Too much time has passed since I last visited the coast.

Sometimes a book I’ve read, particularly a novel, will leave me mystified, which is not always a good thing.

In my recent passion and ongoing interest in reviewing books by local and regional authors, I am offering here, yet another from our cache of talented writers that are close to home. In this case, it’s a book just released in the month of June by regionally heralded Hub City Press in Spartanburg, S.C., just over the North Carolina line.

Recently in this space I reviewed “The Broken Spine” by Dorothy St. James, a murder mystery set in a small town in South Carolina. At one point, I described the novel as “a perfect book for an escape from the trials of the day or for that trip to the beach.”

Cypress, South Carolina is a moderately-sized town surrounded by farms where neighbors know one another and the pace of life is low-key.

But that is about to change. 

It’s not often, if ever, that I would review a book about “how to succeed in business.” But I’m in the mood and the mode for reviewing books by local authors, and as I said in my last review in these pages our local authors have been hard at it during the pandemic cranking out new volumes of interesting, innovative and important work. 

So why take a look here at two books by a philosopher and polymath, neither of which may appeal to a broad audience?

Some men pick up a copy of Ellery Adams’ “The Book of Candlelight: A Secret, Book, and Scone Society Novel” (Kensington Publishing Corp., 2020, 320 pages) might read the blurb, flip through a few pages, and return the novel to its shelf, judging it a chick-lit book and unworthy of their attention. 

During the pandemic, regional authors have been busy. I’ve been made aware of several books being released this year by writers in our own back yard who have published books in several genres. 

“Summertime, and the livin’ is easy….” So begins one of the George Gershwin’s greatest songs, an aria in “Porgy and Bess” reproduced by scores of musicians ranging from Ella Fitzgerald to Willie Nelson to Norah Jones.