Book Reviews

A touching life-long love affair is at the heart of Devin K. Asante’s creative work of historical fiction, Lincoln’s Paramour.

Abraham “Abe” LaRue is the second son of James LaRue, a wealthy Kentucky land baron, and his second wife, Suzanne. He’s as different from his older brother, Aron, as chalk is to cheese, but has an idyllic childhood growing up on his large plantation where his best friend is Maisie, the daughter of his father’s older brother and his black slave mistress – until tragedy strikes and Abe’s father is killed by a bear.

His mother remarries a year […]

It takes an impressive amount of confidence to write a sequel to a Charles Dickens novel, given his titanic status in the history of English literature. In Quigsnip, author Sean Phillips expands a seemingly insignificant detail from Charles Dickens’ classic Oliver Twist and delivers an entire novel in his legendary style.

Following Oliver Twist’s near-death experience and the subsequent discovery that he was a son of the aristocracy, his life has changed in innumerable ways. He is no longer begging for extra gruel, nor is he struggling to make ends meet in the criminal underbelly of London. Even so, […]