Contact mystery author and recipe creator, G. P. Gottlieb and follow her on social media. All-time Favorite Mystery Authors Sort by Last Name Sort by First Name Sort by Most Recent Andrea Camilleri Author of The Inspector Montalbano Mysteries Read More Attica Lock Author of Black Water Rising Read More Barbara Cleverly Author of The Detective Joe Sandilands Mystery Series Read More Barbara Louise Mertz AKA Elizabeth Peters Read More C.S. Harris Author of The Sebastian St. Syr Mystery Series Read More Catherine Louisa Pirkis Author of Disappeared From Her Home Read More Charles Finch Author of The Charles Lynch Mysteries Read More Christopher Fowler Author of The Bryant and May Mysteries Read More Deanna Raybourne Author of The Veronica Speedwell Mysteries and Lady Gray Mysteries Read More Elizabeth George Author of The Inspector Lynley Mysteries Read More Elsa Hart Author of The Li Du Mysteries Read More Frank Tallis Author of The Max Liebermann Mysteries Read More Georgette Heyer Author of various mystery novels Read More Jacqueline Winspear Author of The Maisie Dobbs Mysteries Read More Jennifer Ashley Author of The Kat Holloway Mysteries Read More Load More

Contact mystery author and recipe creator, G. P. Gottlieb and follow her on social media. All-time Favorite Mystery Authors Sort by Last Name Sort by First Name Sort by Most Recent Tasha Alexander Author of The Lady Emily Historical Mystery Series Read More Jennifer Ashley Author of The Kat Holloway Mysteries Read More M.C. Beaton Author of The Hamish Macbeth Mysteries Read More Andrea Camilleri Author of The Inspector Montalbano Mysteries Read More Julia Chapman Author of The Dales Detective Agency Series Read More Barbara Cleverly Author of The Detective Joe Sandilands Mystery Series Read More Lindsey Davis Author of The Marcus Didius Falco and Flavia Albia Mysteries Read More Charles Finch Author of The Charles Lynch Mysteries Read More Judith Flanders Author of The Sam Clair Mysteries Read More Christopher Fowler Author of The Bryant and May Mysteries Read More Mariah Frederick Author of The Jane Prescott Mysteries Read More Elizabeth George Author of The Inspector Lynley Mysteries Read More C.S. Harris Author of The Sebastian St. Syr Mystery Series Read More Elsa Hart Author of The Li Du Mysteries Read More Georgette Heyer Author of various mystery novels Read More Load More

Contact mystery author and recipe creator, G. P. Gottlieb and follow her on social media. All-time Favorite Mystery Authors Sort by Last Name Sort by First Name Sort by Most Recent Josephine Tey Daughter of Time, Brat Farrar, To Love and be Wise. The Man in the Queue, The Franchise Affair Read More Elizabeth George Author of The Inspector Lynley Mysteries Read More Louise Penny Author of The Armond Gamache Mysteries Read More Attica Lock Author of Black Water Rising Read More Barbara Cleverly Author of The Detective Joe Sandilands Mystery Series Read More Charles Finch Author of The Charles Lynch Mysteries Read More Sujata Massey Author of The Perveen Mistry and Rei Shamuro Mysteries Read More Lindsey Davis Author of The Marcus Didius Falco and Flavia Albia Mysteries Read More C.S. Harris Author of The Sebastian St. Syr Mystery Series Read More Laurie R King Author of The Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes Mysteries Read More Deanna Raybourne Author of The Veronica Speedwell Mysteries and Lady Gray Mysteries Read More Ruth Rendell Author of The Chief Inspector Wexford Novels Read More Christopher Fowler Author of The Bryant and May Mysteries Read More Sherry Thomas Author of The Lady Sherlock Series Read More Catherine Louisa Pirkis Author of Disappeared From Her Home Read More Load More

Essays & Media Support Them When They Beg Once, after I gave change to a homeless person who was begging in front of the Art Institute of Chicago, six or seven other people charged at me with their hands open, and I fled. Read More The Sting of an Unexpected Death I’ve been emailing my publisher these last couple of weeks to find out how many of my books sold during a particular time period during which I tried using an advertisement. He usually gets back to me within a day, so I naturally assumed that Dano was annoyed with me — last month I finally admitted that I would NOT have a manuscript ready to turn in by September 1st. That means I no longer need 2/6/23 as the launch date for my fourth culinary mystery. He’d already told me several times that the best way to sell more books is to publish a new one each year. I kept telling him that I’m not a fast writer. Read More I'm an Unreliable Witness If I were called to