A Whipped and Sipped Mystery: Book 2 < Back Available from these sellers Click on the icon below to purchase a copy today When the owner of the business next door is found dead in his office, Alene Baron’s first feeling is relief. She’s been suspicious of the food supplements her neighbor has been selling, not to mention the smoothies he’s been hawking, which are much inferior to the ones Alene sells in her cafe. Plus, Stanley Huff never cleaned up his garbage in the alley they shared. As a sexual harasser and shady businessman, Stanley had enemies. One of Alene’s favorite employees is a suspect. And now that employee is missing. Smothered A Whipped and Sipped Mystery: Book 2 Previous Next

Bruce Holsinger’s novel The Displacements is a gripping saga about what might happen in a world in which climate change can wreak havoc on life, even for those who have everything. < Back The Displacements Bruce Holsinger October 19, 2022 Bruce Holsinger’s novel The Displacements (Riverhead Books, 2022) is a gripping saga about what might happen in a world in which climate change can wreak havoc on life, even for those who have everything. Just before the world’s first category 6 hurricane hits the ground, Daphne, a proficient ceramicist whose pieces are selling for high prices, manages to get the kids packed and in the car. Her husband, a surgeon, is helping evacuate patients at the hospital and can’t be reached when the car runs out of gas, Daphne’s purse is missing, and they family is bussed hundreds of miles away to a FEMA mega shelter in Oklahoma. Knowing that their home is destroyed and there’s nothing to go home to, all they can do is struggle along with all the other evacuees, including the drug dealers and those who hate anyone who is different. No one knows what will happen next. Bruce Holsinger is a novelist and literary scholar based in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is the author of the USA Today and Los Angeles Times -bestselling novel The Gifted School (Riverhead Books, 2019). A Book of the Month Club main selection and described by The Wall Street Journal as "the novel that predicted the College Admissions Scandal," The Gifted School won the Colorado Book Award and was named one of the Best Books of 2019 by NPR and numerous publications. He is also the author of A Burnable Book (2014) and The Invention of Fire (2015), award-winning historical novels published by William Morrow (HarperCollins). His essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times , The New York Review of Books , Vanity Fair , The Washington Post , Slate , and many other publications.). Holsinger also teaches in the English department at the University of Virginia and serves as editor of the quarterly journal New Literary History . His next nonfiction book, On Parchment: Animals, Archives, and the Making of Culture from Herodotus to the Digital Age , will appear from Yale University Press in February 2023. His previous books have won major awards from the Modern Language Association, the Medieval Academy of America, and the American Musicological Society, and his academic work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies. When he’s not teaching or writing, Holsinger plays clawhammer old-time music on his open-back banjo. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

A fictional diary set in interwar Germany and Spain allows us to peek into the life of Klara Philipsborn, the only Communist in her merchant-class, German-Jewish family. < Back Home So Far Away Judith Berlowitz July 26, 2022 After author Judith Berlowitz found both Gestapo and Soviet records about a relative named Klara Philpsborn, she began thinking about writing Home So Far Away (She Writes Press 2022). Set in diary form, the novel opens in 1925 with a visit from Berlin to an uncle living in Sevilla, Spain. "Onkle" Julius has not told his wife and children that he is Jewish, so his visiting family can only celebrate a quiet, hidden Passover, but Klara is intrigued by the language, food, and culture of Spain. A few years later, she takes a job as a chemist in Madrid. 1n 1936, when the Spanish Civil War breaks out, Klara, now Clara, enlists and ends up putting both relationships and her life at risk. Although she must hide her Jewish and communist identity in Spain, Clara is passionate about fighting for human rights and equality. The tale ends in 1938, just as the Nazi movement is picking up steam in Clara’s homeland. Los Angeles-born genealogist Judith Berlowitz fluttered through various career phases before settling on historical fiction as her life’s work. Tools acquired during all these phases are visible in her debut novel, Home So Far Away (She Writes Press, 2022). Her years as a musician (classical guitar, oboe, singer, arranger), language teacher (Spanish), cultural studies teacher, tour guide, peace activist, and genealogist converge in a fictional diary about a relative from Germany in the Spanish Civil War. Judith lives in San Francisco with her husband and sings in the San Francisco Bach Choir while serving as a volunteer curator with the genealogical website, Geni.com. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

