindle, $3.99).

Editorial Note: Deborah Shouse (https://www.deborahshousewrites.com) has been featured in many anthologies, including more than five-dozen Chicken Soup books. For years, she wrote a Love Story column for The Kansas City Star. Deborah and her life partner Ron Zoglin co-wrote Antiquing for Dummies and she co-authored several volumes in the Yes, You Can financial series. She also co-leads the KC Writers Group.

Loving the Dead and Gone
Judith Turner-Yamamoto
https://turneryamamoto.com
Regal House Publishing
https://regalhousepublishing.com
Blackstone Audiobooks
www.blackstoneaudio.com
9781646032587, $17.95, PB, 256pp

https://www.amazon.com/Loving-Dead-Gone-Judith-Turner-Yamamoto/dp/1646032586

Synopsis: For forty years Aurilla Cutter has tended a clutch of secrets that have turned her mean. A freak car crash in 1960s rural North Carolina puts in motion moments of grace that bring redemption to two generations of women and the lives they touch. This fatal accident becomes the catalyst for the release of the passions, needs, and hurts in everyone affected by her hidden past.

Darlene, a seventeen-year-old widow, struggles to reconnect with her dead husband while proving herself alive. Soon loss and death work their magic, drawing Darlene into an unlikely affair that threatens to upend Aurilla's family, and sets loose Aurilla's own memories of longing and infidelity.

Critique: Eloquent, original, memorable, "Loving the Dead and Gone" by author Judith Turner-Yamamoto is a lyrical and insightful novel that explores how both grief and love are the ties that bind. Highly recommended for community library Literary Fiction collections, "Loving the Dead and Gone" is one of those novels that will linger in the mind and memory of the reader long after the book is finished and set back upon the shelf. It should be noted for personal reading lists that "Loving the Dead and Gone" is also available in a digital book format ($0.99) and as a complete and unabridged audio book (Blackstone Audio, 9798212275323, $31.95, CD).

Editorial Note: Judith Turner-Yamamoto (https://turneryamamoto.com) is an art historian who first came to writing through learning to appraise what she saw and to describe what moved her. Her work has appeared in StorySOUTH, Mississippi Review, Snake Nation Review, and American Literary Review, among others, and in many anthologies, including Walking the Edge: A Southern Gothic Anthology, Show Us Your Papers, and Gravity Dancers. Her awards include two Virginia Arts Commission fellowships, an Ohio Arts Council fellowship, VCCA and Fundacion Valparaiso fellowship residencies, the Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize, the Washington Prize for Fiction, and the Virginia Screenwriting Award.

Wash Ashore: A Tale of Cape Cod
Mary Petiet
https://marypetiet.com
Sea Crow Press
www.seacrowpress.com
9781735814070, $16.95, PB, 206pp

https://www.amazon.com/Wash-Ashore-Tale-Cape-Cod/dp/1735814075

Synopsis: When Olive Adams comes to Cape Cod to live in her aunt's old house, she finds her fortune shifting like the sands. Can she navigate a new life in a welcoming but mysterious house? As a dangerous hurricane barrels up the coast, Olive struggles to save the land next door from destruction as she waits for her new love to return.

Critique: A surprise inheritance, a deadly hurricane, nn ancient landscape under threat, these are the contributing elements that make "Wash Ashore: A Tale of Cape Cod" by Mary Petiet a simply riveting read from first page to last. While especially and unreservedly recommended for community library New England themed literary fiction collections, it should be note for personal reading lists that "Wash Ashore: A Tale of Cape Cod" is also readily available in a digital book format (Kindle, $8.99).

Editorial Note: Mary Petiet (https://marypetiet.com) is a writer, poet, and publisher from Cape Cod where her work is deeply influenced by the Cape's nature and inspirational energy. Her work emphasizes our connection to each other and the natural world with a focus on positive empowerment. Mary is the founder of Sea Crow Press.

The Editor
Thomas A. Williams
Venture Press
c/o William & Company Book Publishers
https://www.entrepreneur.com
9781878853554 $16.95, PB, 240pp

https://www.amazon.com/Editor-Brewster-Gazette-Metaphysical-Newspaper/dp/1878853554

Synopsis: "The Editor: How the Brewster Gazette Became the World's First Metaphysical Newspaper" by novelist Tom Williams is the story of one John Hawkwood, a man who meets a midlife crisis head-on when he resigns his professorship to buy a struggling weekly newspaper in the college town of Brewster, North Carolina.

When John grows weary of writing editorials lamenting the shenanigans of the City Council or the scoundrels in Washington, he makes a drastic change. Henceforth, he will editorialize not about the mundane but about the transcendent: the nature of time, the hard problem of consciousness, and leaps of faith.

That's how The Brewster Gazette became the Brewster MacroCosmos, the world's first metaphysical newspaper. "The Editor" not only tells the story of Hawkwood's adventures doing these things, but how in the process he would discover his own identity.

