Luke Karamazov is the true story of two brothers who were convicted of serial murders. In 1964, Luke Karamozov (nee Ralph Searl) confessed to killing five men over a three-month period; following in his grisly footsteps was his younger brother, Tommy Searl, who was sentenced for the rape and murder of four young women in or around the brothers' hometown of Kalamazoo. The events described in the book have the drama of fiction, but are very real events. Conrad Hilberry based his account on interviews with the two men, their friends, the woman whom they both married, and prison officials. Choosing to focus more on the texture of the men's lives than on the crimes themselves, Hilberry explores the movement of their thoughts and the ways in which they have each dealt with their brutal childhoods and their lives in prison. Luke Karamazov is an unusually vivid and detailed study of two contrasting psychological types. Drawing on Ernest Becker's Denial of Death, Hilberry presents Karamazov and his brother as extreme instances of behavior and states of mind that, surprisingly, are not uncommon. The result is a story that is at once bizarre and psychologically interesting.

In 1976, Wayne State University Press published The Third Coast: Contemporary Michigan Poetry, an anthology that offered a sampling of the best poetry written by Michigan writers. A second Third Coast anthology was published in 1988 with many new poets and a wider range of styles. New Poems from the Third Coast continues that tradition with fifty-six writers from across the state sharing their poetic glimpse of trout streams, schoolrooms, and restaurants, as well as portraits of friends, families, lovers, and life in Michigan.

Although this collection is only a sampling of the rich literary culture alive in Michigan, New Poems from the Third Coast is a lively, and carefully-crafted collection of poems from a variety of Michigan voices. Michael Delp, Conrad Hilberry, and Josie Kearns have balanced the old and the new and combined them in a strong contribution to contemporary poetry.

Readers will find in this collection a glimpse of the preoccupations and passions that are moving these American poets is at the end of the century. Lovers of poetry and students and scholars interested in regional literature will find an exhilarating range of styles in this volume.