the witness stand, I’d immediately admit that I made up the three mysteries I wrote and someone else published, without really knowing a single thing about solving crimes. Read More Come On, Boomers! How is it possible that new writers, having just joined Medium last month, have already found close to 1000 followers? I’ve been here since last year and am nowhere near that! Here’s what I think: Read More To Authors Whose Characters Have Sex the Moment they Wake Up It is not natural when two actors (in a movie) or characters (in a book) open their eyes after a full night of sleep and immediately engage in passionate sexual intercourse. Read More Stepping Back in Time at Ye Olde Jewelry Shoppe Last night, we celebrated our anniversary at a much-loved Wisconsin supper club that was a time machine back to the 1970s. The music (think Carpenters or Captain and Tenille) was ‘musak’ of the 1970s, the décor was ‘hunting lodge’, and the food, including a canned, sliced pear as a garnish, could have been served at one of the restaurants I waitressed at in high school. Read More Drag Bingo in a Red State Yesterday, we drove two hours to a small town in Wisconsin where we’d found a charming old bed and breakfast run by a young couple who live with their toddler in the back of the house. Read More Struggling to Breathe in Chicago The air has been a sickening color since Monday. I’ve tried to stay inside because my face, head, and lungs ache and it’s hard to breathe. I wore a mask the few times I needed to leave our building. It felt weird to remove the mask when I went inside the grocery store, the physical therapy office, the senior home where my mother-in-law lives. Read More Ten Things That Make Me Happy Waking up. Because as I age, each day is a miracle. I survived horrible asthma and a surprise bout of cancer in my fifties, but all of us are surviving something these days. We joke about starting our conversations with “organ recitals” in which everyone lists their aches and pains before we can proceed with real conversations. Read More The Most Fabulous Historical Mysteries Set in American Cities I began hosting New Books in Literature, a podcast channel on the New Books Network, in 2018, and have interviewed over 180 authors so far. It was tough to choose just 5 top books, but in looking over all those interviews, I remembered how much I loved reading these books, all set in the United States long before the 21st century. Read More There Are Plenty of Other Evil Villains What about the Third Reich is so appealing that books and movies are still being made about it? And why do we keep wanting to hear more about Nazi lies, Nazi attacks on anyone they hate, and Nazi humiliation of those who don’t agree with them? Read More Thoughts of a Retired Assassin Back in the day, I knew not to compromise my colleagues by posting stunning views on Instagram like they do now. No photos of anything including gorgeous desserts, and everything I’d say would be too vague for anyone to figure out where I was going or where I’d been. You’ve got to play it cool and quiet in this business. Read More The Story of a New Garden We started at a family-owned garden center about 30 minutes east of my daughter’s Colorado home. I couldn’t get over the amount of development that’s taken place in the thirty odd years since I lived there, much of it “little boxes on a hillside and they’re all made out of ticky-tacky, and they all look just the same.” Read More https://medium.com/@gpgottlieb/my-traumatic-lyft-ride-8d1afa5ef20 My flight to Denver landed later than expected, nearly 10:00pm last night. I was tired because it’s an hour later in Chicago. It was a fifteen-minute wait for a rideshare. I sat in someone’s abandoned wheelchair watching a sudden rainfall (luckily, DIA’s pick up area is covered). I scrolled through Instagram, did a couple of Spanish lessons on Duolingo, breathed the mountain air. Read More How to Stay Married for the First Thirty Years We walked around the charming city of Turin for three full days, often holding hands and feeling blessed. It’s a special vacation, and we’re enjoying every moment. Love the architecture, the cobbled streets, the cacophony of languages, the murals. Read More Load More