Critique: Echoing the old theme of 'write what you know', Thomas A. "Tom" Williams is himself an author and publisher -- giving his novel "The Editor: How the Brewster Gazette Became the World's First Metaphysical Newspaper" a particular and entertaining reality. Of special note are the little quotes that open each chapter -- 'Nothing is more active than thought, for it travels over the universe.' - Thales of Miletus. While especially and unreservedly recommended for personal reading lists in a digital book format (Kindle, $9.95), "The Editor" will prove a unique and welcome addition to community and academic library literary fiction collections.

Editorial Note: Thomas A. Williams is the author of a series of books in the writing/publishing field, including Get Paid to Write!, Poet Power: The Practical Poet's Guide to Publication, and How to Publish Your Own Magazine, Guidebook or Weekly Newspaper, now in its fifth edition and the standard in its field. He has owned and edited his own weekly newspaper, regional magazines, and guidebooks. He now directs his own publishing company, Williams & Company, Publishers. (https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/22280.Thomas_A_Williams)

The Marriage Box
Corie Adjmi
https://corieadjmi.com
She Writes Press
www.shewritespress.com
9781647420796, $17.95, PB, 288pp

https://www.amazon.com/Marriage-Box-Novel-Corie-Adjmi/dp/1647420792

Synopsis: Casey Cohen, a Middle Eastern Jew, is a sixteen-year-old in New Orleans in the 1970s when she starts hanging out with the wrong crowd. Then she gets in trouble and her parents turn her whole world upside down by deciding to return to their roots, the Orthodox Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn.

In this new and foreign world, families gather weekly for Shabbat dinner; parties are extravagant events at the Museum of Natural History; and the Marriage Box is a real place -- it's a pool deck designated for teenage girls to put themselves on display for potential husbands.

Casey is at first shocked by this unfamiliar culture, but after she meets Michael, she's enticed by it. Looking for love and a place to belong, she marries him at eighteen, believing she can adjust to Syrian ways. But she begins to question her decision when she discovers that Michael doesn't want her to go to college; he wants her to have a baby instead.

Can Casey integrate these two opposing worlds, or will she have to leave one behind in order to find her way?

Critique: With a very special appeal to readers with an interest in a Jewish themed coming-of-age story, "The Marriage Box" by Corie Adjmi is an exceptionally well written and entertaining read from beginning to end, While also available for personal reading lists in a digital book format (Kindle, $8.49), "The Marriage Box" is an quite special and unreservedly recommended addition to community library Women/Family Life Fiction collections.

Editorial Note: Corie Adjmi (https://corieadjmi.com) is the author of the short story collection "Life and Other Shortcomings", which won an International Book Award, an IBPA Benjamin Franklin award, and an American Fiction Award. Her essays and short stories have appeared in dozens of journals and magazines, including HuffPost, North American Review, Indiana Review, Medium, Motherwell, Kveller, and others. "The Marriage Box" is Corie's first novel.

Mr. Breakfast
Jonathan Carroll
Melville House
46 John Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
https://www.mhpbooks.com
9781612199924, $28.99, HC, 272pp

https://www.amazon.com/Mr-Breakfast-Jonathan-Carroll/dp/1612199925

Synopsis: Graham Patterson's life has hit a dead end. His career as a comedian is failing. The love of his life recently broke up with him and he literally has no idea what to do next. With nothing to lose, he buys a new car and hits the road, planning to drive across country and hopefully figure out his next moves before reaching California.

But along the way Patterson does something his old self would never have even considered: he gets tattooed by a brilliant tattoo artist in North Carolina. The decision sets off a series of extraordinary events that changes his life forever in ways he never could have imagined. Among other things, Patterson is gifted with the ability to see in real time three different lives that are available to him. The choice is his: The life he is leading right now, or two very different ones. In all of them there is love or fame and of course danger because once he has chosen, there is no telling what will happen next.

Critique: With the publication of "Mr. Breakfast", author Jonathan Carroll has created a dazzling, absorbing, and deeply moving novel about the choices that we have to confront and face. With a very special appeal to readers with an interest in the themes of paranormal fantasy and magical realism, "Mr. Breakfast" is a fun and absorbing read from first page to last. While unreservedly recommended for community and academic library Contemporary Literary Fiction collections, it should be noted for personal reading lists that "Mr. Breakfast" is also available in a paperback edition (9781685890889, $17.99) and in a digital book format (Kindle, $14.99).

Editorial Note: Jonathan Carroll (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Carroll) is the author of seventeen novels, including the critically acclaimed The Ghost in Love, The Land of Laughs, and Outside the Dog Museum, for which he has won a British Fantasy award. Jonathan has also written two story collections, with his stories winning a Pushcart Prize, two French Fantasy Awards, a Bram Stoker Award, and a World Fantasy Award. His work has been published in over thirty languages, and he has over 110,000 followers on Facebook.

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