Briar Patch Books

Category: Contemporary literary fiction

  • Gems of insight, writing

    It’s summer – almost – so Bob Moyer is off on a road trip on his Harley. But, fortunately, he’s had time to send us a review of a book that offers a more sedentary way to sample what America has to offer. By Robert Moyer PULPHEAD. By John Jeremiah Sullivan. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.…

  • At home in America

    Got a long driving trip ahead of you? Just like to relax and let somebody tell you stories? Briar Patch Books looks at an audio book that’s a marvelous, poignant family saga that will tug at your emotions and enrich your life. By Linda C. Brinson A GOOD AMERICAN. By Alex George. Read by Gibson…

  • Love vs. justice

    It’s spring break, and I’m sure my students are hard at work on the articles they have due soon after we reconvene in Chapel Hill. My assignment to myself was to try to get caught up on some book reviews. There are some that are more belated than this one, but Defending Jacob is on…

  • Alexander McCall Smith: He’s not just about the Ladies’ Detective Agency

    Like many readers, I fell in love with Precious Ramotswe when Alexander McCall Smith’s first No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency novel arrived on the scene in the United States in 2001 (a few years after it was published in the United Kingdom). I eagerly awaited the next installments in the series, and I was gratified…

  • All aboard for a magical ride

    Because I listen to audio books when I drive, I’ve developed a rating system that involves how far extra I’ll drive to keep listening to a book if I reach my destination in mid-chapter – or even mid-book.  This one cost me a lot of extra miles and gas. But that investment paid off handsomely…

  • Brother, sisters, choices

    Anne Barnhill, who has written a memoir about growing up with an autistic sister, reviews a fictional treatment of a similar family situation. (Congratulations to Anne, whose novel, AT THE MERCY OF THE QUEEN: A Novel of Anne Boleyn, Debut will be published by St. Martin’s Press in January!) By Anne Barnhill THE WAY THINGS…

  • Dangerous mountain

    Remember Charles Frazier, the North Carolina writer who made a huge splash with his first novel, Cold Mountain, in 1997? Then word got out that he received a staggeringly large advance for his second novel, Thirteen Moons, nine years later. As a result, there was more media attention to the business of publishing his books…

  • A chorus of voices from our past

    The saga of the Japanese “picture brides” who came from Japan to California after World War I is a sad chapter of American history that is unfamiliar to many of us. More of us know a little about the later internment of these women and their families, along with other Japanese Americans, during World War…

  • A wonderful book, with flowers

    Here’s another one of those books I might have missed had I not listened to its audio version during my commute (and, truth be told, sometimes while driving a little extra to see what happens next). And what a loss that would have been. This book is a true work of art. By Linda Brinson…

  • A literary master

    Bob Moyer left from the Piedmont Triad International Airport in Greensboro, N.C., for a month in England and Germany a couple of hours after I left from the same airport on the same August day for a week in Italy. We were flying on different airlines, but before I left, I used my boarding pass…