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The Rally by Carla Vass

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The Rally by Carla Vass
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This book is like a Bravo TV reality show on paper!

The Rally has it all- travel, food, fashion, cancel culture, champagne- all the requirements of a really fun read. Well written and timely, this is one of those books you will sit down with in the morning (preferably by a pool with a fun cocktail in hand) and finish with the last rays of sunset. What a great escape!

The Rally by Carla Vass, (List Price: $29, Union Square & Co., 9781454967309, 2026-09-29)

Reviewed by Jamie Anderson, Duck’s Cottage Coffee & Books in Duck, NC

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Buzzard by Inez Ray

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Buzzard by Inez Ray
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Buzzard is the best piece of dystopian fiction I’ve read in a long time. Inez Ray drops the reader into a horrifying world for which we are already seeing road signs- patriarchy reigns, women’s rights are suppressed, climate catastrophe is reality, and paramilitary corporations run it all. Mae is serving a sentence for providing abortions in a time where fertility is controlled by companies like Obsityan, who also runs the prison; she spends long days and nights using her nursing skills to aid teenage drone pilot/prisoners and when one too many turns up pregnant, and an opportunity to have her sentence commuted by looking the other way arises, Mae thinks her time in this Orwellian prison is over and maybe, just maybe, she will get to see her two sons again. But in Ray’s world, Obsityan is everywhere, even in the middle of the desert, where Mae’s past catches up with her when a pregnant woman in labor shows up with a driver who has an agenda.

Buzzard by Inez Ray, (List Price: $19.95, Bindery Books, 9781967967261, September 2026)

Reviewed by Jamie, Duck’s Cottage Coffee & Books in Duck, NC

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All That’s Unseen by Emilee Hackney

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All That's Unseen by Emilee Hackney
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Emilee Hackney’s Appalachian memoir begins as a primer on the Pentecostal religion she is raised within in Tazewell, VA, a small mining town in the heart of coal country USA. Soon though, she begins to question everything she knows when her (older) fiancé Sam, a self-proclaimed man of god, turns out to be a groomer and pedophile. Emilee looks for answers from church and community, but her search turns into something bigger when she applies and is accepted to Harvard after two years of community college. Once ensconced in its Ivy League halls, she realizes just how isolating an upbringing she had and how current politics have used her beloved Appalachia to their advantage. Very well written, timely, and compelling, All That’s Unseen helps explain why America’s most rural areas have been hurt again and again by a government they support unceasingly.

All That’s Unseen by Emilee Hackney, (List Price: $32, Penguin Press, 9780593831403, July 2026)

Reviewed by Jamie, Duck’s Cottage Coffee & Books in Duck, NC

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Dad, Love, Me by Matthew Quick

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Dad, Love, Me by Matthew Quick
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It turns out everything Matthew Quick has written up to this point- all nine best-selling novels- have been prequels to this memoir; a book that should be considered his masterpiece, defining much of his work thus far. Powerful, painful, heart-wrenching, and heart-lifting, Matthew bravely lays bare his heart, soul, and most of all his relationship with his difficult father. Throughout this ‘letter’ to his Dad, the reader watches over and over the inexplicable trauma one man inflicts upon his son and sees the many ways in which it would mold him. Sobriety and analysis team up to help him break the cycle and as Alzheimer’s strips his father of so much, Matthew returns to walk this last journey by his side with love and dignity. If we could all forgive as Matthew has forgiven his father, Michael, the world would be an entirely different place.

Dad, Love, Me by Matthew Quick, (List Price: $30, Avid Reader Press, Simon & Schuster, 9781668091753, July 2026)

Reviewed by Jamie, Duck’s Cottage Coffee & Books in Duck, NC

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