Ralph Ellis will discuss his new novel, "The Accident Report," in conversation with Susan Puckett at 3 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 7, at City Lights Bookstore in Sylva.

Set in the summer of 1974, the novel follows rookie reporter Ronald Truluck, stuck covering petty crimes in a North Carolina textile town until he uncovers a possible police cover-up involving a drunken city councilman.

In a review written in 2013 of John Williamson’s “Stoner,” Tim Kreider snagged the attention of  The New Yorker readers with this title: “The Greatest American Novel You’ve Never Heard of.”

This year, when my friend Anne introduced me to “Stoner,” I still belonged to the ignorant crowd. I’d never heard of the man or his book. Given the title and its publication in 1965, I immediately assumed “Stoner” featured hippies and potheads.

I have always been a sucker for a good love story, so when I was told that J. M. Coetzee — who has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature — had a new novel and that it was a love story (“The Pole,” W. Norton & Co., 2023), I was all in. 

Friday, May 30, was a banner day I’ll long remember.

A soft Carolina-blue sky topped the Virginia hills and fields as I drove to novelist Mark Helprin’s farm, Windrow, in the countryside north of Charlottesville.

In the course of human events, there does come a time when comedy is in order. Such was a time last month for me. I was choosing a book to read and I needed comedy.

“Morte D’Urban,” a novel by J. F. Powers (Doubleday, 1962), had been recommended by a trusted friend. It is brilliantly funny and, how wonderful, much more than that. 

Sometimes fictional books, when they’re written well, can give the same, if not more, insight to a people and culture than a history book can. Alan Paton’s “Cry, the Beloved Country” (Scribner, 2003, 316 pages) is one of those novels. 

In Brad Thor’s thriller “Shadow of Doubt” (Atria/Emily Bestler Books, 2024, 368 pages), the Russians are possibly threatening a nuclear reaction to the war in the Ukraine, a scandal involving spies and treason is about to engulf France and a Russian who has defected to Norway with a massive portfolio of secrets finds himself in danger of exposure and assassination. 

The ever growing stack of my “to-read” books has had Amor Towles’ “A Gentleman in Moscow” for about a year now. Several friends, whose literary opinion I respect, raved about this novel and one of them even bought me my copy.

It’s spring of 1941 and Britain stands alone against Hitler’s Germany. The British aircraft dropping their bombs on German military and manufacturing bases, and cities, were having an effect on that nation’s morale and production, but every downed British aircraft meant fewer experienced airmen.

According to surveys and government data cited in the online article “The Changing Face of America’s Veteran Population,” 40 years ago about 18% of Americans were veterans. Today that number stands at 6%.