NBN Podcast Episodes Hosted by G. P. Gottlieb

Eliyah is 25 when she travels from Tel Aviv to Paris to meet up with her husband, who turns out to be having an affair with a French woman. As her life crumbles, Eliyah plunges into a deep depression, returns home to her childhood bed, and slowly descends into madness.

This is a story about family, the opioid epidemic in rural America, the rise of hatred and bigotry during the past few years, and the grip of creating art on those who feel its pull.

Nineteen-year-old pianist Marie-Thérèse has dropped out of her prestigious conservatory in favor of becoming a nurse, much to her mother’s disappointment. As she begins her final year of study, Germany invades Belgium on its way to France. It’s 1914, and Marie-Thérèse’s world is upended by harsh rules and demands that students and staff spy on each other.

In Side Effects of Wanting (Main Street Rag, 2022), author Mary Salisbury spent nearly twenty years gathering together the pieces of humanity she saw reflected in the lives around her and distilled them into a poetically written, beautifully curated short story collection.

Quinn and a friend are driving from New York City to Pennsylvania when she sees 9-year-old Lulu sitting on a trucker’s lap, smoking a cigarette. At the truck stop for her friend to score drugs, Quinn takes an astounding picture and then leaves, disappointing Lulu, who thinks maybe people will see the picture and help her. Quinn goes on to live the heady life of a successful photographer while Lulu is confronted with various kinds of abuse and dysfunction. Despite the differences in their lives, both women experience moments of great joy, and significant amounts of despair This is a novel about haves and have-nots, those who find love and those who don’t, how the AIDS epidemic fractured New York’s gay community, and the confusing world of art.

Today I talked to C. P. Lesley about Song of the Storyteller (Five Directions Press, 2023).

Kudzu salesman James T. Cullowee arrives in Cooper County, North Carolina in the spring of 1941 to spread the gospel of kudzu. It can apparently feed cattle, improve soil, grow with no effort, be turned into jam, and cure headaches.

I Meant to Tell You, by Fran Hawthorne (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2022) opens during a conversation between Miranda Isaacs and her fiancé, Russ, who is going through an FBI security check as a prelude to getting his dream job in the U.S. Attorney’s office.

"Starling is 19 and was raised in a camper van by a strong-willed mother who cut them off from their community of fellow travelers. Starling, who has never gone to school or to the dentist, knows the nomadic life of trapping rabbits, foraging for food, and getting kicked out by local police."

"We can't all be heroes. Some try and succeed. Others posture and pretend. And a few--just a few--set off on their hero's quest only to discover that failure was within them all along."

“July 25, 1969 12:41am Hunts Landing. Acrid sulfur from the fireworks faded with the nighttime breeze. Dr. Theodore Wexler held up his glass-red flashes from the police cars on the Quad pulsed chestnut in the bourbon. Pulse. Pulse. The cadence matched his heartbeat, steadier now, settled after this disrupted day of jubilee.“

Stephen Cane is a guitarist – he’s already walked out on one band to join another one that subsequently falls apart. He gets himself to New York City to try to rejoin his first band, the one headed by his best friend and former bandmate, Dylan John. It’s 1967, drugs and girls are everywhere, Dylan is on the verge of becoming a rock n’ roll star, and Stephen makes some extremely poor choices.

For two years author Elissa Bassist saw over twenty medical specialists for pain that none of them managed to diagnose or resolve. Some of their treatments led to other medical problems but never relief. Then an acupuncturist suggested that she simply needed to take control of her voice, and Bassist was shocked when it worked.

Charles Lindbergh and his wife were out on the night of the kidnapping, but the nanny was home. After the baby disappeared from his bed, that nanny, Betty Gow, became a prime suspect, and her life was never the same. She was known thereafter as the Lindbergh Nanny.

It’s the late 1990’s and Alice Stein is a grad student in New York City. As she struggles to study, write, teach, take care of the little girl from downstairs, and figure out her grandmother’s secrets, Alice Stein uncovers layers of secrets about herself, her family, and everyone around her.