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Murderland by Caroline Fraser

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Murderland by Caroline Fraser
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In this freewheeling braided memoir/true crime/environmental expose Pulitzer Prize winner Fraser builds a damning case, harsh detail by harsh detail, that the 70’s & 80’s serial killer zenith (think Ted Bundy, Green River Killer, Night Stalker) was, in part, caused by environmental pollution which poisoned millions but warped some young men into infamy. Not for the faint of heart, this book scares and infuriates in equal measure.

Murderland by Caroline Fraser, (List Price: $32, Penguin Press, 9780593657225, June 2025)

Reviewed by Sam Miller, Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky

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The Bible Says So by Dan McClellan

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The Bible Says So by Dan McClellan
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Immensely informative with a touch of wry humor sprinkled in his examinations, McClellan offers up an in-depth exploration of biblical text and how it’s (mis)interpreted in today’s society. Stripped away are faith-based arguments as we’re led through the etymology and historical context of many prevalent passages. A wondrous read for the faithful and the skeptical without vitriol towards those of differing opinions.

The Bible Says So by Dan McClellan, (List Price: $30, St. Martin’s Essentials, 9781250347466, April 2025)

Reviewed by Nath Mayes, Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky

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The Unicorn Woman by Gayle Jones

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The Unicorn Woman by Gayle Jones
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An intimate, grounded story with hope to claim the unobtainable thrumming at its center, this is a novel teeming with tangible characters & intimate, captivating prose. I was blissfully lost in its pages until they ceased, but not without an impression left behind.

The Unicorn Woman by Gayle Jones, (List Price: $17.95, Beacon, 9780807019627, May 2025)

Reviewed by Nath Mayes, Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky

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The Moon That Turns You Back by Hala Alyan

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The Moon That Turns You Back by Hala Alyan
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Simultaneously experimental and universal, these poems focus on heritage, fertility, displacement, and so much more. At turns fierce, at others tender, this collection is one I’ll want to devour again and again.

The Moon That Turns You Back by Hala Alyan, (List Price: $17.99, Ecco, 9780063317475, March 2024)

Reviewed by Nath Mayes, Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky

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Ginseng Roots: A Memoir by Craig Thompson

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Ginseng Roots: A Memoir by Craig Thompson
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Craig Thompson bursts back onto the Comix scene with this exquisitely crafted hybrid memoir/socio-cultural essay that explores his youthful experience working Wisconsin’s Ginseng farms and the fascinating history of this prized root as a bridge between Eastern and Western cultures. A book as rich in information as it is beautifully adorned.

Ginseng Roots: A Memoir by Craig Thompson, (List Price: $35, Pantheon, 9780593700778, April 2025)

Reviewed by Jonathan Hawpe, Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky

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Precious Rubbish by Kayla E.

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Precious Rubbish by Kayla E.
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Kayla E. is a ferociously inventive and blisteringly effective comix maker with an incredibly focused, original vision. Something of Chris Ware’s laser-honed visual sense and brutally tragicomic writing is in her artistic DNA, but melded with a rawer, bodily expression not unlike Lynda Barry or Phoebe Gloeckner’s. Precious Rubbish almost violently morphs and subverts the bubblegum slapstick of Nancy, Little Lulu, et al, and subverts the candy shine surfaces of 20th C. commercial illustrations, to make a universe of pain, sorrow, and black humor go down like a Coke and a smile mixed with acid and lye. Utterly brilliant.

Precious Rubbish by Kayla E., (List Price: $29.99, Fantagraphics, 9781683969280, April 2025)

Reviewed by Jonathan Hawpe, Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky

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Tongues, Volume 1 by Anders Nilsen

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Tongues, Volume 1 by Anders Nilsen
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Tongues is a masterpiece, and with it Anders Nilsen fulfills the most ambitious possibilities of the graphic novel as a medium. Rarely have images and words, form and function, been married so beautifully; his pages and panels bursting with innovative, jewel-like complexity and cascading, organic beauty. The story marries the erudite and the bawdy, political and mythical, violent and meditative, in ways that you find only in literature’s greatest: Utopia, Candide, Gulliver’s Travels, The Plague, The Castle, Cosmicomics, The Master and Margarita, White Noise. This book belongs in the pantheon.

Tongues, Volume 1 by Anders Nilsen, (List Price: $35, Pantheon, 9781524747206, March 2025)

Reviewed by Jonathan Hawpe, Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky

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Dear Writer by Maggie Smith

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Dear Writer by Maggie Smith
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So much more than a “how-to,” this book is a perfect primer for cultivating creativity within oneself. A cheerleader of a book in the best sense, it gives exercises to expand one’s artistic soul. This is a winner of a book and one to return to over and over and over.

