With gripping portrayals of fathers and sons, mothers and siblings, passion and pain – this is a moving, non-linear novel about the relationships to family and society upon which all humanity rests. < Back A Song from Faraway Deni Ellis Béchard October 27, 2020 A young man visits his half-brother in Vancouver and steals a book that changes his life. An archeology student is befriended and brought to Iraq by a brother and sister who need his help in assessing a family art collection. A man who fought for the British in South Africa’s Boer War enlists as an American to fight in WWI Germany. Spanning decades and continents, the stories in Béchard's haunting novel A Song from Faraway (Milkweed Editions, 2020) slowly reveal themselves to be connected. In these pages, the lies of one generation are inherited by the next, homes are burnt to the ground, wives are abandoned, and innocent people suffer. With gripping portrayals of fathers and sons, mothers and siblings, passion and pain – this is a moving, non-linear novel about the relationships to family and society upon which all humanity rests. Deni Ellis Béchard is the author of eight books of fiction and nonfiction, including Vandal Love (Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book); Into the Sun (Midwest Book Award for Literary Fiction and chosen by CBC/Radio Canada as one of 2017’s Incontournables and one of the most important books of that year to be read by Canada's political leadership); Of Bonobos and Men (Nautilus Book Award for investigative journalism and Nautilus Grand Prize winner); Cures for Hunger (an IndieNext pick and one of the best memoirs of 2012 by Amazon.ca); Kuei, my Friend: a Conversation on Racism and Reconciliation , (coauthored with First Nations poet Natasha Kanapé-Fontaine). A traveler by nature, Béchard has a habit of changing homes as often as every three months, and the place he has lived in the longest over the past ten years was a community circus. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

When Jim Jones and his wife Marceline founded the Peoples Temple in the 1950s, they wanted to give hope to the poor and disenfranchised, to earn their bread from the earth, and to come together as sisters and brothers. They built a commune in the British Guyana jungle where some lived better than they’d lived in the states. Then Jim Jones became more autocratic, sired children with other followers, and ordered his doctor to drug dissenters. On November 18, 1978, 917 people were murdered or took their own lives at his direction. < Back Paradise Undone: A Novel of Jonestown Annie Dawid November 14, 2023 Paradise Undone: A Novel of Jonestown by Annie Dawid, (Inkspot Publishing 2023), opens long after 917 people died by drinking cyanide or by lethal injection on November 18, 1978. It’s 2008, and one of the survivors, who made it out earlier that day, is speaking to a reporter on the 30th anniversary of the “Jonestown Massacre.” When Jim Jones and his wife Marceline found Peoples Temple in the 1950s, they wanted to give hope to the poor and disenfranchised of all colors. They wanted to live honest lives earning their bread from the earth. They dreamt of their followers coming together as equals, loving each other as sisters and brothers, and building a commune in the British Guyana jungle. As the years passed, Jim Jones became more autocratic, he bedded his followers and sired children, and although Marceline hated what their marriage had become, she still loved him. Even unto death. Annie Dawid writes and teaches online in very rural Colorado, where she also makes rugs and assemblages as well as plays tennis and Scrabble. For the last 7 years, she’s taught in the master’s creative writing program for University College, University of Denver. She received her Ph.D. in 1989 from the University of Denver’s English Dept. in Creative Writing. For 15 years, she was professor of English and Creative Writing director at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR. Her last book, Put Off My Sackcloth: Essays, came out from The Humble Essayist Press in 2021. Her first book, York Ferry: A Novel , Cane Hill Press, 1993, second printing, was positively reviewed in The New York Times Book Review and the Los Angeles Times . It won the 2016 International Rubery Award in Fiction. Her second book was Lily in the Desert: Stories , Carnegie-Mellon University Press, 2001, followed by And Darkness Was Under His Feet: Stories of a Family , Litchfield Review Press, 2009, winner of their inaugural short story collection prize. In 2017, Finishing Line Press published her chapbook, Anatomie of the World: Poems . Along the way, her 10-minute drama, Gun Play, won the New Rocky Mountain Voices Contest and was performed in Westcliffe, Colorado. But most of the last 19 years have been devoted to researching, writing, revising, and searching for a publisher for her Jonestown novel, rewarded, at last, by Inkspot Publishing of the UK and published on the 45th anniversary of the Jonestown massacre. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

