Looking to read more Indiana authors?
Every month, we’re releasing a book review highlighting a new book by a Hoosier author, reviewed by a Hoosier writer. Check back every month for a new recommendation or look for the review in your local paper.
All Book Reviews
Indiana Hill Country Poems
By Norbert Krapf | Reviewed By Edward Byrne
Norbert Krapf deftly invites readers of his poetry to visit places personally important to him and to meet the people, past and present, with whom he has shared those locations. Within the carefully crafted lines of poetry in Indiana Hill Country Poems, his work repeatedly displays deep insight into the human condition, compelling a certain […]
The Lucky One
By Lori Rader-Day | Reviewed By Michael Koryta
The missing stay missing, so they can’t report back, Lori Rader-Day writes on the first page of her excellent fifth novel, The Lucky One. And then she proceeds to report back for the missing, across 377 pages of intricately woven suspense. The Lucky One is very much a novel of contemporary concerns, and even contemporary […]
Wake Up, Woods
By Gillian Harris (Illustrations), Michael Homoya (Text), Shane Gibson (Verses) | Reviewed By Helen Frost
On the beautiful front cover of this book, a mouse sniffs along the edge, a caterpillar munches on a leaf, and a bee gathers pollen from a flower. Another flower remains closed, but you can almost see it begin to unfold its petals and open to the sun. Everything about the image—mouse, leaves, flowers, caterpillar and bee—invite the reader to open the book […]
Now Entering Addamsville
By Francesca Zappia | Reviewed By Sarah J. Schmitt
Francesca Zappia’s newest novel, Now Entering Addamsville, opens with a fiery mystery. When George Masrell’s house burns down in the middle of the night, all eyes in Addamsville turn to local teen Zora Novak. Never mind that she was on the other side of town trying to make up for the crimes of her father. Or the fact that the last time she’d been near a fire she’d woken […]
Do Not Go On
By Bryan Furuness | Reviewed By Lori Rader-Day
Late in Bryan Furuness’s Do Not Go On, the narrator, the current director of the federal Witness Security Program, recalls his predecessor telling a story to a family that will soon go into hiding. While no one in the room seems to be taking in the plot, the narrator sees his old boss as “Charon, […]
Tornado Weather
By Deborah E. Kennedy | Reviewed By Cathy Day
There are two ways to write about Indiana—warmly and fuzzily, stirred by sentimentality and nostalgia, and a way that tells the truth. Take for example Deborah E. Kennedy’s debut novel, Tornado Weather, the most recent emerging author winner of the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Awards. Which kind is it? The title of the […]
The Book of Delights
By Ross Gay | Reviewed By Callista Buchen
In The Book of Delights, a collection of lyric essays by Ross Gay from Algonquin Books, Gay describes “feeling delighted and compelled to both wonder about and share that delight.” Driven by that impulse, Gay writes the 102 short essays that make up The Book of Delights, exploring delight with beauty, humor, and a tender, […]
