All through the novel THE BETWEEN by TANANARIVE DUE I felt sympathy for Hilton and his family. Hilton is a husband and father of two children, Kaya and Jamil. Hilton suffers insomnia because of unexplained dreams and/or nightmares. Often these horrible dreams will have many doorways down a long h...
When Phoenix Smalls was ten, she nearly died at her parents' jazz club when she was crushed by a turn-of-the-century piano. Now twenty-four, Phoenix is launching a career as an R & B singer. She's living out her dreams and seems destined for fame and fortune. But a chance visit to a historical si...
I am a big fan of historical fiction, but I think this was a very sanitized, whitewashed version of Madame C.J. Walker's life. Since the millionaire kept no diary and no one is alive that knew her, there's little insight into her personality and character. We can only assume her charactaristics...
Thanks to Gramps, Caitlin O’Neal had been chain-smoking since she was sixteen. He’d let her smoke her first cigarette when she was seven, the same year he’d died. Gramps had not been a nice man. If Caitlin had been able to go back in time, she would have kicked him in the balls. But the habit had...
Light. Still here. Jessica woke as she usually did, breathless and wide-eyed; a swimmer clawing for shore after sleep tried to drown her. She was eager to escape to her bedroom’s weak sunlight. 6 a.m., the lime-green face of her digital alarm clock assured her. Still here. Jessica sat up beneath ...
We sat on the top rail of a fence overlooking the king’s pasture, where the new colts were trying out their legs. Andrzej, Istvan, and I were dead veterans of the kuruc revolt (or was it the kuruc crusades?), buried a week or so earlier, risen up only recently. “Do you think the brown will live t...
Peach. Rose. Lemon yellow. For years after her father died, even for routine Sunday services, Bea only wore black in church. Then, she slowly progressed to other sober shades like rust or forest green. Now, for some reason, a rebirth. Jessica wondered if Bea’s bright new look had anything to do w...