Reviews in Brief

A beautifully illustrated book about caution and care, Let’s Look, Not Touch by Kateryna Dronova, with illustrations by Valeriia Pertiia, is a charming growing-up adventure of exploration, admiration, and maternal wisdom. As a mother and her curious son spend their days and seasons wandering through parks, forests, beaches, and fields, they encounter dozens of interesting creatures along the way, and the lesson of the title is reinforced with each new discovery in the natural world. The rhyming and rhythm are not always on target, but the art is vivid and engaging, the wrap-up is sweetly encouraging, and the core lesson is an important one to instill early in every child’s life.

The romantic antics of reality TV collide with authentic off-camera passion in Not My Bachelor by Tricia Heggeness, a quick and steamy read with unexpected depth. When Rina, a jaded New York writer, meets a charming law-school hunk in the California sun, sparks fly fast and hot, but Marcus is already neck-deep in drama as one of six bachelors seeking love on a live-in dating show. Navigating inconvenient but undeniable feelings, they’re both forced to separate life-changing facts from on-screen fiction, rather than letting a real one slip away. For fans of first-person romance that delivers both sex and substance, this is a comfortingly predictable but well-plotted work of romance that also delves into the challenging realities of love and shared emotion.

The exhilarating biography of a golden boy gone bad, Kentucky Barracuda: The Notorious Scoundrel and Delightful Rogue of Antebellum & Civil War America by Joe Goodbody recounts the true tale of Parker Hardin French, a legendary 19th-century con man with inimitable style, and his hand in a bewildering number of schemes. From legitimate maritime ventures gone conveniently awry, narrow escapes during Gold Rush swindles, illicit legal dalliances in California, and international invasion schemes, Parker French was an infamous fraudster, a media darling, and an incorrigible annoyance to authorities on multiple continents. Backed by Goodbody’s remarkable depth of research into a broad historical record, this jaw-dropping story reveals a gentleman thief who never shied away from attention, controversy, or the allure of an unsuspecting mark, raising the profile of a man who has not always gotten his due, but remains one of the more colorful characters of the Civil War era.

A smirking wink and a nostalgic sigh all at once, The Usefulness of Hippopotamus: A Humorous Chapbook for Trying Times by Vincent J. Tomeo is a wry and raw collection that tugs at the petty and profound pieces of human nature in equal measure. From the validation of reading one’s poetry to a dog and relatable maternal guilt trips to playfully provocative tangents and astute observations in experimental forms, this collection gleams with whimsy and wisdom. Written during the pandemic in the midst of his own health crisis, this sometimes laugh-out-loud collection is a tangential and vulnerable offering from a formative time for us all, distinguished by the author’s recognizable observations and unique perspective on health and renewal.

A sharp-witted collection of aphorisms, observations, and weighty one-liners,  Washington Post is Switching Off Lights by Piotr Bardzik succinctly takes aim at the hypocrisies and paradoxes of modern life, dissecting a gamut of contemporary issues and taking an incisive blade to apathy. Bardzik’s wickedly creative wordplay launches cunning critiques of society, politics, media, language, medicine, and more, landing somewhere between profoundly wise and savagely scathing. Standing on the snarky shoulders of Ambrose Bierce and Dorothy Parker, this tongue-in-cheek examination of everything from patriotism and ego to our collective dopamine addiction is a cathartic work of social philosophy, which is at once heavily satirical and all too realistic.

A tenderly curated collection of amorous poetry, I Have Danced With Angels: Selected Love Poems (The Passion & Reason Poetry Series) by Joe Giampaolo captures the enigmatic experience of romantic connection. Worshipping at the altar of affection with lavish devotion and erotic creativity, these passionate poems are the work of a true philophile, a wordsmith unabashedly in love with love. Giampaolo entices readers to enter the realms of obsessive desire, immerse themselves in limerence, experience the ecstasy of satiation, and occasionally drown in the tragic loneliness of loss. The expressive language makes his free-flowing verse a provocative and enthralling feast for those who have felt similar desires, while his delicate haikus probe at heavy truths with exacting brilliance, resulting in an unassuming but enormously affecting collection.