Joey Madia, New Mystics Reviews

  (New York: Shivering Pond Publishing, 2025). ISBN: 9781088146774 It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly four years since I reviewed E. Denise Billups’s Civil War/modern era ghost story Tainted Harvest . Since that time, the author has written two more books in the series and fourteen overall. I’m delighted to have the opportunity to read and review her latest. Similar to Tainted Harvest , this book, Beneath Beauford Grove , is also a ghost story, although with significant additional paranormal and horror elements. It takes place in multiple timelines in three locations—Haiti (not long after the slave rebellion that gave Saint-Domingue its independence from France and a new name), the fictional Beauford Grove in Alabama (in the 1800s and forward to the present), and modern-day Boston. It’s in Boston that the book opens, where the protagonist, Evangeline (Eva), is a hematologist struggling with a desperate pediatric case that calls for equally desperate decisions. The story un...

 (St. Louis, MO: Reedy Press, 2025), ISBN-13: 978-1-681065823 When considering the most well-known and impactful writers and photographers who chronicle Route 66—Jim Hinckley, Michael Wallis, Joe Sonderman, and Chery Eichar Jett, all of whom I have met and/or presented with—one must include Jim Ross and Shellee Graham. My introduction to the work of this husband–wife super-duo, about 18 months ago, happened as I was preparing a series of presentations on what I call “Supernatural 66.” As part of my research, I read their 2017 Secret Route 66: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure . Two months ago, I was privileged to do a presentation about/as Cyrus Avery, “Father of the Mother Road,” at AAA RoadFest in Tulsa, where Jim and Shellee were also presenting and debuting Route 66: The First 100 Years . I was lucky enough to have a close friend gift me the book just before their presentation, which I very much enjoyed. Afterward, they were nice enough to personalize and autog...

  (Deltona, FL: Thomas-Jacob Publishing, LLC, 2025), ISBN-13: 978-1-950750-58-0 For the past eight years, I have been inspired, challenged, and moved by the novels of Jungian analyst Sharon Heath. In February 2017, I was introduced to her most fascinating, provocative character, the neurodivergent, brilliant physicist Fleur Robins, who reminds me so much of my daughter, who was 18 at the time and who turned 26 today. Fleur has now appeared in four books, all of which I have read and reviewed, and I am looking forward to her further (cosmic) adventures. I have also read and reviewed a stand-alone novel from 2019 called Chasing Eve . In many ways, the clusters of characters (a mix of blood and chosen family) in Heath’s beautifully rendered, emotionally and socially complex novels, are akin to those in the films of Wes Anderson— Royal Tennenbaums most prevalently, especially in terms of invisible threads . As I have mentioned in previous reviews, there is such a broad spectrum ...