Southern Literary Review

Richly imaginative and intriguing provocative, The Wondrous Lives and Loves of Nella Carter (Lake Union 2025) is a time- and continent-spanning novel with social significance. Just as Octavia Butler’s Kindred revealed the depths of humanity’s racism through time travel, so does this debut novel by Brionni Nwosu. But the story goes far beyond...

A rural, southeastern Texas town has survived a summer of horrors — for the most part. The ghouls have been slain by the Evans women, like they’ve always done, and the dead can rest now. That is, until more killings start happening. Something is prowling the town and it’s out for blood. The Evans family will face a new kind of danger and uncover old family secrets, ev...

The sun is rising over a small Texas town and the dead are rising too. Four generations of the Evans family run a funeral parlor, putting the dead to rest, even when they have to kill them again. It’s 1999 now and the buried are growing restless. Something has come to town, leaving a bloody trail in its wake, and only the Evans women can stop it.

What would your life look like if it were played back for you in your final moments, watched from a lofty vantage like heaven, or the more oblique angle of purgatory? Would you see yourself being carried along, pinged from vertex to vertex as the polygon of your life develops? Could you name the forces that were driving you?

For George, protago...

Jianqing Zheng’s