Darden North, MD

An agonizing story that you wish were only fiction ..... I shelved my personalized-signed copy of the lengthy novel and instead enjoyed the digital audio version of this latest Penn Cage installment. Admittedly, I was at a slight disadvantage since I have not yet read "The Devil's Punchbowl," Iles' preceding novel.  However, I quickly absorbed the sickening back-story of racism and political assassinations that filled so much of the news while I was in elementary school and growing up in Louisiana and Mississippi. Much of the first 40 chapters of "Natchez Burning" builds for the reader the sickening story of the KKK and Brody Royal's Double Eagles, a group bent on a degree of terror and torture that rivals any modern-day terrorist organization. It is after these chapters heavily laced in back-story that the novel finally accelerates, earning for Iles the reviewer cliché: "Couldn't put it down." Natchez (Mississippi) mayor and novelist P...

Book Review Stir, Laugh, Repeat: Finding Joy While Playing in the Kitchen Author: Martha A Cheves Publisher: Tate Publishing and Enterprises, LLC Softcover, 2008, 154 pages. $12.99 U.S. $16.99 Canada My wife has often suggested I take up cooking. In fact, one of my physician friends was recently featured in our local paper doing just that. It seems that the anesthesiologist expertly prepares gourmet meals on his grill and makes it look easy. Anyway, I have never taken my wife’s suggestion about cooking and instead have started writing books. And it seems that a major aspect of being a twenty-first century author is networking with other writers as well as with readers --- lots of readers, one hopes. This networking with other literary minds and writing groups, both in person and via the Internet, has lead me to author Martha A. Cheves and her culinary creations in Stir, Laugh, Repeat: Finding Joy While Playing in the Kitchen. Cheves’s beautiful cookbook found its way to my m...