If you were struggling through a bitter divorce from an alcoholic spouse, and unable to communicate with your son, and finally enjoy a night out where you drink just one more beer, and a couple of people on a bike ride straight at you while you’re driving into the entrance, when they should have been taking the exit, and it’s impossible to see through the fog….is it really your fault if you hit them and they die? Tandem (Andy Mozina) is about a Kalamazoo economics professor who bargains with himself about how much good he can do if he stays out of prison, to make up for the deaths of two innocent kids. < Back Tandem Andy Mozina November 21, 2023 An economics professor at a Michigan college is struggling through a bad divorce, having a tough time with his only son, and then, through hardly any fault of his own, he must avoid getting caught by the police. He only had one extra beer and it was late and foggy outside, plus the two college kids were biking out of the entrance to the deserted beach, instead of the exit, without a headlight, so was it really his fault when he hit and killed them? Also, couldn’t he do more for the world and right his wrongs, if he was still teaching and making contributions, than if he was stuck in jail forever? Mike will do anything to avoid being caught in this moving novel about the lengths a person will go to avoid facing uncomfortable truths. Born and raised in Milwaukee, Andy Mozina majored in economics at Northwestern, then dropped out of Harvard Law School to study literature and write. He’s published fiction in Tin House , Ecotone , McSweeney’s, The Southern Review , and elsewhere. His first story collection, The Women Were Leaving the Men , won the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award. Quality Snacks , his second collection, was a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Prize. His first novel, Contrary Motion , was published by Spiegel & Grau/Penguin Random House. His fiction has received special citations in Best American Short Stories , Pushcart Prize , and New Stories from the Midwest . He’s a professor of English at Kalamazoo College. His passion is grading papers, and his hobbies include listening to legal podcasts and rooting for Wisconsin professional sports teams. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

Hermine “Herself” Zook is a healer who rules over an island in a swampy area of Michigan known as “The Waters.” People, including her three grown daughters, fear her, but her powerful herbal and plant-based medicines have cured the townspeople for decades of viruses, pains, and unwanted pregnancies. < Back The Waters Bonnie Jo Campbell October 29, 2024 Hermine “Herself” Zook is a healer who rules over an island in a swampy area of Michigan known as “The Waters.” People, including her three grown daughters, fear her, but her powerful herbal and plant-based medicines have cured the townspeople for decades of viruses, pains, and unwanted pregnancies. Her first two daughters Molly and Prim were foundlings, but Rose Thorn is the product of Hermine’s husband having an affair with Prim before getting kicked off the island. Herself, now nearly eighty, is raising eleven-year-old granddaughter Dorothy “Donkey” Zook. Donkey loves animals and longs for her mother, Rose Thorn, to marry Titus, whom she wants as her father. Donkey is the product of Rose Thorn being raped by Titus’s drunk father in this richly nuanced tale of rural poverty, changing landscapes, corporate control of farmland, religious extremism, childhood naivete, and the shaky balance between nature and humanity. Bonnie Jo Campbell ’s novel The Waters (Norton, 2024) was a Today Show “Read with Jenna” Book Club selection. Her other novels include Once Upon A River , a National Bestseller that was adapted into an award winning film, and Q Road . Campbell’s short story collections include American Salvage , which was a finalist for the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award, and Women and Other Animals , an AWP Grace Paley Prize winner. She is a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow, and a recipient of the Eudora Welty Prize and Mark Twain Award. She lives in Kalamazoo with her husband and donkeys. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