< Back Off to Join the Circus Deborah Kalb ​ In Deborah Kalb’s debut adult novel Off to Join the Circus (Apprentice House Press 2023) it’s 2018, Howard Pinsky’s sister Adele, who ran away in 1954, as his parents said, “to join the circus,” is suddenly, 64 years later, in Bethesda wanting to be a part of the family. Howard, now 75 and a retired lawyer married to Marilyn, a retired teacher, spent years researching circuses and trying to find his sister. Now, during a two-week period when their eldest daughter is about to give birth at 46, their middle daughter’s younger son is about to become a Bar Mitzvah, and their youngest daughter is recovering from a terrible divorce, Adele forces everyone to consider the ties that bind them all as a family. There are secrets to be unearthed, resentments to be faced, concerns about the three sisters’ relationships, misunderstandings to be sorted, and worries that pull even 80-year-old Aunt Adele back into the Pinsky family circus. Deborah Kalb is a freelance writer and editor. She spent about two decades working as a journalist in Washington, D.C., for news organizations including Gannett News Service, Congressional Quarterly , U.S. News & World Report , and The Hill , mostly covering Congress and politics. Her book blog, Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb , which she started in 2012, features hundreds of interviews she has conducted with a wide variety of authors. She is the author of three novels for kids, Thomas Jefferson and the Return of the Magic Hat (Schiffer, 2020), John Adams and the Magic Bobblehead (Schiffer, 2018), and George Washington and the Magic Hat (Schiffer, 2016) — and she’s the co-author, with her father, Marvin Kalb, of Haunting Legacy: Vietnam and the American Presidency from Ford to Obama (Brookings, 2011). She is the author/updater of Elections A to Z, 5th edition (CQ Press/SAGE, 2022), the editor of the two-volume reference book, Guide to U.S. Elections, 7th edition (CQ Press/SAGE, 2016), the co-author of The Presidents, First Ladies, and Vice Presidents (CQ Press, 2009), and the co-editor of State of the Union: Presidential Rhetoric from Woodrow Wilson to George W. Bush (CQ Press, 2007), and has contributed updates to a variety of other CQ Press books on politics and government. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

NBN Podcast Episodes Hosted by G. P. Gottlieb Women's Fiction March 5, 2024 Inside the Mirror Parul Kapur INSIDE THE MIRROR centers on twin sisters growing up in 1950s Bombay, who aspire to become artists. The family is still recovering from the Partition of India in 1947, especially the twins’ grandmother, who once fought for justice against the British regime. Listen to Episode Buy Book February 6, 2024 Mrs. Lowe-Porter Jo Salas Mrs. Lowe-Porter is a fictional retelling of the life of the author’s grandmother-in-law, who sidestepped the boundaries placed on women of the early 20th century to spend over three decades translating the books and stories of literary giant, Thomas Mann. Lowe-Porter’s translations led to worldwide acclaim that earned Mann the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929, but she dreamed of being a published author in her own right and struggled to find her own voice. Listen to Episode Buy Book November 7, 2023 The Good Time Girls Get Famous KT Blakemore It’s 1905, and there’s a bounty on the heads of Ruby Calhoun and Pip Quinn for trumped-up crimes they didn’t commit in Kansas. When a wannabe movie producer convinces them to star in a moving picture about their exploits, everyone’s lives are put in danger, but Ruby and Pip refuse to back down in this charming, light-hearted series about 1900s life in the west, the early movie industry, and the bonds of friendship. Listen to Episode Buy Book October 31, 2023 A Coup: Turkish Trilogy Book 3 Phyllis Skoy It’s 2016, after an attempted coup against Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and because of a tip, the police suddenly show up at the office of a young journalist. Nuray, her fellow journalists, and her visiting friend Adalet are thrown into a notorious prison. They’re placed in separate, filthy and horrifying cells, and Adalet has to confront the possibility of never getting out alive. Her Jewish boyfriend has already left Istanbul and is trying to get her to marry him, but Adelet loves her country. Nuray is alone in the world, but she has to confront the father who disappeared from her life and the soldier who wants to see her punished. This is a novel about regular people trying to live their lives in the aftermath of Turkey’s takeover by a populist, authoritarian leader. Listen to Episode Buy Book October 17, 2023 The Blue Window Suzanne Berne Lorna is a social worker who helps countless depressed and disturbed patients pull their lives together, but she can’t begin to communicate with her miserable 19-year-old son, who will barely communicate and speaks in passive voice. She needs to drive up to Vermont to see to