Two guys named Nick Chance, both with clairvoyant dogs named Royo, both inventors living in Pasadena, California – in 1913 and 1993. There’s some magical realism, lots of fascinating historical detail about Pasadena and southern California, and lots of eating. < Back Arroyo Chip Jacobs May 22, 2020 Two guys named Nick Chance, both with clairvoyant dogs named Royo, both inventors living in Pasadena, California – in 1913 and 1993. The original Nick, who starts out working on an ostrich farm, is drawn to the Colorado Street Bridge and manages to meet some of the great personalities of the period: Teddy Roosevelt, Upton Sinclair and Adolphus Busch all meet Nick. He parlays an idea for lighting into a job on the bridge and survives the lethal collapse of one of its arches during construction. Eighty years later, on the anniversary of the bridge’s inauguration, the second Nick Chance is pulled into rectifying the mistakes of the past. Pasadena, which had a millionaire’s row even back then, is nothing like the original, romanticized version of the town. There’s some magical realism, lots of fascinating historical detail about Pasadena and southern California, and lots of eating. Today I talked to Chip Jacobs about his new book Arroyo (Rare Birds Books, 2019) Jacobs is a Los Angeles Times bestselling author and journalist. Chip Jacobs is a Los Angeles Times bestselling author and journalist. His books include the biography Strange As It Seems: the Impossible Life of Gordon Zahler ; the environmental social histories The People's Republic of Chemicals , and the international bestselling Smogtown: the Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles (both with William J. Kelly); the dark-humor true crime caper The Ascension of Jerry ; and the story collection, The Vicodin Thieves . Jacobs has also contributed pieces to anthologies, most recently for the bestselling Los Angeles in the 1970s: Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine . His reporting, which has garnered seven Los Angeles Press Club awards, has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, L.A. Daily News, CNN, The New York Times, Bloomberg, and L.A Weekly, among others. He is currently at work on a follow-up novel and a non-fiction project. Jacobs trusts dogs, plays electric guitar, and is an avid reader, runner, and prankster. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi’s novel Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions: A Novel in Interlocking Stories (Amistad 2022), is a moving and unforgettable collection of stories that span a lifetime. < Back Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi April 18, 2023 Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi’s novel Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions: A Novel in Interlocking Stories (Amistad 2022), is a moving and unforgettable collection of stories that span a lifetime. Four young girls rebel against a boarding school principal and the aftermath stays with them throughout their lives in this complex weaving of relationships and customs. Stories about immigration, powerful mothers and strong-willed daughters lead into stories about raising boys, searching for home, and seeking happiness. Ogunyemi references Nigerian history and traditions prior to the changes enforced by the missionaries, and considers a dystopian future, but the friends continue to love and count on each other across the years and the miles. Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi was born and raised in Ibadan, Nigeria. A finalist for the 2009 PEN/Studzinski Award, her stories have been published in New Writing from Africa 2009 (a collection of PEN/Studzinski Award finalists’ stories), Ploughshares, and mentioned in The Best American Short Stories 2018. Her poetry has appeared in the Massachusetts Review, the Indiana Review and Wasafiri. She graduated from Barnard and UPenn with bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in computer science. Omolola is a Professor of Preventive and Social Medicine at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in South Los Angeles, where she teaches and conducts research on using biomedical informatics to reduce health disparities. Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions, her first book, was selected as a New York Times Editors Choice (October 20, 2022), made The New Yorker's list of "Best Books of 2022 So Far," was a Los Angeles Public Library pick for "Best of 2022: Fiction," and was the October 2022 selection for Roxane Gay's Audacious Book Club with Literati. Omolola lives in California with her husband and loves to try out new restaurants, especially fusion cuisine. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