Yael’s parents originally emigrated to Canada from South Africa years before and have returned while mourning the tragic death of Yael’s brother. Yael, also in mourning, but busy learning everything from medic training to driving on the left side of the road, uncovers a deadly elephant poaching ring. After witnessing some horrible violence, she just isn’t sure what to do about it. < Back No Entry Gila Green December 8, 2020 No Entry (Stormbird Press, 2020) is Gila Green’s first young adult Eco-Fiction novel. It is the first in an environmental series focused on elephant poaching and the international trade that leads to their illegal slaughter. Seventeen-year-old Yael Amar is in South Africa, signed up for a summer course in South Africa’s Kruger National Park. A rising senior, she plans to join her parents in Johannesburg, where her father will spend his sabbatical year from a Canadian University. Yael’s parents originally emigrated to Canada from South Africa years before and have returned while mourning the tragic death of Yael’s brother. Yael, also in mourning, but busy learning everything from medic training to driving on the left side of the road, uncovers a deadly elephant poaching ring. After witnessing some horrible violence, she just isn’t sure what to do about it. In addition to No Entry , Canadian author Gila Green is the author of three novels: King of the Class (Non-Publishing 2013), Passport Control (S&H Publishing, 2018), and White Zion (Cervena Barva Press, 2019). Her short fiction appears in dozens of literary magazines in the U.S.A., Canada, Australia, Israel, Ireland, and Hong Kong including: The Fiddlehead , Terrain.org , Akashic Books, Sephardic Horizons , Jewish Literary Journal , Fiction Magazine, The Saranac Review, Arc Magazine, Many Mountains Moving, Noir Nation, Quality Women's Fiction, The Dalhousie Review, The Bookends Review, and Boston Literary Review . Green’s work has been short-listed for the Doris Bakwin Literary Award (Carolina Wren Press), WordSmitten's TenTen Fiction Contest, the Walrus Literary Award, and the Eric Hoffer Best New Writing Award. She also wrote the introduction to Doikayt, an anthology of short tabletop roleplaying (November 2020). When She’s not teaching or writing, Green is busy raising five children, cooking, and baking her own bread. She loves music, daily walks through the Judean Hills by her home, hiking, pilates, and really good coffee. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

Set mostly in a clinic for migraine sufferers run by a concerned doctor and funded by a wealthy widow, Pain of Pleasure is about tending and being tended, striving and obsession. The widow hires a nurse to spy on the doctor, who is obsessed with a former patient. And the hurricane battering the church where the clinic is housed is a metaphor for the pounding, inescapable torture of relentless headaches. < Back The Pain of Pleasure Amy Grace Loyd July 25, 2023 In Amy Grace Loyd’s new novel, The Pain of Pleasure (Roundabout Press 2023), nearly everyone suffers some kind of intense pain. Some find their way to the Doctor, formerly a respected neurologist but now director of a headache clinic in the basement of what was once a Brooklyn church. He experiments with different treatments for a wide variety of migraine sufferers but can’t stop obsessing over Sarah, the patient who suddenly broke off contact with the clinic and disappeared, leaving only a journal that describes her affair with a married man. The Doctor’s salary and the clinic’s costs are underwritten by a wealthy patron, Adele Watson, who, because she believes the doctor was in love with Sarah, is also obsessed. Mrs. Watson hires Ruth, a nurse with her own troubled back story, to spy on the Doctor. And the fragile balance between patient health and trust in The Doctor starts to crumble when a hurricane sweeps through New York, upending or destroying whatever is in its path. Amy Grace Loyd is an editor, teacher, and author of the novels The Affairs of Others , a BEA Buzz Book and Indie Next selection, and The Pain of Pleasure . She began her career at independent book publisher W.W. Norton & Company and The New Yorker , in the magazine’s fiction and literary department. She was the associate editor on the New York Review Books Classics series and the fiction and literary editor at Playboy magazine and later at Esquire . She’s also worked in digital publishing, as an executive editor at e-singles publisher Byliner and as an acquiring editor and content creator for Scribd Originals. She has been an adjunct professor at the Columbia University MFA writing program and a MacDowell and Yaddo fellow. She lives between New York and New Hampshire. Amy loves to get lost in music, dance wildly to wild music, walk long distances, often with NO PHONE on hand, just the sounds of the world around her as she moves, especially the sounds of trees (she’s made for trees). She is passionate about silence and solitude and kindness in an unkind world. We all have a lot of healing to do these days and she keeps searching for ways to achieve that for herself and others. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