her aging mother, now suffering from a possible broken ankle, and dreads being with her because the mother disappeared without a word when Lorna was a child, and only came back in her life after her son was born. Then there’s her ex-husband out on the west coast – Lorna’s job is communicating, but she hasn’t found a way to do so in her own life. Listen to Episode Buy Book August 1, 2023 Kantika Elizabeth Graver Rebecca Cohen and her family live in Istanbul, until they lose all their wealth and are forced to leave. It’s also no longer safe for Jews, and many are trying to find a place to go. Rebecca’s father, once a successful businessman, now cleans a synagogue in Barcelona. Listen to Episode Buy Book July 25, 2023 The Pain of Pleasure Amy Grace Loyd 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. Listen to Episode Buy Book June 20, 2023 Under the Blue Moon Joan Schweighardt 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. Listen to Episode Buy Book May 23, 2023 After the Barricades Jessica Stilling After her mother dies in a tragic accident, Anna cleans out her closet and finds a striking painting that she’d never seen before. She also finds a trove of letters from Stefan Terre, a name she’s never heard. Listen to Episode Buy Book April 11, 2023 Because I Loved You Donnaldson Brown Sixteen-year-old Leni O’Hare loves her horse, so when her mother tries to sell it, she rides as far as she can. It’s 1972, and she ends up falling in love with another horse-lover. Listen to Episode Buy Book April 4, 2023 Charred: A Whipped and Sipped Mystery G.P. Gottlieb In Charred, the third of G. P. Gottlieb’s Whipped and Sipped Mysteries, her heroine, Alene Baron, has a lot on her mind. Chicago is in lockdown, a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, complicating Alene’s already hectic life. Listen to Episode Buy Book March 28, 2023 The Woman Beyond the Sea Sarit Yishai-Levi 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. Listen to Episode Buy Book March 14, 2023 Take What You Need Idra Novey 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. Listen to Episode Buy Book February 7, 2023 Tell Me One Thing Kerri Schlottman 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. Listen to Episode Buy Book January 17, 2023 I Meant to Tell You Fran Hawthorne 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. Listen to Episode Buy Book Load More

NBN Podcast Episodes Hosted by G. P. Gottlieb African American Fiction October 24, 2023 Indigo Field Marjorie Hudson A sweeping picture of family trauma, Native American and Black history, and the earth’s vengeance on human pettiness. A retired colonel’s wife dies, leaving him alone in a snooty North Carolina senior community. Reba, an elderly Black woman who speaks to the ghosts of her family, takes in the white child whose father killed her beloved niece. The colonel mistakenly causes damage to Reba’s old car and unleashes a torrent of spirits, while his son guards the bones that have been unearthed in what was once “Indian Field.” This is a stunning debut about race relations, land use, history, and memory. Listen to Episode Buy Book April 18, 2023 Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi 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. Listen to Episode Buy Book September 22, 2020 What You Don't See Tracy Clark Cass Raines left the Chicago Police force after a morally bankrupt cop nearly got her killed. Now she runs her own Private Detective agency. Listen to Episode Buy Book September 8, 2020 Saving Ruby King Catherine Adel West Two south side Chicago families are bound together by a violence-infused past. Ruby’s mother, Alice King, has been murdered. Her father, Lebanon King, is an abusive man who endured a terrible childhood. Listen to Episode Buy Book July 31, 2020 Pale Edward A. Farmer It’s 1966, and Bernice’s husband has either died or abandoned her. Her brother Floyd invites her to join him as a servant working for white owners of an old plantation house in Mississippi. Floyd warns Bernice about the housekeeper, Silva, who lives there with her two young sons. The owner and his wife don’t speak much and there seem to be secrets hidden in every corner. Listen to Episode Buy Book July 27, 2020 The Gone Dead Chanelle Benz A decrepit house in Greendale, Mississippi once belonged to Billie James’s father, a renowned black poet who died unexpectedly when she was four years old. Her mother dies of cancer. Then years later, her paternal grandmother dies and leaves Billie the old Mississippi Delta house. Listen to Episode Buy Book June 30, 2020 Tea by the Sea Donna Hemans A