It’s 1937 and rural Tennessee is still recovering from the Great Depression. The construction of a huge dam brings job seekers, fortune hunters, and the promise of electricity to the area. Claire, a young mother of two, realizes her marriage is over when she wakes up with a sexually transmitted disease brought home by her husband. < Back Watershed Mark Barr January 15, 2020 It’s 1937 and rural Tennessee is still recovering from the Great Depression. The construction of a huge dam brings job seekers, fortune hunters, and the promise of electricity to the area. Claire, a young mother of two, realizes her marriage is over when she wakes up with a sexually transmitted disease brought home by her husband. Nathan is an engineer with a shameful secret who changes his name to get work at the dam. Everyone in this colorful cast of dog-fighting neighbors, beer-guzzling ex-husbands, and power-hungry employers is trying to survive in the mosquito-infested heat of a southern summer. Mark Barr has been awarded fellowships from Blue Mountain Center, I-Park Artists Enclave, Jentel Arts, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, Millay Colony, and Yaddo. Favorably reviewed by Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and Booklist, his debut novel, Watershed (Hub City, 2019), was featured in the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance’s fall Okra list and Deep South Magazine's Fall/Winter Reading List, and named as one of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's "12 Southern Books You'll Want to Read This Fall" and one of Nashville Lifestyles Magazine’s "Four Fall Reads." Mark holds undergraduate degrees from Hendrix College and University of Iowa, and an M.F.A. from Texas State University. He lives with his wife and sons in Arkansas, where he develops software and bakes bread. If you enjoyed today’s podcast and would like to discuss it further with me and other New Books Network listeners, please join us on Shuffle. Shuffle is an ad-free, invite-only network focused on the creativity community. As NBN listeners, you can get special access to conversations with a dynamic community of writers and literary enthusiasts. Sign up by going to www.shuffle.do/NBN/join Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

Maureen Stanton’s new memoir, The Murmur of Everything Moving (Columbus State University 2025) opens when she was in her early twenties, working at a bar saving for a backpacking trip through Europe. < Back The Murmur of Everything Moving Maureen Stanton May 20, 2025 Maureen Stanton’s new memoir, The Murmur of Everything Moving (Columbus State University 2025) opens when she was in her early twenties, working at a bar saving for a backpacking trip through Europe. She meets and falls for Steve, an electrician who at 27 is the father of three children going through a divorce. They are deeply in love, now back in Michigan close to Steve’s children, when he’s diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer that has metastasized throughout his body. In beautiful prose, Stanton describes the medical challenges, Steve’s physical and psychological pain, and the heartache they face knowing that his time is limited while trying to defy the odds. This is a moving story of human fragility, resilience, and the different forms love can take. Maureen Stanton is also the author of Body Leaping Backward: Memoir of a Delinquent Girlhood, winner of a Maine Literary Award and a People Magazine "Best Books Pick"; and Killer Stuff and Tons of Money: An Insider’s Look at the World of Flea Markets, Antiques, and Collecting, winner of a Massachusetts Book Award and a Parade Magazine "12 Great Summer Books" selection. Her nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times , Fourth Genre, Creative Nonfiction, Longreads, New England Review and elsewhere, and has been recognized with the Iowa Review prize, the Sewanee Review prize, and Pushcart Prizes. She's received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Maine Arts Commission, and the MacDowell Colony. She teaches at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and lives in Maine. When she’s not reading, writing, or teaching, she enjoys swimming (ponds, tidal rivers, lakes, and the ocean), foraging for wild mushrooms, baking, and haunting flea markets. www.maureenstantonwriter.com . Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

