Book Review: Beneath the Stones by Susan Coryell

Beneath the Stones by Susan Coryell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Susan Coryell continues the saga of Ashby Overton she began in A WILD WILD ROSE. Five years later, Ashby prepares to marry her boyfriend Luke at her family estate, Overhome, which she discovers, much to her dismay, is deep in debt. It is up to her to find a way to save her horse farm.

Ashby sorts through mounds of bills run up by her aunt. Rather than holding a grudge, Ashby decides the only ways to save Overhome are to sell off 50 acres and expand her boarding and horse training business. When she hand her 12 yo nephew explore the acreage she want to sell, she discovers an old stone house and one very angry ghost. Ashby's only experience with ghosts has been with a benign spirit Rosabelle who saved her from peril in the first in this series.

To be able to more forward with her plans, Ashby must determine who the ghost is and why he wants to harm her.

A new character, a Civil War

Book Review: The Homespun Wisdom of Myrtle T. Cribb

The Homespun Wisdom of Myrtle T. Cribb by Sheri Reynolds

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Sheri Reynolds writes a wonderfully Southern picaresque novel where Myrtle Cribb leaves her husband without warning on a journey into herself. She's on her way to a doctor's appointment she doesn't want to keep. She passes the doctor's office before nearly running off the road. Hellcat, the local homeless man, crawled into her truck the night before. He wakes up and scares her.

Myrtle wants to dump Hellcat someplace where he can walk back to the town they live in, but every time she gets close to doing so, she chickens out. Myrtle and Hellcat help each other on this journey into what's important in their lives. Two opposites, he understands her intuitively. She grows to accept herself through a series of short adventures.

Reynolds add "Meaty Tidbits" at the end of each chapter wherein she adds philosophical comments to underscore the narrative.

If you even have a chance to hear her read, trample everyone in your way to get to one of her readings. Then read one or more of her books. Her unique Southern voice resounds off the page. You'll never read one of her books without hearing her speak.



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The Well and the Mine

Disclaimer: I do not seek out Southern fiction, but sometimes it finds me.

A few weeks ago I read a glowing review in Publishers Weekly about a debut Southern writer. Gin Phillips chose to write about a coal mining town in Alabama in 1931. Pre-teen Tess watches a woman throw a baby into her family's well. In her child's mind, this becomes a mystery that plays out against rural America during the Depression, against racism, potential mine disasters, company towns, and poverty. Yet the family is strong and supportive, and the climax is subtle and profound. From her opening sentence, "After she threw the baby in, nobody believed me for the longest time." Now, THAT'S a hook.

Phillips has a fine ear for idiom, but doesn't bog down dialogue with regionalisms. Enough for the reader to get the point, but no more. Her characters are as down to earth as the coal dust in work-hardened hands. Her language soars and dips, spare and lush, and always drives the story forward.

I loved the experience of reading this book. I didn't put it on a Kindle. This demands the reader enjoy it in analog format -- a page-turning book.