Joanna Poncavage

Fiction

Literary Tale of Sadness, Sorrow and Grief Told by a Poet

Should a book ever win a prize for its unreliable narrator, bet on The Offering (Penelope Books) by Salah el Moncef. The narrator in question is Tariq Abbassi, a lapsed Muslim who leaves Tunisia to study philosophy at the Sorbonne but ends up running a successful Middle Eastern restaurant in…

Joanna PoncavageNovember 7, 2022

Fiction Fiction - Featured Recommended

Literary Journey of Self-Discovery Shows the Making of a Man

It’s a bold and gutsy move to open a book with a description of two dead men, their bodies mangled at the bottom of a construction pit, blood running from their mouths and stiffening into maroon jelly. “If you have to, blame me for wanting to feel the rush that…

Joanna PoncavageOctober 31, 2022

Fiction Fiction - Featured

Alternate History Gives Autonomy to Enslaved Young Man in America

What if? That’s the question the alternate history genre of speculative fiction poses as it weaves together real events and gives them a different outcome. One of the best-known examples is Philip K. Dick’s classic, The Man in the High Castle, in which Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan win WWII.…

Joanna PoncavageOctober 4, 2022

Nonfiction Nonfiction - Featured

The Joys of a Natural Disaster in Powerful Memoir Placing Family Above All

Fifty years ago in June of 1972, Agnes, one of the most devastating storms in hurricane history, caused record damage across large swaths of the eastern United States. In Pennsylvania, up to 19 inches of rain fell, rivers overflowed and more than 200,000 residents lost their homes. Of the estimated…

Joanna PoncavageSeptember 16, 2022

Fiction Fiction - Featured

An Otherworld Journey Delivers Surreal Fantasy

It was a dark and stormy night (yes, really). Icy rain falls as a six-wheeled imperial berlin drawn by eight great horses hurtles along a mountain road, followed by a mounted escort on unruly thoroughbreds. Inside the coach are the aging, bejeweled Lady Drasher Elizabeth Tasgneganz, two doctors and two…

Joanna PoncavageAugust 22, 2022

Fiction Thrillers Thrillers - Featured

Pandemic Thriller Has an Unusual Villain: Our Health Care System

When Irv Tinsley, an epidemiologist investigator with the Seattle-King County Public Health Offices arrives at a remote country cabin to examine a body, he finds its condition “a bit off.” There’s a strange smell emanating from the corpse, and an unusual pattern of decay. Toxicology tests indicate the man may…

Joanna PoncavageJune 22, 2022

BooksToScreen Fiction Fiction - Featured

Love In the Time of War, Anti-Semitism & Racism

In 1943, a trip to Miami Beach to escape Michigan’s icy-cold winter had seemed like such a good idea. But when two young women arrive after a horrible three-day train ride, they find the hotel rooms taken up by Army Air Corps soldiers in training there. Even worse, one hotel…

Joanna PoncavageJune 17, 2022

Fiction Fiction - Featured

“My Name Is Edward”: A Novel of Homelessness, Heartbreak and Hope

My Name Is Edward by Annmarie Topel is a carefully crafted debut novel based on personal experience. “This is a story of fiction inspired, in part, by true events,” she writes. She dedicates her book to the homeless man, who in her book she names Edward: “You will always be in…

Joanna PoncavageJune 15, 2022

Fiction Fiction - Featured

Who Was NeOmi? A Poetic Novel Explores Cultural Identity

Her Name Was NeOmi (Gatekeeper Press) by Seta Shishmanian is a tale of immigrants, told in an idiosyncratic, poetic style in the present tense. Its effect is dreamlike and surreal. After translating her grandfather’s letter, Katherine writes a novel based on what she has learned about her family. Her publisher…

Joanna PoncavageJune 14, 2022

Fiction Fiction - Featured

A Roman Soldier Takes on Black Magic in “The Vampire Affair”

Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres. Gaul as a whole is divided into three parts. It’s the first sentence of Julius Caesar’s Commentariii De Bello Gallico (Commentaries on the Gallic War), his story of Rome’s conquest of a vast area of Europe stretching from today’s Switzerland to Great Britain. …

Joanna PoncavageJune 3, 2022

Business Nonfiction Nonfiction - Featured

The Death of Cryptocurreny Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

Some crypto-pundits compare the cryptocurrency phenomenon to the Internet — a specialized technology that became universal. Cryptocurrency hasn’t yet become part of most daily lives, but according to that same New York Times column, “20 percent of American adults, and 36 percent of millennials, own cryptocurrency.” Blockchain Ethics: Fighting Honorable…

Joanna PoncavageMay 16, 2022

Nonfiction

A Vietnam War Vet Gives Gives His Firsthand Account in “Going Off the Beach”

Drafted into the Army when he was 20 and sent to South Vietnam in 1969, Robert Garlick spent the next year in the “hostile, volatile, bloody” Binh Dinh Province on the country’s central coast. “If one were to review my military records, I am certain one would find them most…

Joanna PoncavageMay 11, 2022

Nonfiction Nonfiction - Featured

Find Out How Deep Police Corruption Runs in “Black, White and Gray All Over”

Compton, California, is a city known for gangs, drugs, gangsta rap and, at one time a murder rate 10 times the national average. Black White and Gray All Over, a memoir by Frederick Douglass Reynolds and subtitled “A Black Man’s Odyssey in Life and Law Enforcement” is an insider’s view…

Joanna PoncavageApril 21, 2022

Fiction Thrillers Thrillers - Featured

“Surfacing” Dives Into Secret Deep State

Surfacing (Fiery Dawn), a new thriller by Andrew Dean, brims with secret military operations and what-if scenarios not too far from possibility, if not probability. The book begins in the unforgiving heat of Afghanistan as Theodore (last name redacted) watches the gate of a heavily guarded U.S. military outpost. Teddy,…

Joanna PoncavageApril 11, 2022

Nonfiction Nonfiction - Featured

Find Out How Celebrities Touch the Masses in “Celebrities Against Violence”

Celebrities Against Violence: Case Studies in Speaking Out by Truman R. Keys is a scholarly look at what makes celebrities such powerful spokespeople. Keys notes that their fame makes it easy for people to relate, just as we might listen to a friend’s opinion or experiences. Celebrities also can “plainspeak” complex…

Joanna PoncavageApril 5, 2022

Fiction Fiction - Featured

Transcend “The Fourth Wall” With a Psychic Soldier’s Afghanistan War Story

Possessing extrasensory powers, Captain Thomas Jett was living comfortably in Houston, building up his law practice and serving in the Army Reserve when he got the call to volunteer in Afghanistan. “With all my experience in law, military intelligence, archeology, and the knowledge of the occult, I was the one.”…

Joanna PoncavageMarch 18, 2022

Joanna Poncavage

Literary Journey of Self-Discovery Shows the Making of a Man

Alternate History Gives Autonomy to Enslaved Young Man in America

The Joys of a Natural Disaster in Powerful Memoir Placing Family Above All

An Otherworld Journey Delivers Surreal Fantasy

Pandemic Thriller Has an Unusual Villain: Our Health Care System

Love In the Time of War, Anti-Semitism & Racism

“My Name Is Edward”: A Novel of Homelessness, Heartbreak and Hope

Who Was NeOmi? A Poetic Novel Explores Cultural Identity

A Roman Soldier Takes on Black Magic in “The Vampire Affair”

The Death of Cryptocurreny Has Been Greatly Exaggerated

A Vietnam War Vet Gives Gives His Firsthand Account in “Going Off the Beach”

Find Out How Deep Police Corruption Runs in “Black, White and Gray All Over”

“Surfacing” Dives Into Secret Deep State

Transcend “The Fourth Wall” With a Psychic Soldier’s Afghanistan War Story

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