It may be no surprise that in a state notorious for flinty independence, self-publishing appears to be on the rise. Just ask Mike DeSanto: Five years ago, when he bought The Book Rack in Winooski, a couple of poets a year would wander into his store with their chapbooks. “Now I must get 20 to 25 self-published books a year,” he observes.... Read more

Geof Hewitt’s passion for poetry began when his high school English teacher gave him a C-minus for trying “to out-Shelley Shelley.” The funny part, Hewitt says, was that he had been attempting “to out-Poe Poe.” But some 40 years and a half-dozen books later — including the latest, Only What’s Imagined — the clever Calais resident has managed to outdo himself, over and over again.... Read more

At the age of 10, baseball-obsessed Noel Weather-spoon tries to stretch a triple into a home run in a Little League game. He knocks down the opposing catcher, who is carried off the field in a coma, never to recover. Noel, a severe asthmatic, never really recovers, either. And so newcomer Lee Durkee sets the stage for his first novel, Rides of the Midway, which despite this inauspicious beginning is far from a simple tragedy.... Read more

In Shelby Hearon’s latest novel, Ella in Bloom, Ella is a widow with a 14-year-old daughter, trying to make ends meet in the picturesque Louisiana town of Old Metairie. Having run away while in college with a deeply unsuitable boy, who dumped her soon afterwards, she has always been the black sheep of her genteel family in Austin, Texas. And she’s been permanently in the shade of her older sister, Terrell, who married well and was a pillar of Austin society until her tragic death in a plane crash.... Read more

KENNEDY CONNECTION: Kevin Costner plays a convincing Kennedy confidant in the new movie 13 Days. That’s according to the son of the man who held that job — Kenneth O’Donnell — when the United States was on the brink of nuclear war. Now a resident of Westford, Kenny O’Donnell Jr. was a freshman in high school when his father disappeared for two tense weeks during the Cuban missile crisis.... Read more

What is the true cause of violence? Is it an integral part of the human animal, or is there another explanation for our blood-spattered history of atrocities, pogroms, wars and murders? This is the question at the heart of The Babel Effect, a new “thriller” by Vermont-based author Daniel Hecht, and the follow-up to his best-selling Skull Session.... Read more

When Julius Caesar was 25 years old, he was captured by pirates and held for ransom on an island off the coast of Asia Minor. Of this 40-day captivity, Caesar’s biographer Suetonius says only that it caused him “intense annoyance.” Caesar, of course, survived and went on to become conqueror of Gaul and master of Rome. Vincent Panella, who teaches writing at Vermont Law School, has taken this mysterious episode as the subject of his first novel.... Read more