Winter’s Bone

Winter’s Bone

By Daniel Woodrell

Review by Pam Blittersdorf

Author Daniel Woodrell creates a memorable heroine in 16 year old Ree Dolly. Ree desparately wants to escape the poverty of her Ozark community and enlist in the Army (“where you got to travel with a gun and they make everybody help keep things clean”), but she feels duty-bound to her family. Her meth-cooking dad has posted the family home as collateral, then jumped bail. To save her younger brothers and mentally ill mother, Ree has to ask some tough questions about her father’s fate. The folks with the answers to those questions don’t take kindly to being asked. The language of the novel is gritty, genuine and suspenseful. Ree’s grim humor and determination are certain to catch you up in her story. Continue reading

Horrorstör

HorrorstörHorrorstör by Grady Hendrix

Review by Angie Andre

I have lived in the hell many of you know as retail for over 20 years.  I appreciated the craziness, impossible expectations, prison like mentality, always selling, selling, selling. Horrorstör is a retail nightmare for its employees. This knock off Ikea superstore in Ohio is a strange place to work.  Unexplainable things happen. Sales are low and management wants to know why.  Three employees decide to stay overnight and figure out what is happening when the lights go off at night. This is where Hendrix lost me. Continue reading