Mona’s Eyes (Europa Editions, 2025) is an enchanting debut novel written by art historian Thomas Schlesser. It tells the story of a 10-year-old girl living in Paris who briefly loses her vision. < Back Mona's Eyes Thomas Schlesser September 9, 2025 Mona’s Eyes (Europa Editions, 2025) is an enchanting debut novel written by art historian Thomas Schlesser. It tells the story of a 10-year-old girl living in Paris who briefly loses her vision. After much testing, the doctor suggests that Mona might benefit from seeing a psychiatrist, and Mona’s grandfather offers to take her to her appointment each week. Instead, every Wednesday afternoon for an entire year, he takes her to visit masterpieces of art from the past five hundred years, now displayed in the great museums of Paris. Henri, Mona’s grandfather, carefully explains each piece, shares the history of its creator, and emphasizes a lesson to be learned from it. He hopes that if her blindness returns, she will have internalized the colors, emotions, and beauty of 52 of the world’s finest and most influential pieces of art. Thomas Schlesser is the director of the Hartung-Bergman Foundation in Antibes, France. He teaches Art History at the École Polytechnique in Paris and is the author of several works of nonfiction about art, artists, and the relationship between art and politics in the 20th century. Thomas received a PhD in History and Civilizations from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and obtained the Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches (HDR), a specific academic qualification in France, authorizing him to supervise doctoral research (as professor at École Polytechnique in Paris). He is the grandson of André Schlesser, known as Dadé, a singer and cabaret performer who founded the Cabaret L’Écluse. Mona’s Eyes is Thomas’s second novel and his American debut. It has been translated into thirty-eight languages, including Braille. Thomas was awarded 2025’s Author of the Year by Livres Hebdo . In his spare time, Thomas loves cooking and organizing aperitifs, dinners, and festive gatherings. He’s also passionate about retro gaming and pop culture, and he enjoys wandering and exploring at a leisurely pace. He constantly reflects on his many flaws and tries to work on them, although it's not easy. He listens to others, and if he has one message to share, it's that life is about patching things together — rigid, overly normative, and definitive frameworks should be approached with caution. He’ll add that the cause of animal welfare and the rights of people with disabilities are very dear to him. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

Alex has always wanted a real family. Her father commits suicide, her mother has never noticed where she is, and at 15, she falls in love with a 27-year-old photographer. When she comes of age, she’s about to marry him, but someone else has turned her head, Ted Neal, a charismatic activist on his way to Mississippi for 1964’s Freedom Summer. < Back What a Wonderful World this Could Be Lee Zacharias June 25, 2021 Today I talked to Lee Zacharias about her new book What a Wonderful World this Could Be (Madville Publishing, 2021). Alex has always wanted a real family. Her father commits suicide, her mother has never noticed where she is, and at 15, she falls in love with a 27-year-old photographer. When she comes of age, she’s about to marry him, but someone else has turned her head, Ted Neal, a charismatic activist on his way to Mississippi for 1964’s Freedom Summer. Alex just wants to take pictures, but she and Ted invite some of his friends to live together in a collective that functions like a sort of family. Alex is happy, but the conversations focus in on anti-war movement of the 60s, and some of the so-called family members get radicalized by the ‘Weathermen.’ Alex is incensed to learn that the FBI is following her even after the ‘family’ disperses and shocked when Ted disappears. Eleven years later he shows up again, but now he’s dying and Alex, who hasn’t remarried, has to figure out what love means. Lee Zacharias, who holds degrees from Indiana University Hollins, College, and the University of Arkansas, has taught at Princeton University and the University of North Carolina Greensboro, where she is Emerita Professor of English, as well as many conferences, most recently the Wildacres Writers Workshop. She is the author of a collection of short stories, Helping Muriel Make It Through the Night ; three previous novels, Across the Great Lake , Lessons , and At Random ; and a collection of personal essays, The Only Sounds We Make . She has co-edited an anthology of stories, Runaway, released in 2020, with Luanne Smith and Michael Gills. Zacharias has received fellowships and is a recipient of several awards. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in numerous journals, including, among others, The Southern Review, Shenandoah, Five Points, Gettysburg Review, Crab Orchard Review, Outdoor Photographer, and Our State. Her essays have been named Notable Essays of the Year by The Best American Essays, which reprinted her essay "Buzzards" in The Best American Essays 2008, and she served as editor of The Greensboro Review for a decade. Zacharias, when she’s not writing, loves photographing landscapes and birds. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back New Cover Designs Coming Soon G. P. Gottlieb Sep 23, 2025 I can't wait to share them with you! I’m absolutely delighted to announce that the beloved Whipped and Sipped Mysteries series is being re-released with all-new cover designs through the esteemed publishing house, Anamcara Press ! This exciting update is not just a simple rebranding; it is a thoughtful reimagining of the covers while keeping the initial ideas intact. These upcoming editions will feature fresh, updated artwork that better fits to cozy feel of the series and will bring readers even closer to the world of the Whipped and Sipped Café. The redesigned covers will begin to roll out soon, and I look forward to sharing them with you all. Each cover will not only attract the eye but also to bring to life the essence of the world I've built in my stories. Whether you’ve been with the series from the very beginning, eagerly flipping through each installment as it was released, or you’re just now pulling up a chair at the Whipped and Sipped Café for the first time, these new editions will be a wonderful addition to your bookshelf. I am thrilled to start this new chapter of the Whipped and Sipped Mysteries journey with all of you and can’t wait for you to experience these refreshed editions that bring new life to the series. Previous Next