Dear Writer by Maggie Smith, (List Price: $28.99, Washington Square Press, 9781982170844, April 2025)

Reviewed by Johanna Hynes, Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky

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Luminous by Silvia Park

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Luminous by Silvia Park
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An absolutely stunning debut that will enthrall literary and sci-fi readers alike. Luminous is set in a future unified Korea filled with robots, but at its heart it is a novel about three fractured siblings: robot personality programmer Morgan, who struggles to make meaningful human connections; robot crimes detective Jun, haunted by his past in the war, and their robot brother Yoyo, forever twelve, who lives in a scrapyard and makes friends with nearby schoolchildren. This novel is a rush to the senses, gorgeous, glorious, luminous.

Luminous by Silvia Park, (List Price: $29.99, Simon & Schuster, 9781668021668, March 2025)

Reviewed by Fisher Nash, Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky

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Milk White Steed by Michael Kennedy

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Milk White Steed by Michael Kennedy
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Michael Kennedy’s comix are somewhere between jazz, surrealism, Greek tragedy and Krazy Kat. Suffused with the grain and pain of hard luck life, these strange tales dot along the timeline of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora like messages from the Gods drawn in blood and fruit juice.

Milk White Steed by Michael Kennedy, (List Price: $24.95, Drawn and Quarterly, 9781770467590, February 2025)

Reviewed by Jonathan Hawpe, Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky

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Inverno by Cynthia Zarin

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Inverno by Cynthia Zarin
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Elegant and beautiful prose. This books reads like memory, floating from thought to thought and back again. Looping ideas and theories, childhood revelries and desires. A slender and stunning example of literary experimental fiction where love and life coincide.

Inverno by Cynthia Zarin, (List Price: $17, Picador, 9781250338174, January 2025)

Reviewed by Rachel Brewer, Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky

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Blob by Maggie Su

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Blob by Maggie Su
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The most surprisingly accurate description of being at loose ends in your early twenties that I’ve read. Vi is in the midst of an epic tailspin—a breakup, a failed class, an abandoned education—when she decides to take care of an apparently sentient blob she finds late one night behind a bar. Vi feels like the antihero of her own life, with disappointment all around her, but she, like the alien blob she nurtures, has to find a way to live in the world, too. This is the funny, thoughtful, antithetical romance novel you never knew you needed—but now you do.

Blob by Maggie Su, (List Price: $26.99, Harper, 9780063358645, January 2025)

Reviewed by Emma Aprile, Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky

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The Harder I Fight the More I Love You by Neko Case

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The Harder I Fight the More I Love You by Neko Case
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As far as music memoirs go, the supremely talented Neko Case brings a new and often mind-blowing perspective to an often paint-by-numbers genre. Mostly centered around her harrowing childhood and teen years and her fraught relationships with her parents, there’s loads to unpack, with shocks and trauma you will not believe. And the music! Her influences, how she got her start, and the joy and sorrow of the life on the road. Highly recommended!

The Harder I Fight the More I Love You by Neko Case, (List Price: $30, Grand Central Publishing, 9781538710500, January 2025)

Reviewed by Seth Tucker, Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky

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Sunday by Olivier Schrauwen

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Sunday by Olivier Schrauwen
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Olivier Schrauwen’s Sunday is an epic of interiority, emerging like a psychological hologram out of one fragile, mundane, ridiculous, precious human mind to commune with a world of love, sex, art, work, time, and experience at the nexus of the goofy and the transcendent: imagine James Joyce’s Ulysses as a comic book.

Sunday by Olivier Schrauwen, (List Price: $39.99, Fantagraphics, 9781683969679, October 2024)

Reviewed by Jonathan Hawpe, Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky

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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy 25th Anniversary Edition by Douglas Adams

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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 25th Anniversary Edition by Douglas Adams
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The perfect compendium for a beloved sci-fi classic, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy 25th Anniversary Edition holds five novels that follow the adventures of a British man (Arthur Dent) as he’s whisked away through the galaxy with a strange set of comrades to save the Earth, the Galaxy and themselves. Adams balances humor, wit, and some scientific insight in this series; be amazed to read about sentient dolphins who have their own language and singing abilities, a supercomputer who finally figures out the meaning of life, and many other zany characters.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy 25th Anniversary Edition by Douglas Adams, (List Price: $22, Crown, 9781400052929, August 2004)

Reviewed by Hilton Airall, Carmichael’s Bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky

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