Be Frank With Me

Be Frank with Me, is a witty and touching novel by Julia Claiborne Johnson.  Alice Whitley, the narrator of the story, is a young publishing associate from New York City … Continued


Dirty Grandpa is Super Dirty

I like it when comedies have heart. Dirty Grandpa is a movie about love and loss, of doing what makes you happy and being your own person. It also features Zac Efron … Continued


Becoming a Jackal

Becoming a Jackal is the debut long-play presentation of the songwriting of Conor J. O’Brien, an Irish singer and multi-instrumentalist with the band Villagers. Comfortable manipulating multiple harmonic forms integrated into … Continued


The War of the End of the World

The best contemporary fiction of any era provides some insight into the moment of its creation, possessing a specificzeitgeist, or peering through a particular weltanschauung.  In the ink or ribbon or … Continued


Ordinary Victories

With Ordinary Victories and its concluding volume, Ordinary Victories:  What is Precious, Manu Larcenet describes the common state of humanity in our contemporary moment.  Ordinary Victories is a primeval and … Continued


Burning Valley

Burning Valley is perhaps the most political novel of Southwestern Pennsylvania ever written.  Published in 1953, the book is set in the depths of a hollow on the outskirts of Duquesne, Pennsylvania, in the years … Continued


August Wilson’s Pittsburgh

At a performance of any one of the ten plays in August Wilson’s “Century Cycle” (also known as his “Pittsburgh Cycle”), the experience of the African American community in the … Continued


Everything I never told you

A story about an unsolved crime, a family tragedy and a moving portait of a mixed race family living in small-town America.


The Turner House

Part historical fiction, part family drama, and all heart – The Turner House tells the story of a family’s fifty years in Detroit.