Thursday, 27 March 2025
Welcome to Books By My Friends!
Today we are featuring
- CHAD BOYKIN
- JAMES FLANAGAN
- BARBARA JEAN MILLER
- VALERIE NIEMAN
- LYNN SLAUGHTER
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CHAD BOYKIN
BOOK: The Twilight Zone Haiku
AUTHOR: Chad Ellis Boykin; Foreword by Tom Elliot
GENRE: Haiku, Poetry, Popular Culture, Television, Science Fiction.
BLURB: The Twilight Zone Haiku explores the essence of Rod Serling’s iconic,
uncanny 1960s television show through haiku, giving us dazzling, spot-on
snapshots of each episode. In seventeen syllables, Boykin captures the
show’s main objective: to deliver a keen jolt of existential awareness.
As you read, you find yourself marooned on an alien planet, lost in
time, trapped inside a mannequin, surrounded by the debris of a nuclear
attack, and always, always powerless to forces beyond your control. The
Twilight Zone Haiku conjures the trappings of each haunting plot of the
series, but more astutely, its scalpel-edged soul.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Attorney, author, and former boxer Chadwick Ellis Boykin is the owner
and creator of Jobber House Press, LLC. He is the author of Muay Thai
Kickboxing: The Ultimate Guide to Conditioning, Training, and Fighting
(Paladin Press, 2002), The Twilight Zone Haiku (Jobber House Press,
2023), and the forthcoming Kaiju and Kayfabe, essays on the uniquely
interconnected history of giant Japanese monster cinema and the art of
professional wrestling. He has contributed to the forthcoming Outside In
Can Live With It: 174 Deep Space 9 Stories, 174 Writers, 174 New
Perspectives (ATB Publishing), and The Kaiju Haiku: The Comic Zine with
Weirdo Poetry.
Tom Elliot is the host of The Twilight Zone Podcast, the definitive and
longest running podcast about the landmark show on the web. In addition
to episode reviews, the podcast includes short story readings, book
reviews, event coverage and interviews. The show has been graced by
guests such as Anne Serling (daughter of The Twilight Zone creator Rod
Serling and acclaimed author of As I Knew Him: My Dad, Rod Serling),
Earl Holliman (the first actor to ever appear in The Twilight Zone) and
Win Rosenfeld, Executive Producer of the 2019 The Twilight Zone reboot.
Tom featured as one of the speakers in the BBC documentary You’re
Entering Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone, along with Anne Serling and
Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker. The Twilight Zone Podcast is an
unofficial production, dedicated to the preservation and promotion of
The Twilight Zone and the work of Rod Serling.
JAMES FLANAGAN
BOOK: The Civil War with a Twist
AUTHOR: James Flanagan
GENRE: Historical Fiction
BLURB: History meets the Twilight Zone.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Retired principal became a professional storyteller then put his stories into books.
BARBARA JEAN MILLER
BOOK: Governess for a Week
AUTHOR: Barbara Jean Miller
GENRE: Regency Romance Suspense
BLURB: Governess Marian Greenway feels she’s been hired by a lunatic when her employer demands she wear a revealing dress to dinner then introduces her to his relatives as his fiancée. When she realizes his behavior may be rooted in his war wounds he has her instant sympathy. Captain David Armstead, Lord Wyle just wants to fob off his interfering aunts, and a fake engagement seems a good idea when in his cups. But the next day the woman he thought was a hired actress takes over his household, and his children become instantly devoted to her. After only a few days he feels that he is falling in love with her but she has vowed never to marry a soldier. Even before they wed Wyle and Marian face the dilemma of what is more important, the welfare of the children or their own happiness. They find the answer when a threat to those children vaults them into an international plot where only Marian’s resourcefulness and Wyle’s faith in her can bring them all home safe.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Barbara Jean Miller is a retired educator, author, and nature observer.
VALERIE NIEMAN
BOOK: Upon the Corner of the Moon
AUTHOR: Valerie Nieman
GENRE: Historical Fiction
BLURB: At the dawn of the second millennium, two royal Scottish children are swept away from their families—Macbeth to the perilous royal court of his grandfather, Gruach to the remnants of the goddess-worshiping Picts. Macbeth learns that blood bonds are easily severed while Gruach finds her path only to lose it when she’s summoned back to the patriarchal world. They struggle with gaining and losing power, guided and misguided by prophecy and politics as their paths converge in a fiery bid for royal succession. Upon the Corner of the Moon separates literary legend from the reality of rulers who changed the face of Scotland. While closely following recorded history about Macbeth, it also speculates on the heritage of his wife Gruach, drawing on the Neolithic settlement of Alba and the mysterious legacy of the Picts. “Upon the Corner of the Moon is a haunting and bloody tale of Scottish history. It’s also a finger tracing along a set of scars, ones we already know are too deep to ever really heal,” said the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Valerie Nieman’s debut historical novel, Upon the Corner of the Moon, is the story of the young Macbeths, destined to unite Scotland in the tumultuous 11th century. To learn more about the people and landscapes, she wandered Scotland from coast to coast and spent many happy hours in museums, libraries, and small pubs. She is the author of a short fiction collection, three poetry books, and six other novels, including In the Lonely Backwater, winner of the 2022 Sir Walter Raleigh Award, which was called “not only a page-turning thriller but also a complex psychological portrait of a young woman dealing with guilt, betrayal, and secrecy.” Her novel Blood Clay won the Eric Hoffer Prize in General Fiction. To the Bones, a horror/Appalachian/ecojustice novel, was a finalist for the 2020 Manly Wade Wellman Award, and now has a sequel, Dead Hand. A graduate of West Virginia University and Queens University of Charlotte, she has held state and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships is professor emerita of creative writing at NC Agricultural and Technical State University.
LYNN SLAUGHTER
BOOK: Missing Mom
AUTHOR: Lynn Slaughter
GENRE: Young Adult Coming-of-age romantic mystery
BLURB: Never mind the circumstantial evidence. Seventeen-year-old Noelle, an aspiring ballet dancer, doesn’t believe her missing mother would ever have committed suicide and launches her own investigation. Meantime, she’s dealing with growing romantic feelings toward Ravi, her best friend and fellow dancer, as well as worries about why her little sister is so reluctant to visit their dad. Threaded throughout the novel is the story of a young woman nearly twenty years earlier whose escape from an abusive marriage turns out to be related to Noelle’s investigation.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Lynn Slaughter is addicted to the arts, chocolate, and her husband’s cooking. After a long career as a professional dancer and dance educator, Lynn earned her MFA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University. She is the award-winning author of five young adult romantic mysteries: MISSING MOM, DEADLY SETUP, LEISHA’S SONG, IT SHOULD HAVEBEEN YOU, AND WHILE I DANCED, as well as an adult mystery, MISSEDCUE. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky, where she’s at work on her next novel and serves on the board of Derby Rotten Scoundrels, the Ohio River Valley chapter of Sisters in Crime.
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