new father walks out of the hospital with his day-old baby while the mother recuperates from giving birth. He tells a series of lies and moves houses or countries whenever the truth gets too close. The young, broken-hearted mother devotes herself to searching for her missing daughter. Listen to Episode Buy Book June 8, 2020 Everywhere You Don’t Belong Gabriel Bump In Everywhere You Don’t Belong (Algonquin Books, 2020), Gabriel Bump has created an unforgettable debut novel that will sometimes make you laugh, and sometimes pull at your gut. Listen to Episode Buy Book August 31, 2021 What Passes as Love Trisha R. Thomas In 1850, at age six, Dahlia Holt is taken from the only home she knows and moved into the big house to serve her two older sisters. They share a father, who owns the house and its slaves. On her sixteenth birthday, Dahlia gets to dress up in one of the sister’s discarded dresses for a trip to the city. There, she gets separated from her family, and meets a young Englishman who thinks she’s white. Listen to Episode Buy Book October 27, 2022 Cora's Kitchen Kimberly Garrett Brown Cora, who works at Harlem’s 135th Street library, reads a powerful poem by the young Langston Hughes, who begins to offer advice about her own writing. She’s awakened to thoughts about society and the role of women, prejudice, and the plight of Black women. Listen to Episode Buy Book December 7, 2021 Gone Missing in Harlem Karla FC Holloway The Mosbys leave their life in Sedalia within hours after six-year-old Percy loudly notes that his father’s boss has made a mistake in calculating what is owed. Percy’s parents know what would happen if they stayed. Listen to Episode Buy Book January 18, 2022 What Storm, What Thunder Myriam J. A. Chancy At the end of a long, sweltering day, as markets and businesses begin to close for the evening, an earthquake of 7.0 magnitude shakes the capital of Haiti, Port-au-Prince. Listen to Episode Buy Book February 1, 2022 Bone Broth Lyndsey Ellis It’s 2015, and the suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri are still simmering after the fatal police shooting sparked a national debate about use-of-force law, militarization of police, and the relationship between the police and African Americans. Listen to Episode Buy Book June 14, 2022 Black Cloud Rising David Wright Faladé Author and scholar David Wright Faladé tells the story of Richard Etheridge, who towards the end of the Civil War joined America’s first and only “African Brigade.” Listen to Episode Buy Book Load More

NBN Podcast Episodes Hosted by G. P. Gottlieb Immigrant Fiction January 23, 2024 Nadiia Christine Evans Nadia is a young Bosnian refugee who has lost everyone she’s loved. In 1997 she gets into England on a fake passport and finds temp work in a shady office that might be doing something illegal. A new temp shows up and Nadia knows he’s from her country even though he says he’s Armenian. She can tell that he’s Serbian, perhaps the kind that hunted down Bosnians like her. Nadia sees danger everywhere. Listen to Episode Buy Book December 19, 2023 American Ending Mary Kay Zuravleff It’s the early 1900s in an Appalachian town filled with immigrants, and Yelena is the first American born to her Old Believer Russian Orthodox parents. She can cook, clean, and take care of her baby siblings by age nine, but she loves school and wants something different that all the other girls, who get married by 13 or 14, and start having more babies than they can feed. Listen to Episode Buy Book December 5, 2023 The Shining Mountains Alix Christie Angus McDonald had to escape from Scotland or risk arrest. In 1838, he contracted with the Hudson Bay Company to trade in the Pacific Northwest. There he discovers majestic mountains, raging rivers, and buffalo. Listen to Episode Buy Book August 1, 2023 Kantika Elizabeth Graver Rebecca Cohen and her family live in Istanbul, until they lose all their wealth and are forced to leave. It’s also no longer safe for Jews, and many are trying to find a place to go. Rebecca’s father, once a successful businessman, now cleans a synagogue in Barcelona. Listen to Episode Buy Book July 4, 2023 Shadows We Carry Meryl Ain Meryl Ain's Shadows We Carry (Sparkspress, 2023) is a follow-up to the author’s 2020 novel, The Takeaway Men, focuses on fraternal twins Bronka and JoJo Lubinski, now in college and figuring out what to do with their lives. Listen to Episode Buy Book May 16, 2023 Hotel Cuba Aaron Hamburger Two sisters fleeing the horror of the Soviet Revolution and aftermath of WW1 are disappointed when American policy prevents them from joining their