Category: Book Review

Working Waterfront

Outside, looking in on Maine coast

Everyone Knows But You: A Tale of Murder on the Maine Coast By Thomas E. Ricks; Pegasus Books (2024) Early in Thomas Ricks’ novel Everyone Knows But You, FBI agent Ryan Tapia goes into the local diner on Liberty Island to begin a murder investigation. The Fisherman’s Pal, as the… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

A man’s love affair with airplanes

From the Cockpit: Selected Writings by James S. Rockefeller Jr. From Strut & Axle, Owls Head Transportation Museum Journal 1979-2013 (June 2025) James S. Rockefeller Jr. (also known as “Pebble”) who died in January was one of the founders (along with Tom Watson Jr. and Steve Lang) of the Owls… SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Indigenous stories hit hard

This story collection comes with the author’s “trigger warning,” advising readers that they may be disturbed by issues including “racism, missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, pregnancy loss, murder, physical abuse and drug abuse.” SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

A travel writer’s hippie roots

Steves has been described as the Mr. Rogers of travel programs, and if that’s accurate, On the Hippie Trail creates some clashing images. Steves did indeed have longish hair and a beard in the book jacket photo, taken when he wrote this book in 1978. But then... SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Art appreciation

The striking thing about these poems is their down-to-earth, conversational atmosphere, couched nonetheless in precise diction and tightly made speech rhythms heightened into the music of poetry. SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Milliken’s compelling memoir

In a tour of the house Milliken offers memorable details, from the bottom step trapdoor where his mother hid her weed to the shellacked artist conk fungi that served as shelves for teapots. This was the place he considered most his home, “among the ghosts of this land’s previous inheritors. In the acute absence of anyone else.” SEE MORE

Working Waterfront

Pandemic memories haunt novel

For many of us, jobs and schooling went remote, and many left crowded urban areas to reside in seasonal homes or with family or friends offering more room to spread out. Emotional support often was a low priority, and paranoia and distrust came to dominate our normal, instinctual desire to share and problem-solve in communal ways. SEE MORE