CAPTURED BY THE CONFEDERACY, two New York reporters write from Civil War prisons. History reads like a novel! B PLUS

JUNIUS AND ALBERT’S ADVENTURES IN THE CONFEDERACY : A CIVIL WAR ODYSSEY
PublicAffairs
2013

A GRAND, EXTRAVAGANT LOVE letter to Dickens, to fine art, to New York, to the intricacies of the human heart. B PLUS

THE GOLDFINCH
Little
2013

Thanks to some good feedback from authors published by small presses and micropresses, I’ve decided to alternate Self-Publisher Sundays and Small Press Sundays here at Booktweeting.

“Small presses,” for the purposes of November’s reviews, will be limited to publishers putting out twelve or fewer titles per year; I’ll revisit that definition on the basis of reader feedback.

If you’d like to submit a small-press book for consideration, email me at Booktweeting {at} gmail [dot] com.

Self-Publisher Sundays return in December!

EXISTENTIAL DETECTIVE CLAIRE DEWITT investigates an old flame’s death in this philosophical California noir. B PLUS

CLAIRE DEWITT AND THE BOHEMIAN HIGHWAY
Mariner Books
2014

HAUNTING, BLEAK PORTRAIT of a young Scottish woman spending her life in custody. Devastating first novel. B PLUS

THE PANOPTICON
Hogarth
2013

IMPASSIONED, TOUCHING, POETIC novel based on a real-life tragedy: a chicken plant fire that killed dozens. SOLID B

A SOUTHERN TRAGEDY, IN CRIMSON AND YELLOW
Zuckerman Cannon
2005

The last book about a meat processing plant that made me cry was The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair; the last book about a deadly fire that made me cry was Stewart O’Nan’s The Circus Fire. In A Southern Tragedy, In Crimson and Yellow, Lawrence Naumoff combines the clarity and passion of Sinclair and other 20th-century social realists with the same poet’s eye for telling, humanizing details and vivid touches of regional culture that mark the very best of today’s Southern writing, and creates a heart-wrenching and sobering tale.

A Southern Tragedy takes as its basic material the horrific 1991 fire at a Hamlet, North Carolina chicken processing plant, which killed dozens of workers and injured dozens more. In a heartbreaking echo of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911, plant management had locked emergency doors and workers were trapped inside.

The basic story is tragic enough. Where Naumoff’s novelization brings additional emotional power is in his vivid evocation of the town and its people, and of the intermeshed destinies and choices that brought both victims and survivors together. That human element is what gives the story its lasting power as a haunting elegy and a call to action.

IMPASSIONED, TOUCHING, POETIC novel based on a real-life tragedy: a chicken plant fire that killed dozens.

LOVELY, ELEGAIC BIOGRAPHICAL novel follows the great Noel Coward through his last days at his Jamaica retreat. B PLUS

FIREFLY
Europa Editions
2013

A WILD, CRAZY LOVE in youth, revisited as a wiser friendship fifteen years later, captured in elegant detail. B PLUS

MY EDUCATION
Viking Books
2013