Jean Harkin

Hi Friends and Followers-- I am happy now to announce the publication and release of my debut novel, "Promise Full of Thorns" published by Brown Posey Press, an imprint of Sunbury Press. It is available now at Sunbury Press and Amazon.com. Soon it will be available through bookstores, distributed by Ingram. "Promise Full of Thorns" is also available on Kindle and other e-books.

Hi Friends and Followers-- I'm happy to announce the publication of my book of short stories, "Night in Alcatraz: And Other Uncanny Tales." It is now available on Amazon at an affordable price. Here's the link: https://www.amazon.com/Night-Alcatraz...

I'm happy to answer questions about my book anytime. And I'll send a free copy to the first Friend (in USA) who requests one.

Hi to My Friends: You are all invited to see my new author page and blog. Just click on my picture and my page will appear on your screen. I'll try to keep my blog up to date every week. Feel free to leave comments anytime. And thanks Sheila and Judy for your comments already!

I often find links between books I read, sometimes matching up the most unlikely of books. This time I found something in common between Peter Matthiesen's "In Paradise," and Alexander McCall Smith's "The Revolving Door of Life." Such unlikely companions: "In Paradise" is a somber, psychological book about a reunion of people from diverse backgrounds reuniting at Auschwitz in 1996. "The Revolving Door of Life" is a light, often hilarious read about residents in an Edinburgh neighborhood.

What could they possibly have in common? In both novels, characters experienced a mystical, unexplainable, unexpected experience. In "In Paradise," it happened with a spontaneous linking of hands and a 'dance' at the prison camp. In "The Revolving Door. . .", Angus Lordie is at a dinner party and looks out the window onto the sunset-lit skyline of Edinburgh and suddenly feels at one with humanity. His wife Domenica's explanation illuminates both experiences: ". . . a vision of agape, that pure disinterested love of one's fellow man that so many of us would love to find, but never do."

See my review of "Deadly Gold" by Ken Baysinger. Ken will present the program at Writers' Mill meeting, June 19. I recommend the book if you enjoy a good detective mystery.

What was Colum McCann thinking of when he titled his latest book "Thirteen Ways of Looking"?! That title is just 3 words short of Jane Smiley's "13 Ways of Looking at the Novel"! I wonder what McCann was looking at. He surely didn't look up previous book titles before he labeled his!

FYI-- For anyone who saw the update that I was following author Kathryn Atwood, I no longer am!

I have just finished reading a book that was reviewed in the newspaper a week or so ago. The title "So Far, So Good" by Ralph Salisbury wasn't among the 12 or so books of this title that Goodreads came up with. Goodreads couldn't find it, but Google did-- also Amazon did. The book won the 2012 River Teeth Prize for Literary Nonfiction and was therefore published by University of Nebraska Press. This book struck my fancy because the author is a shirttail relative who grew up in Iowa-- familiar territory to me. I figured I'd learn some things about that part of the family I hadn't known before, and I was not disappointed. I found out a lot! Turns out this family is part Cherokee/Shawnee Indian, and that heritage comes through loud and clear, more so than the Irish. I would rate the book 3 1/2 stars, even if the author weren't a relative. The author is a poet, so the narrative style was punched throughout with poetic flourishes as it hopped and danced around from childhood to WWII experiences, from near-death experiences to family life and his literary history and career as a university educator (most recently at U of Oregon).