The Bookends Review

Established in 2012, The Bookends Review is a standalone creative arts journal that focuses on showcasing exceptional original works. It features a diverse range of content, including fiction, nonfiction, poetry, interviews, essays, book reviews, and visual and musical art from across the globe.

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Articles

Beat the Devil - The Bookends Review

1 week ago | thebookendsreview.com | Jordan Blum

Hell is nothing like what anyone says, Michael thought as he walked through the large iron bar gates. They were cracked just enough for him to slip under the chain linking them together. He stood there for a moment. As he walked down the cobblestone street, the thought solidified in his mind. Not like anything anywhere. Plato has described a giant layered prison of sins. The vikings told of a barren, cold wasteland at the bottom of the universe.
Samsara - The Bookends Review

1 week ago | thebookendsreview.com | Jordan Blum

The old man crouches beside a straw basket, weary from his travels, his skin glistening with sweat. Children run past him, tumbling through bright saris hanging from twine. Squatters look over his clothes, the few possessions he’s carried for miles on his orange turban. He closes his eyes and blows into the tip of a pungi, emitting a low humming sound.
The Darkness Rising

2 weeks ago | thebookendsreview.com | Jordan Blum

The moon’s gaunt and narrow. …………..They say our corridor through life’s…………..measured by the moon. …………..Slim as a tunnel, I tuck my legs under my knees. Pat scratches licks on the rosewood,…………..strumming them in fragments of silk and nylon. …………..Three-Part Rasguedo, Golpe,…………..Rumbagitana. …………..He plays. Fire-starting calluses, fireboard,…………..spun Mullein, none of these items…………..are amazed by their use. In the circle dance,…………..my back foot scratches the dust.
Laura and Ollie - The Bookends Review

2 weeks ago | thebookendsreview.com | Jordan Blum

Laura liked to think she was honest with herself; it was everyone else she lied to. In the end, what difference would it make? It would only cause everyone to worry and fuss and make a big deal out of it, and she just wanted to live what little life she had in peace. Was that too much to ask? Actually, if she was honest with herself, she needed to acknowledge that it couldn’t be a secret forever.
Decker Canyon - The Bookends Review

2 weeks ago | thebookendsreview.com | Jordan Blum

It was May 14th 1971, my seventeenth birthday. I was stuck in the restaurant kitchen at chi chi Bullocks’ Department store in Sherman Oaks, California, working the early dinner shift for Tuesday’s weekly designer fashion show. It sucked being young and poor, but restaurant work was a good source of rent and provided meals every shift; two blessings for an only child in the recession of the 70’s living with a single, bipolar mom.
1904: Mishap at the Fair

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.
The Torch Singer

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.
Convolvulus - The Bookends Review

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.
Missing Mira: A Review of 'Wrongful' by Lee Upton

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.
Undressing in Public: An Interview with Peter Murphy

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.