I'm continuing my research for the second of my Macbeth books, The Last Highland King, and this book really filled in the world of the Norse and Danes in the decades leading up to my period. Well-written and just full of the small details that add context to the recitation of events. Great use of the sagas!
In the eleventh century, the rulers of the lands surrounding the North Sea are all hungry for power. To get power they need soldiers, to get soldiers they need silver, and to get silver there is no better way than war and plunder. This vicious cycle draws all the lands of the north into a brutal struggle for supremacy and survival that will shatter kingdoms and forge an empire.
The Wolf Age takes the reader on a thrilling journey through the bloody shared history of England and Scandinavia, and on across early medieval Europe, from the wild Norwegian fjords to…
These stories take us deep into the daily lives of a Black family in Louisville, KY, with all the joys and heartaches. Unflinching yet so compassionate.
The linked stories in Mama Said are set in Louisville, Kentucky, a city with a rich history steeped in tobacco, bourbon, and gambling, indulgences that can quickly become gripping and destructive vices. Set amid the tail end of the crack epidemic and the rise of the opioid crisis, Mama Said evokes Black family life in all its complexity, following JayLynn, along with her cousins Zaria and Angel, as they come of age struggling against their mothers' drug addictions.
JayLynn heads to college intent on gaining distance from her depressed mother, only to learn that her mother's illness has reached a…
I'm not usually a reader of memoir, but this book grabbed me from the first page. Both a coming-of-age story about the writer and a reflection on the people who shaped him, in particular a man of considerable genius and many troubles. Male friendship considered with grace.
In this powerful memoir, the bestselling author of Big Fish tries to come to terms with the life and death of his multi-talented longtime friend and brother-in-law, who had been his biggest hero and inspiration, in a poignant, lyrical, and moving memoir.
If we're lucky, we all encounter at least one person whose life elevates and inspires our own. For acclaimed novelist Daniel Wallace, he had one hero and inspiration for so much of what followed: his longtime friend and brother-in-law William Nealy. Seemingly perfect, impossibly cool, William was James Dean, Clint Eastwood, and MacGyver all rolled into one, an…
All Maggie Warshauer wants is to leave behind her stifled life at a North Carolina backwater and escape to college. An outsider at school and uncertain of her own sexual identity, Maggie spends her days sailing, exploring, and categorizing life around her. But when her beautiful cousin Charisse disappears on prom night and is found dead at the marina where Maggie lives, her life begins to unravel. A mysterious stranger begins stalking her and a detective on the case has her struggling to hold on to her secrets—her father's alcoholism, her mother's abandonment, a boyfriend who may or may not exist, and her own actions. Maggie is forced to come to terms with the one person who might hold the answers—herself. Winner of the Sir Walter Raleigh Award. Finalist in Forewords Reviews awards.
