Literary

In Hough’s fourth historical novel, an infamous American fertility doctor erects a radio tower in the small Mexican border town of Corazón de la Fuente to broadcast his goat-inspired impotence cure. Citizens, hungry for work, are hopeful it will become a pillar of prosperity for their post-revolution ravaged home. But, as the surrounding poor, thieves […]

A modest formal experiment in narrative minimalism, Danish thespian Lars Husum provides as little data as possible to move the plot along for star appearances by My Friend Jesus Christ. Expect no realistic descriptions. Husum’s first novel transliterates cartoon panels depicting spare silhouettes without detail. Comic book exclamatories like SMACK, WALLOP, a page-long AAAAHHHH and […]

Codename Sailor V is bound to be recognized as the precursor series to the popular Sailor Moon. The stories start off very similar—young Minako Aino meets a talking cat who gives her the ability to transform into the magic-powered Sailor V. Her mission is to defeat the forces of evil, from energy-stealing aliens to petty […]

When Myfanwy Thomas awakes in the rain with dead bodies surrounding her, she knows only what is provided by a letter in her pocket addressed to her from…herself. She learns that she holds a high level position in a secret supernatural government agency—organized like a chess board—and that a traitor from within stole her memories […]

As a genre of romanticized love between men drawn primarily by women for women, yaoi stories often lack much of a realistic stance. Only Serious About You is one of few seen in English that approaches the topic with such patience and honesty that its remaining tropes rarely distract from its merits. This first volume […]

“The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author,” wrote literary theorist Roland Barthes—so while The Art of Fielding’s hype has focused on its author’s exorbitant $650,000 advance, let Chad Harbach be dead for our purposes. After all, Faulkner’s loudness and anger when drunk doesn’t affect my reading of […]

Even though Richard Peck’s Remembering the Good Times was written almost 30 years ago, the story still resonates with modern readers. Written in 1986, Good Times tells the story of three best friends—Buck, Kate and Trav—as they transition between childhood and adulthood. After a tragic event, two of the friends are left to re-evaluate the […]

A writer’s craft is always evolving—even for an author who has penned over 50 books. Ten years after publishing Cold Clear Morning, Lesley Choyce re-immersed himself into the manuscript to release a new revised edition. “It was a series of setbacks in my own life that suggested there may be more to Taylor’s story,” said […]

It has been said that writers write and writers read. On Halifax’s literary scene this has never been more true. Writers are writing. They are writing a lot and so they’ve got a lot of reading to do. The Lilah Kemp Reading Series provides a cozy yet collegial forum for writers to do just that: […]

Arguments against the supremacy of digital readers begins and ends with Lynda Barry books. No e-reader captures the same textural flow of images side by side or the thrill of initial glimpses as a page turns over. And with Barry, each new page is like going through a door to even greater landscape. More than a collections […]

Any number of reasons can make a book impossible to put down—perhaps poignant characters who breathe between the letters, or climax-per-page narratives—but for Justin Torres’ We The Animals, it’s the torrid, heart-grappling pace. Revolving around a young Brooklyn family stitched together by nothing more than their rawest kind of love, it’s told from the three […]