Category: Review
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Book Review: ‘Sarah’s Cross’ by Dean M. King
Dean M. King’s first novel, Sarah’s Cross, is a treat for readers who like their ghost stories seasoned lightly with blood and gore. King and his family live in Door County, but he chose to set Sarah’s Cross in Wisconsin’s Northwoods, a likely place to encounter spirits both helpful and malevolent. King’s hero is Tommy […]
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‘Apologies to the King’: How ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ Got Away with It
If we shadows have offended,Think but this, and all is mended,That you have but slumber’d hereWhile these visions did appear. Because of the immediate, physical nature of theater, its ability to deliver powerful messages directly to the audience is paramount. And because of its implicit interpretive nature, it’s common to see classic texts reimagined and […]
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Review: “The Testaments” by Margaret Atwood
In the last chapter of Margaret Atwood’s acclaimed novel The Handmaid’s Tale, time suddenly leaps forward to the year 2195, when a Professor Pieixoto delivers a lecture at the Twelfth Symposium on Gileadean Studies. Although the professor has been unable to discover the ultimate fates of the major characters, he makes it clear that the […]
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REVIEW: ‘The Silence of Darkness’
Nothing refreshes the spirit like a drive in the country. The car glides past green hillsides where contented cows graze, past broad fields where corn grows tall. Somewhere a farmer and his wife rest in their Adirondack chairs and bask in the sunlit beauty of the scene, their hearts and minds at peace. But in […]
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REVIEW: ‘Eleven Miles to Oshkosh’ by Jim Guhl
Delmar Finwick is the 15-year-old hero of Jim Guhl’s debut mystery novel Eleven Miles to Oshkosh. Delmar’s friends and relatives call him “Del”; everyone else calls him “Minnow.” Del is a sophomore at Shattuck High School in Neenah, Wisconsin, but he faces an array of problems that would make many a grown man shudder. He […]
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REVIEW: Dianna Hunter’s ‘Wild Mares’
Review by Terri Schlichenmeyer You were going to change the world. It’s true that you were one small voice – just one person with a vision – but you were sure it could be done. You were going to change the world, one corner at a time – starting with the one you called home. And […]
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Review: ‘The Doggedly Determined’
by Bob McCurdy, Range Light Press, 242 pages, 2019Review by Barbara Becker The Doggedly Determined is Bob McCurdy’s 17th novel and the first in a new series that takes place in Door County. He has two other series: the Andy McCloud mystery series (of which there are 11 books) that features a former social worker […]
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Review: ‘The President Is Missing’
Bill Clinton and James Patterson, 528 pages, Little, Brown and Company and Knopf, 2018 It is not unusual for an American president to write a book, either before or after his presidency. Theodore Roosevelt, in fact, was a professional writer before he became president, and John F. Kennedy won the Pulitzer Prize for Profiles in […]
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Many people think of a “poet” as a writer who searches for inspiration by wandering through the woods or walking beside the sea, notebook in hand. Perhaps Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” or “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” comes to mind. But Tracy K. Smith, the current Poet Laureate of the United […]