Skewed, that word best describes the characters, situations, and timeframes in this collection, A Masque for the Fields of Time. Take the opening story, where a dance seems to be happening during the narrator's youth, since his baby-sitter is busily flirting on the dance floor with another teenager. But then time skews and the dance is happening -- when? And those puppets in the rafters, seemingly pulling strings on all the dancers -- just what are they doing? Well, maybe the collection's last story will clear things up . . . or does it only skew matters further, for this story's protagonist is swimming, yes swimming, on a mission to obtain headstones -- now irritatingly called "grave markers," the narrator complains. Okay then, in another story we at least have the comfort of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus confronting Simone de Beauvoir -- but then why do tiny voices haunt the professed atheistic trio with religious barbs? With humor both grim and playful, all the stories in this c

Masques for the Fields of Time

Literature & Fiction

Taylor, Joe

Contemporary

Livingston Press at the University of West Al

Capone, the Cobbs, and Me

A romp through the Roaring 20s! Baseball big-leaguer Mort Hart, trapped between an insane Al Capone and a vengeful Ty Cobb must use his wits to save his skin and the skin of the woman he loves, Charlene, Cobb's wife.

Burwell, Rex

Literary

King of Yiddish

Fiction. Jewish Studies. A serio-comic novel that tells of Shmulik Gafni, a professor of Yiddish. Two narratives contrast: One: Gafni's extended search in Poland for the man who murdered his father in the notorious Kielce pogrom. Two: Gafni's infatuation with Malina, a pretty non-Jewish Polish linguist in Jerusalem to study Yiddish. Guess who her private tutor is? Rumors fly. Will synchronicity also fly?

Leviant PH D, Professor Curt

Humor & Satire

Bonita Byrnes comes of age during the civil rights movement in Birmingham's working class neighborhoods. Pearl, her mother, runs a boarding house. Ida, her black cook with enormous faith, becomes her confidante as Pearl goes from one bad relationship to another, leaving Bonita's father for a young Marine, just home from Korea. Their lives are complicated by what we now would call his PTSD from World War II. He drinks to excess, becomes violent at times, and moves from job to job. Lucinda, her older sister, does not like the stepfather. Bonita's father Phil marries a new wife and does very little to help with the girls though he is quick to criticize Pearl's efforts. His first wife, Priscilla, is more than willing to help Pearl and her girls. The two women bond as they care for their children together when Pearl is on hard times.

How Can I Keep from Singing

Cobb, Loretta

Genre Fiction

Iced

"Iced is a an intriguing story of a disgruntled college professor who just slops his way through his job, uninterested that he's about to be fired. Until he remembers a half baked plot from a recently deceased student and decides to claim the idea for his own. The ending is a surprise. The main character is hardly likeable, he's lackadaisical, surly, and indifferent. Being familiar with the local area the author used as the setting, it was amusing to decipher the veiled references in the book."--Amazon.com

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Grindy, Robert

Mystery

Contemporary Literary Fiction. Women's Studies. Abigail Stewart returns to her childhood stomping grounds in an effort to decipher truth from fiction surrounding her childhood. Her mother, now elderly, remains cagey and manipulative and is determined that Abby will not discover that which has been carefully hidden. The book starts in current times but the majority of the story is set in the 1950's in the Gulf Coast region of Alabama. It is an easy and interesting read. Current readers are demanding the sequel which is in process! NOT FOR YOUNG READERS!

Secrets of the Devil Vine

Kaiser, Faith

United States

The Chilling Simple

Fiction. At the end of the 18th century, two grave robbers, a secretive doctor, the village midwife, and the young sole survivor of a mysterious disease combine to tell a story in the strange coastal village of Chilling. Imagined as a prequel to Dickens' Great Expectations.

Chilling Simple

Previti, Zana

Yonder Where the Road Bends

Yonder Where the Road Bends follows the path of Virgil Hill, a 17 year-old fighter, as he comes to terms with loss and love in the aftermath of the War Between the States. The story moves from the streets of Tallahassee, to the battlefield at Natural Bridge, to a wilderness settlement along the Manatee River. There, in a house built on an ancient Indian mound, he meets the woman he will love. As an old man in a new and unwelcoming century, Virgil sums up his life and reflects on his unique relationship with two friends, who have stayed with him nearly 40 years, though gone from the world all that time.

Abrams, Tom

Coventry

Fiction. First time in paperback. This novel, which won the Novello Literary Award in 2006, hits hard and doesn't stop hitting. Bathanti surely drew on his extensive experience teaching in prisons to create a scad of unforgettable and unforgiving characters in an equally unforgettable and unforgiving setting: a prison camp. Cal Gaddy is haunted by his father, a guard who took young Cal on hunts for escaped convicts, despite protests from Cal's religious mother. And then we have Thrake, the hardcore sergeant who much resembles Cal's father and who brooks no disciplinary problems from the prisoners--with the exception of the camp's voodoo man, Pitch, a contraband dealer who keeps Thrake fearful of his powers to curse and maim. A bonus: Bathanti's prose hits every bit as powerfully as his tale and his characters. Here is a novel to awake each reader to another, darker side of life. Bathanti surely drew on his extensive experience teaching in prisons to create this unforgettable and unforgiving setting: a prison camp.

Bathanti, Joseph

Shining Man

Fiction. In SHINING MAN, narrator Cash, an over-educated but under-achieving fry cook, decamps from a long period of floundering in suburban Charlotte, NC, to either find his vanished father in Chicago or settle his affairs, whichever comes first. The mission ultimately throws his own life into stark relief. The book explodes themes of economic opportunity, identity and the individual's place post-Great Recession in a politically polarized, culturally isolated, and class-stratified America--all through the eyes and voice of a young Southerner whose compatriots include both left-wing demonstrators and race car crew members.

Dills, Todd

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