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“Though not Appelfeld’s best work, Suddenly, Love despite its deceptive simplicity offers much food for thought and would be a good choice for book groups.”  —From my NYJB review. For a shorter synopsis of the novel see my examiner article.

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 "David Grand’s third novel, Mount Terminus, is written in luscious, erudite prose so dense his readers have no choice but to read it slowly." 

-- from my review of Mount Terminus by David Grand on New York Journal of Books. Also see my examiner article.

In my New York Journal of Books review I describe Ellen Litman's second novel Mannequin Girl as “a welcome addition to the coming of age genre that will appeal both to adult readers and to precocious teenagers.” Also see my examiner article about this novel set in 1980s Moscow.

In my NYJB review of Leaving the Sea by Ben Marcus I recommend the book “to serious readers who will want to reread its stories gaining new insights with each reading.” Also see my examiner.com article: Books: novelist Ben Marcus returns to the short story in Leaving the Sea.

On 11/22/63 I was a 4th grader in PS 110 in Manhattan. That afternoon our lesson was interrupted by a radio broadcast over the PA system describing the shooting and eventually President Kennedy's death. Only then did the principal or asst. principal announce early dismissal. On the door of my bedroom I had a poster of the presidents and added "-1963" under the picture of President Kennedy. Three decades later I wrote JFK: Lines of Fire, a Verse Docu-drama

JFK: Lines of Fire is a sequence of dramatic documentary vignettes culled from the literature concerning the assassination of President Kennedy. . Many of these found poems are dramatic monologues in the voices of people who had information about the assassination and either failed to prevent it or lacked a context to understand such information until it was too late. These accounts share certain emotional undercurrents, the need to act balanced by a sense of resignation, the shock of recognition balanced by a callous bravado. Whether or not Oswald acted alone or was nuts, there was (is) a wider insane acceptance of violence that (through these dramatic voices) provides an emotional context to this event. In this sense the real subject of this book is our American vernacular and the ways these themes are expressed in our speech. JFK: Lines of Fire was first published by PulpBits in 2003; PulpBits went out of business in March 2007, and I am happy to make it available here.