Janene, Cora, and Amadahy live on the banks of the river in a small North Carolina town, but they live centuries apart. Janene, a modern-day high school teacher, loses her career and identity in the face of a devastating disease. < Back Timeless Sisters Shelly Hoover April 8, 2020 Janene, Cora, and Amadahy live on the banks of the river in a small North Carolina town, but they live centuries apart. Janene, a modern-day high school teacher, loses her career and identity in the face of a devastating disease. Cora, an enslaved child during the Civil War, flees the Yarbrough plantation after her family is murdered and finds refuge at the home of a big-hearted woman. Amadahy, a Cherokee of the Wolf Clan in 1663, loses her child and husband, leaving her with a surviving child and a psychotic mother. A sacred, maternal talisman connects the three women as they search for lasting peace. It’s an emotional journey for these three women, who meet at the river. U.S. Navy veteran Shelly Hoover is the author of Timeless Sisters: Peace at the River . She earned an Ed.D. in Education from Cal State, Sacramento and retired as a public-school administrator in 2013 after being diagnosed with ALS, a terminal motor neuron disease. But physical limitations have not stopped Shelly from educating and advocating. ALS has paralyzed her body, so she types with her eyes using a Microsoft surface tablet whose camera is able to follow her eyes. Despite her physical challenges, Shelly lives in gratitude and encourages other to do the same, regardless of circumstance. She is a mother of two, a grandmother of four, and lives with her husband, Steve, in the mountains of Northern California. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

The Lake on Fire is about whom to love, the struggle between rich and poor, and the choices we make about how to live in an unfair world. Although set in the 19th century, Rosellen Brown’s writing, as intriguing and luminous as Chicago’s “White City,” has something to say about our still unfair, turbulent times. < Back The Lake on Fire Rosellen Brown March 26, 2019 Against the backdrop of a gritty 1890’s Chicago teeming with labor problems, filthy sweatshops, and putrid stockyards, two young immigrants struggle to survive. Chaya and her brilliant younger brother Asher escape the tedium of the Wisconsin farm to which their parents had emigrated from Eastern Europe. Guided by a kind, wealthy young man to the Jewish neighborhood of Maxwell Street, the two siblings, still speaking with Yiddish accents, scrape together a living until they each find a way to reconcile their convictions with their lives. The Lake on Fire (Sarabande Books, 2018) is about whom to love, the struggle between rich and poor, and the choices we make about how to live in an unfair world. Although set in the 19th century, Rosellen Brown ’s writing, as intriguing and luminous as Chicago’s “White City,” has something to say about our still unfair, turbulent times. Rosellen Brown currently teaches in the MFA in Writing Program at Chicago’s School of the Art Institute, and lives in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood, home of the Columbian Exposition, the University of Chicago, and the Obamas. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

The story of a family that is forced to confront both autism and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). < Back The Extraordinary Brad Schaeffer August 9, 2022 The Extraordinary by Brad Schaeffer (Post Hill Press 2021) tells the story of a family that is forced to confront both autism and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Fourteen-year-old Wes is unable to communicate with anyone except his father, who calls him an Ex (extraordinary). Most others are Ords (ordinary). Wes’s father is a captain in the Marine Corp and returns home broken in body and spirit after a third tour in Iraq. Wes has no idea how to adapt to this new version of his father. He needs order – his day is regimented, and he follows a timed sequence that includes watching the entire movie version of Sound of Music every morning. Wes’s relationship with his mother and two siblings is constrained and sometimes confusing – he only feels love from his father. This is a lovely and emotional tale about how a family can be easily torn and not so easily put back together. Brad Schaeffer was born in Baltimore, MD but grew up in a suburb of Chicago. After attending the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he lived in Chicago where he embarked on his dual career as both a commodities trader and author/novelist. He currently resides in New Jersey. His prolific and eclectic writing can be found in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, New York Daily News, National Review, Daily Wire , and other well-read publications. His interests, as reflected in his articles, encompass a wide swath from business, to science, education, the arts, history, politics, social issues, and general day-to-day living. He is also an accomplished guitarist and pianist and can be found playing in local New Jersey clubs with one of several rock bands in which he has played over the years. He is the author of Of Another Time and Place (2018), which takes place in World War II Europe. It is a study of the conflicts that good men confront when compelled by national loyalty and indoctrination to fight for morally reprehensible causes. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next