Smorgasbord Book Promotions – Summer Book Fair 2023 – #Poetry #Fairystories by Luanne Castle, #Mystery #Thriller N.A. Granger, #Shortstories D.L. Finn

Posted on June 17, 2023 by Smorgasbord - Variety is the Spice of Life.

This year in the first part of the Summer Book Fair, I will be revisiting some of the new books on the shelves promotions for the last six months. It offers not just an opportunity to boost the book but also to share a follow up review. Later on in the series I will also be sharing my recommended books from the last 12 months and one of their more current reviews. Not all the books are newly published but they are new to the Smorgasbord Bookshelf.

The first book today is a poetry collection by Luanne Castle published at the end of January 2023 Our Wolves

About the Collection

For many years, I explored fairy tales, such as Little Red Riding Hood stories from around the world, and taught them in my children’s literature class. Traditional literature, like folk and fairy tales, was one of my favorite topics of the course. I was particularly fascinated with the French and German (Perrault and Grimm) versions of Red Riding Hood and decided to address the subject in a poetic way.

I am happy to announce my newest poetry chapbook, Our Wolves (Alien Buddha Press, 2023). Our Wolves looks at the identity of wolves in our everyday lives and the varied ways of viewing the wolf. For example, this character cannot be seen as merely bad or even redeemed or misunderstood, as in some interpretations of the fairy tale. Similarly, “Little Red” is not simply a victim or a representation of innocence. Instead, this collection reveals the tale as a conduit for many voices and interpretations of gender, identity, and feminism.

How to Digest the Wolf

Explore the wilderness of your father’s workshop.
Listen so intently that you can hear a turtle scratching
in the window well.
Offer an hour of pinochle or hoops.
Another distraction might be a good report card.
Study his face for bared teeth or curled lips.
Take the belt without crying.
Swallow the soap bubbles without crying.
Look into his yellow eyes without flinching.
Build a moat around your bed with piles of books.
Go out to play after dinner and don’t come home until the stars appear,
Then sneak in to your bedroom as if you were always there.
Stay overnight at anybody’s house, even the girl who smells like pee.
Find a wolf hunter to be your boyfriend.
Go away to college or, if that doesn’t work, marry the hunter.
Sign up for classes in wolf psychology and lupine warfare.
Lock up the hunter when the wolf comes around. Lay on your new armor
and sharpen your tongue. The better to chew him with.

One of the reviews for the collection

Elizabeth Gauffreau Fresh, Imaginative & Wholly Original!

Our Wolves, Luanne Castle’s second poetry chapbook, offers a fresh, imaginative, and wholly original challenge to the wolf trope prevalent in Western culture, wherein wolves are portrayed as representing our worst primitive urges. I particularly appreciated the way the poems challenge this trope through the use of concrete sensory imagery and compelling, individualized speaker voices. There is anger, regret, and a certain fearlessness in these voices. I believed them.

The opening poem, “A Snowy Night in Manistee River Valley,” immediately anchors the reader in the physical world–a cabin in the woods, a tarp-covered woodpile, a big chainsaw, mailboxes along a dirt road. We may have driven on such a dirt road ourselves and idly wondered who might live in that cabin.

But for the person inside the cabin looking out, a blizzard has changed the familiar landscape and introduced an element of danger: “Unseen, the dark river has been stilled.” And yet, the speaker “feel[s] stir crazy.” The cozy warmth from the wood stove at the beginning of the poem has become worrying. The speaker feels the need to get outside to “let the chill wind wake me to myself,” and bring clarity to which dangers have substance and which do not.

The need for clarity about the substance of danger is one of the primary themes in the chapbook. It prompted me to reflect on my own ignorance when I was younger of danger and those who would do women harm. For example, the prose poem “When Grandmothers were Diabetic and Ate Dietetic Food” hit home particularly hard with its ending lines: “Her parents stood firm / on good manners in fear’s face. / The End. (Not really.”) I was brought up the same way, and I have had to teach myself to be rude to protect myself from predators of every ilk. Another poem that hit particularly hard was “School for Girls Who Shouldn’t Trust.” I’ve lived that poem, both as a young girl and as a teacher.

The chapbook achieves its power by presenting constantly moving perspectives on the wolves in our lives, including a suite of poems from the varying perspectives of the characters in the fairy tale “Little Red Riding Hood.” Each speaker–the grandmother, the mother, the wolf, the hunter/woodsman–seeks to tell Little Red’s story, thereby determining her identity according to their own definition, as well as their own identities. Unlike the fairy tale, in which the cast of characters are cardboard cutouts moved around a cautionary tale, Castle’s characters–the grandmother, the mother, the wolf, the hunter/woodsman, Little Red herself–are living, breathing people, who reveal complex emotions and motivations through the language of everyday speech:

“They say she was on her way to bring me gifts, but the only
times she would call was when
she hankered for a sucker
or wanted a dress for a dance.” (“What Happens in the Dark When It’s Cold Outside”)

Another suite of poems–”How to Digest a Wolf,” “from the kitchen you enter,” “Grounded,” and “How to Make a Hand Shadow Wolf”–uses the wolf as metaphor for the speaker’s father. These poems are so unflinching in their honesty, I found them devastating to read.