It’s 1867, and a 20-something civil war widow has just set up a detective agency with a former rebel soldier named Gabriel Garnick. She uses a professional name, Mrs. Paschal, so nobody connects her with the former in-laws who are trying to stop her from receiving her dead husband’s estate. < Back Devil by the Tail Jeanne Matthews August 10, 2021 Today I talked to Jeanne Matthews about her new novel Devil by the Tail (D.X. Varos, 2021) It’s 1867, and a 20-something civil war widow has just set up a detective agency with a former rebel soldier named Gabriel Garnick. She uses a professional name, Mrs. Paschal, so nobody connects her with the former in-laws who are trying to stop her from receiving her dead husband’s estate. Garnick and Paschal get two cases on the same day – the first to help prove a man innocent of murdering his wife, the second to find reasonable doubt for an accused murderer. Imagine their surprise when the cases turn out to be linked? And imagine 19th Century pre-fire Chicago, teeming with corrupt politicians, gambling parlors, and bawdy houses of ill-repute. Also, someone is trying to murder Quinn Sinclair, aka Mrs. Paschal. Jeanne Matthews graduated from the University of Georgia with a degree in Journalism and has worked as a copywriter, a high school English and Drama teacher, and a paralegal. She worked for litigators for twenty years, and there was seldom a day when she didn’t fantasize about murder. So, it was no wonder when she turned to writing murder mysteries. Matthews’ five-book Dinah Pelerin mystery series published by Poisoned Pen Press between 2010 and 2015 received glowing reviews from Library Journal, Booklist, and Publisher’s Weekly. The settings for these books (Bones of Contention, Bet Your Bones, Bonereapers, Her Boyfriend’s Bones and Where the Bones Are Buried) range from the Australian Outback to the Norwegian Arctic to the sophisticated noir of Berlin. Matthews and her husband, a law professor, currently live in Washington State with Jack Reacher, their Norwich terrier. She loves travel, hiking, and photography, plays old torch songs from the 1930’s and 40’s on piano after a few glasses of wine, and enjoys cooking and baking. She also plays a mean game of Scrabble. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

An automobile accident in front of a homeless shelter causes Lola, a dog trainer/groomer in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to renew her battle with the grief she previously pushed below the surface of her daily life. Ben, formerly an architect in the same city, has been abandoned by his family and is currently homeless. < Back Under the Blue Moon Joan Schweighardt June 20, 2023 Today I talked to Joan Schweighardt about her book Under the Blue Moon (Five Directions Press, 2023). An automobile accident in front of a homeless shelter causes Lola, a dog trainer/groomer in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to renew her battle with the grief she previously pushed below the surface of her daily life. Ben, formerly an architect in the same city, has been abandoned by his family and is currently homeless. Lola sees him on the day of her accident, trying to smuggle something into the shelter while all the people associated with the facility are outside with her, waiting for the ambulance to arrive and watching the drama unfold at the end of the street as the guy who broadsided her runs from the scene and is pursued by police. Ben, who lives on a ledge under an overpass with his 18-year-old cat and two space-mates, wants nothing more than to find a job and get back on his feet (and thereby win back both his dignity and his daughter’s love). Lola wants a second chance for a meaningful life. Their individual pursuits put them on parallel paths that offer not only chance encounters with each other but glimpses into the mysteries of luck, love, art, compassion, and what it means to be human in these times. Joan Schweighardt has worn multiple book-world hats over the course of the last many years. She has been a publisher, an agent, a ghostwriter, an editor and more. Her own projects include Under the Blue Moon (2023), and the Rivers Trilogy—Before We Died (2018), Gifts for the Dead (2019), and River Aria (2020). The Art of Touch: A Collection of Prose and Poetry from the Pandemic and Beyond— an anthology she conceived and co-edited, containing the work of 38 contributors—will be published by the University of Georgia Press in November (2023). When not reading or writing, Joan enjoys hiking in the foothills of Albuquerque's Sandia Mountains, bike riding on the city’s numerous trails, oil painting, and hanging out with friends and family. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

