Jordan Blum

2 weeks ago | thebookendsreview.com | Jordan Blum

Today, Aloysius O’Leary picked the wrong pocket. From the tippy-top of the Ferris wheel at the St. Louis World’s Fair, he watched blue-coated coppers weave around fairgoers at the crossroads of Skinker and Ceylon. With over fifteen-hundred structures and tens of thousands of people, he thought they’d never nab him or his accomplice. No problems all week, but if separated, they’d meet at the Ferris wheel.

3 weeks ago | thebookendsreview.com | Jordan Blum

I lived with a singer once, a number of years ago in that distant valley called youth. She had been the singer for a group called The Savage Blusterbox, and you can get the idea of the sort of music they made from that name. I was the roadie. I had no musical talent. I have no musical talent. Or even much interest. The band’s leader, Jorge, probably thought I took an interest in his music, if not music in general. This was one of many demonstrations of Jorge’s denseness. His stage name was Duneman.

3 weeks ago | thebookendsreview.com | Jordan Blum

It was the morning glorywreathed around the jersey’shorns that turned you intoa vegetarian. The beast stoodthere in the green pasturelike some bovine Ophelia,brown, beautiful and tragic,trailing white flowers, green hearts. How could I ever eat you? youmurmured and made a pactwith the future never to do so. I, with my eyes on the traffic lights,missed the scene and the promise,being concerned with the moreimmediate future by depressingthe throttle and heading down the road.

3 weeks ago | thebookendsreview.com | Jordan Blum

It’s not often that a writer is equally adept at poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and literary criticism, yet Lee Upton has been an exception to the rule for over a decade. Unsurprisingly, her latest novel—Wrongful—only cements that fact, as it’s a thoroughly stirring and imaginative but realistic mystery/character study (in the self-aware vein of Agatha Christie) that exemplifies her many talents.

3 weeks ago | thebookendsreview.com | Jordan Blum

Peter E. Murphy is the author of a dozen books and chapbooks of poetry and prose including the forthcoming A Tipsy Fairy Tale: A Coming of Age Memoir of Alcohol and Redemption about growing up in Wales and New York City. The founder of Murphy Writing of Stockton University based in Atlantic City, he leads writing workshops around the US an in Europe. I met Peter Murphy at the Murphy Writing Winter Getaway in January 2024.