Reviewed by Dennis Ray Historian Geoffry C. Ward and filmmaker Ken Burns have put together a compelling and informative book with “The Vietnam War,” which is also a 10-part, 18-hour documentary television series on PBS beginning in September 2017. Although I haven’t seen the film but have looked over theContinue Reading
Interview by Dennis Ray New York Times bestselling author Wiley Cash returns with a new novel, set in the Appalachian foothills of NC in 1929 and inspired by actual events. A chronicle of a single mother’s struggle for her rights in a textile mill, The Last Ballad is a movingContinue Reading
The Last Ballad Twelve times a week, twenty-eight-year-old Ella May Wiggins makes the two-mile trek to and from her job at American Mill No. 2 in Bessemer City, NC. The insular community considers the mill’s owners-the newly arrived Goldberg brothers-white but not American and expects them to pay Ella MayContinue Reading
On September 26, Denise Kiernan’s signs her book THE LAST CASTLE: The Epic Story of Love, Loss, and American Royalty in the Nation’s Largest Home at Malaprop’s Bookstore (55 Haywood St, Asheville). Kiernan (also the author of The Girls of Atomic City) will be in conversation with New York TimesContinue Reading
The Changeling **** (4 Stars out of five) Review by Dennis Ray The Changeling by Victor LaValle, offers great enjoyment if you know a little bit about the story before hand. If you go into it simply by reading the book flaps, then you may find yourself utterly confused andContinue Reading
Gradle Bird by J.C. Sasser Explores Bullying Gone Bad Signing and reading from debut Southern Gothic novel, Gradle Bird, at the end of this month on August 31, 7pm at Malaprop’s Bookstore. www.malaprops.com Twenty-nine years after befriending a schizophrenic genius, author J.C. Sasser delivers on her promise: to tell his story.Continue Reading
***** (Five Stars) The Tragedy of Brady Sims by Ernest J. Gaines Read by JD Jackson, Danny Campbell Ernest J. Gaines’s new novella about a courthouse shooting that leads a young reporter to uncover the long story of race and power in his small town and the relationship between theContinue Reading
***** (out of 5) Review by Dennis Ray This January I got sick. Not the flu though at first I thought it might have been. Toward the end of the month, I began losing my energy, I suffered from cold sweats, and I felt all around horrible. I rested, ateContinue Reading
**** (Four Stars out of Five) Reviewed by Dennis Ray Minecraft: The Island is the first official Minecraft novel, and the audio version consists of two separate editions. One is read by Jack Black or Samira Wiley depending on whether you would like the character to be male or female.Continue Reading