Our Wolves is a remarkable poetic achievement and an equally remarkable reading experience. I highly recommend it for readers who enjoy thought-provoking, emotive poetry with nuance and depth.

Head over to read the reviews and buy the collection: Amazon US – And: Amazon UK

Also by Luanne Castle

Read the reviews and buy the books: Amazon US – And: Amazon UK – More reviews: Goodreads – Website/blog: Luanne Castle – Twitter: @writersitetweet – LinkedIn: Luanne Castle

The next book was published in early April and very pleased to share my review for the book by N.A. Granger – Death at the Asylum: Rhe Brewster Mystery Series, Book 5

About the book

Attending the opening of a new commercial center, Rhe Brewster, an ER nurse and police investigator, and her husband Sam, chief of the Pequod police department, save the governor of Maine from a sniper attack. They are assigned to a task force to find the sniper, at the same time trying to identify the person who has stolen Rhe’s personal data and is using it to run up thousands of dollars in debt and even steal their home. Rhe treats a student from Pequod University raped following a night at a local bar and soon discovers there is a serial rapist on the loose.

The threats to Rhe and Sam escalate as a sociopath from Rhe’s past reemerges in a strange twist. Are any of these perpetrators linked?

Maine’s most tenacious sleuth is back, surrounded by the colorful characters who populate the coastal town of Pequod. In this fifth installment of the Rhe Brewster Mysteries, Rhe’s strength and determination are tested to their limits while she tries to protect her unborn child.

My review for the book June 6th 2023

What a great story, interesting characters and setting for this story. I love the family unit that the author has created with multi-tasking mother to be Rhe, her husband Sam who is Chief of Police and her son Jack from her previous marriage to Sam’s brother.

Although this is the fifth book in the series it easily stands alone with a brief overview to set the scene and I found it very easy to get into the flow of the book immediately. All the main characters and those in a supporting role form a strong cast of players as the drama unfolds.

Rhe and her family live in a close knit community and when a sniper takes aim at the Governor of Maine it hits hard for everyone. As well as being an ER nurse, Rhe works part-time in the police department a job that she loves and she assists with the investigation into the shooting and a dangerous rapist on the prowl. However, there is a more personal danger about to intrude into their peaceful life, a hangover from one of the previous books in the series.

As well as contending with the unsettling activities of their unknown enemy, Rhe also has to deal with her boss at the hospital who is out to get rid of her because of her stand against him, and a troubling series of drug thefts from the emergency room.

All these different threads come together in this fast paced thriller with many unexpected twists and some heart-stopping moments.

The ending leaves the door open for another in the series which I understand is in the works and I look forward to catching up with Rhe Brewster again sometime soon. Highly rcommended.

Head over to read the reviews and buy the book: Amazon US – And: Amazon UK

Also by Noelle Granger

Head over to read more about Noelle A. Granger and buy her books: Amazon US – And: Amazon UK – Blog: Sayling Away – Goodreads:Noelle A. Granger – Twitter: @NAGrangerAuthor

The third book today also released in April is the amazing short story collection by D.L. Finn – In the Tree’s Shadow: A collection of stories that exist in your dreams… and nightmares.

About the collection

A collection of short stories where dreams and nightmares co-exist.

Nestled inside these pages, you’ll meet a couple in their golden years who take a trip with an unexpected detour, a boy desperate to give his brother the Christmas gift he asked for, a girl with a small glass dragon who is at the mercy of her cruel uncles, or a young mother who has the same dream about murder.

You’ll be introduced to worlds where people get second chances and monsters might be allowed their desires while angels and dragons try to help. Happy endings occur, but perspective can blur the line between good and evil in these twenty-seven tales.

Since the stories vary between 99 to 12k words, whether you have only five minutes or an entire evening to settle into reading, there is something that will suit your time and taste.

One of the reviews for the collection

Every book I read from this author is great, and this was no exception. This book is a collection of short stories that she’s written over the years, and I enjoyed every single one of them. She has a gift of creating such rich characters in just a few pages. Her scenes draw you in immediately, and you can’t help but connect with what the characters are going through.

Many of the stories have a paranormal flare, which I LOVE! The author has a series on evildwels, spirits that invade people and encourage them to do evil things. It’s a great series, and I was happy to see that she included a story about them in this book. She had several other stories where people were haunted by evil but found their way to the light, which I always love.

She also includes heartfelt stories of redemption or closure. A few of the stories focused on dystopia and a possible apocalypse here and there (lol!). And then there were the stories with crazy twists in them that were right up my alley. I honestly loved all the stories. Some are as short as 99 words while others were multiple pages, including a novella at the end. All of them were worth reading, and I highly recommend this book to everyone!

Read the reviews and buy the collection: Amazon UK – And: Amazon US

A selection of books by D.L. Finn