Romantic chick-lit crossed with Japanese illustrated Manga is a fusion too good to pass up. Like exotic bubble tea that keeps popping up in local tea shops, you just have to try it, whether or not you will like it can be determined after the first sip. Response, written by Penny Jordan with art by [...]
About: Melissa Slachetka
Website: http://melissaslachetka.blogspot.com/
Melissa graduated with a degree in English Literature. After moving to Minneapolis, she discovered freelance writing. Melissa's work has been featured in local publications such as Twin Cities Statement, Rain Taxi, The Bridge, The Downtown Journal, The Northeaster, and Twin Cities Daily Planet. She also enjoys photography, writing poetry, and traveling.
It seems like a recipe for failure to have your storyline told by a family pet, expound on the sport of racecar driving, and top it off with the idea of reincarnation. The fact that this novel works is a testament to Garth Stein's skill as an author. The plot is crafted beautifully, the characters [...]
Off We Go into the Wild Blue Yonder is a new novel by Travis Nichols, with the title taken from a popular World War II bomber song. The story is told through a group of letters written to Luddie, a Polish woman, who hid the main character's grandfather from Nazi's during the war. The main [...]
Laurie Lindeen (who answered MN Reads 6 questions last year) sets us up for a solid rock-n-roll road-trip in Petal Pusher: A Rock and Roll Cinderella Story. With its sassy pink cover, this memoir will do its best to surprise you with brutal honesty and boundless energy. Lindeen and her band, Zuzu's Petals, may not [...]
Bonnie Rough expertly straddles the fine line of too much information in her new book Carrier, Untangling the Danger in my DNA. Reality and memoir fill in the pieces to Rough's past as she writes about her genetic abnormality � an inherited DNA trait � that she could likely pass on to future children. “In [...]
Dreams of Sex and Stage Diving is the best Martin Millar book since Good Fairies of New York. It is uncouth, dirty, and a lot of fun. Millar taps into confused youths brave denial of any proper society, by pushing sexual boundaries and creating a punk-rock playground. The writing is graphic and gratuitous, with an [...]
Shocking and powerful: Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa is a history of heartache that will turn on the water-works. It is an intimate portrait of true loves' deep scars and generations of families that get brought together and pulled apart so many times, that it's like ripping a band-aid off the same place again [...]
Under the idyllic and pastoral cover, The Stranger Manual by Catie Rosemurgy is a creepy little book of poems. It juxtaposes the realities of grotesque and pretty: of comic and disturbing. While this seems alarming, it may not be a bad thing. Miss Peach, an ever-appearing character in the verses, is as compelling as Miss [...]
The Last Days of Madame Rey is a perfect companion to A. W. Hill's Nowhere-Land. Both feature the daring PI Stephan Raszer, and although Madame Rey came first, it has just been newly released in a paperback with brand-new cover art. Both reads are intense, but Madame Rey has an earthy mother-nature tone where science [...]
Greg Hewett's new book of poems, darkacre, dabbles in property law as well as the physical and abstract definitions surrounding it. The poetry collection’s name is a play on the legal term 'blackacre' which simply defines one property from another, 'whiteacre', for contracts and legal proceedings. Hewett takes this from law to literary, with poems [...]
Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty is a colorful and contradictory view of America. The poems are a filled with musings on the century we are living in and the dynamics of love and life. Tony Hoagland's verses seem to ask if we are just bold adventurers claiming a new democratic royalty or is [...]
Like a CSI television drama, Find the Girl captures our full attention. The poems deal with the death of and lurking danger to girls and young women. Author, Lightsey Darst's verses urge the reader to tap into the days of innocence when running through fields was brave exploration and lips were stained red by Kool-Aid, [...]
Minneapolis's own Hell's Kitchen is no relation to the television show of same name but it is just as intense, and reading the story behind its success is even better than watching Chef Ramsay yell. The vivacious chef and owner of our local hellish hotspot is Mitch Omer. He joins literary forces with Ann Bauer, [...]
Writer's block, obsessive authors, and drunken arrests, don't begin to describe John McNally's novel, After the Workshop. Main character, Jack Hercules Sheahan, is a writer that had a chance to make a name for himself as a novelist and let it slip through his fingers, finding himself years later as an ill-paid, often disrespected media [...]
Ruby and the Stone Age Diet is a classic Martin Millar novel with a jumble of sub-plots, twists and turns, and an unnamed narrator. Millar, once again, explores the world of Britain's underclass filled with dreamers, tweakers, and lovable misfits. Threads of storyline intermingle to create a literary fog that is great to get lost [...]