A publishing house called The House of Marvelous Books houses an old library in the center of London and hovers on the brink of financial disaster. < Back The House of Marvellous Books Fiona Vigo Marshall May 24, 2022 The House of Marvellous Books by Fiona Vigo Marshall (Fairlight Books 2022) describes a publishing house called The House of Marvelous Books that houses an old library in the center of London and hovers on the brink of financial disaster. Told in journal entries over the course of a year by Junior editor Mortimer Blakely-Smith, the publishing house seems to stumble into one disaster after another. The publisher focuses on safety issues, his assistant has cataracts and is nearly blind, and the chief editor is obsessed with finding a famous missing manuscript buried somewhere in the building. Mortimer grapples with his elderly uncle, annoying co-workers, a close friend who is in prison for stealing precious books from libraries all over the world, and hearsay about mysterious Russian buyers. Along the way, he attends fabulous concerts, reads Proust, and works on his own novel, about the patron saint of navigation. Fiona Vigo Marshall was born in London and educated at Somerville College, Oxford. Her debut novel Find Me Falling , published by Fairlight Books in 2019, was shortlisted for the Paul Torday Memorial Prize 2020. The House of Marvellous Books is her second novel. Her short stories and poems have been nominated for numerous awards, including the V. S. Pritchett Memorial Prize, which she won in 2016 with her short story ‘The Street of Baths’. Her work has appeared in Prospect, Ambit, The Royal Society of Literature Review, Orbis International Literary Journal , and The London Journal of Fiction. When not writing or reading, Fiona enjoys walking, swimming in the sea, and attending to her allotment or garden. She has a lifelong love of classical music. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

Later, as his marriage crumbles and his wife takes their daughter with her to Maine, Walter finds himself more and more drawn to his young neighbor. This is a novel about family dynamics, growing older, struggling with loneliness, and forbidden love. < Back The Best of Crimes K. C. Maher October 4, 2019 A man turns himself into the police for kidnapping an underage girl. The police chief tell him to go home but Walter insists on being arrested and charged. Back to the beginning of the story in 1999, Walter is an eighteen-year-old math prodigy who has already earned two doctorates but is told to get some work experience before going to law school. An investment banker on Wall Street, by nineteen he’s married, and by twenty, the father of a daughter, Olivia. Then 9/11 happens, Walter loses his best friend, he becomes disillusioned with the banking world, and he focuses on fatherhood. Then he includes the little next-door neighbor in all of Olivia’s activities. Later, as his marriage crumbles and his wife takes Olivia with her to Maine, Walter finds himself more and more drawn to the neighbor. This is a novel about family dynamics, growing older, struggling with loneliness, and forbidden love. K. C. Maher always knew that she wanted to write. She learned grammar in parochial school and did a BA at St Johns College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she found her second passion, philosophy. Her short fiction has appeared in literary journals including Ascent, Black Warrior Review, Confrontation, Cottonwood, Gargoyle , and The View From Her e. Her work has been short-listed for the Iowa School of Letters Award and Drue Heinz Literature Prize. She lives in New York City and when not writing, she likes to run along the East River where it connects to the Hudson River, then back through the Financial District. Today we discuss her book The Best of Crimes (RedDoor Publishing, 2019). Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

In candid, witty, and often funny, razor-sharp dialogue, Feldman confronts the fall-out from excessive drinking, mental illness, childhood trauma, drugs, adultery, and nearly every other way a person can be wounded. < Back Start Without Me Joshua Max Feldman December 3, 2018 In Joshua Max Feldman 's thoughtful, bittersweet novel Start Without Me (William Morrow, 2017), two strangers meet at an airport restaurant, and through the course of one Thanksgiving Day, help each other grapple with love, disappointment, and family. In candid, witty, and often funny, razor-sharp dialogue, Feldman confronts the fall-out from excessive drinking, mental illness, childhood trauma, drugs, adultery, and nearly every other way a person can be wounded. His deeply-flawed characters are recognizable and honest as they strive to understand their mistakes while continuing to make them. Adam is a former musical prodigy who comes home for Thanksgiving for the first time since getting sober. Even though his family has seen him hit rock-bottom, he still feels like he’ll never be able to get anything right with them. Flight-attendant Marissa is in a marriage strained by tensions over race, class, and her husband’s lack of ambition. Now she finds out that she’s pregnant following a one-night-stand with her high school sweetheart. If Thanksgiving is the classic, all-American holiday, Start Without Me should be the classic, all-American tale about the struggle we face to become our best selves. Joshua Max Feldman is the author of two novels, The Book of Jonah (translated into nine languages) and Start Without Me . Joshua has written for The New York Times Book Review , among other publications, and is a former fellow of New York's Laboratory for Jewish Culture. He currently resides in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next