older sister in New York. Listen to Episode Buy Book April 18, 2023 Jollof Rice and Other Revolutions Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi 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. Listen to Episode Buy Book January 14, 2019 Lucky Boy Shanthi Sekaran An optimistic young Mexican woman gets pregnant while trying to cross the border into the states. An Indian-American woman struggles with infertility. When undocumented Solimar is detained by the state, Kavya and her husband foster and then fall in love with her little boy. Listen to Episode Buy Book October 6, 2020 A Peculiar Kind of Immigrant’s Son Sergio Troncoso Troncoso fills these 13 linked stories with the struggles and triumphs of Mexican/American immigrants or their children who’ve settled in the United States. In a nod to philosophical perspectivism, the view that perception changes according o the viewer’s interpretation... Listen to Episode Buy Book November 13, 2018 A Terrible Country Keith Gessen The only job Andrei Kaplan has been able to find since completing his doctorate, is teaching an online, poorly-paid course. So, he agrees to fly to Moscow when his brother promises him a round-trip ticket, hockey games, and his old bedroom with free WiFi in exchange for taking care of their aging grandmother. Listen to Episode Buy Book March 2, 2021 Purple Lotus Veena Rao Already in her late twenties, Tara is relieved when her parents arrange a marriage with a man who lives across the world in Atlanta. But she understands quickly that her husband doesn’t love her or even want her. Listen to Episode Buy Book November 30, 2021 Nermina's Chance Dina Greenberg Nermina is a medical student in Sarajevo. She’s been raised in an educated family of Westernized, secular Muslims, but it’s 1992 and the Serbian Chetniks have started to destroy the city. Listen to Episode Buy Book February 8, 2022 In the Shadow of Dora Patrick Hicks In the Shadow of Dora by Patrick Hicks explores the space program’s path from the Dora Mittelbau concentration camp in 1940’s Nazi Germany, to the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969. Listen to Episode Buy Book March 29, 2022 River Aria Joan Schweighardt It’s 1928 and Estela Euquério Hopper, of Manaus, Brazil, is the star vocal pupil of a world-renowned musician who’d come to revive a magnificent opera house. Listen to Episode Buy Book July 26, 2022 Home So Far Away Judith Berlowitz 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. Listen to Episode Buy Book Load More

NBN Podcast Episodes Hosted by G. P. Gottlieb Historical Fiction March 5, 2024 Inside the Mirror Parul Kapur INSIDE THE MIRROR centers on twin sisters growing up in 1950s Bombay, who aspire to become artists. The family is still recovering from the Partition of India in 1947, especially the twins’ grandmother, who once fought for justice against the British regime. Listen to Episode Buy Book December 19, 2023 American Ending Mary Kay Zuravleff It’s the early 1900s in an Appalachian town filled with immigrants, and Yelena is the first American born to her Old Believer Russian Orthodox parents. She can cook, clean, and take care of her baby siblings by age nine, but she loves school and wants something different that all the other girls, who get married by 13 or 14, and start having more babies than they can feed. Listen to Episode Buy Book July 18, 2023 The Isolated Seance Jeri Westerson It’s 1895, and Tim Badger, who is quite familiar with the inside of a jail cell, and his intuitive friend Ben Watson, who is Black in a society that is weary of difference, are unlikely detectives. But Tim was once one of the Baker Street Irregular urchins who ran errands and spied for the great Sherlock Holmes, and the two young men are trying to be detectives. Listen to Episode Buy Book June 13, 2023 LOOT Tania James Tania James' novel Loot (Knopf 2023) is about a young woodcarver who is ordered by Tipu Sultan, ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore in late 18th century India, to carve a large wooden tiger. Listen to Episode Buy Book May 23, 2023 After the Barricades Jessica Stilling After her mother dies in a tragic accident, Anna cleans out her closet and finds a striking painting that she’d never seen before. She also finds a trove of letters from Stefan Terre, a name she’s never heard. Listen to Episode Buy Book April 25, 2023 The Great Reclamation Rachel Heng In the 1940s, Singapore was controlled by the British occupied by the Japanese and comprised of rubber plantations and decrepit fishing villages. A timid little boy is the only one who can help his father, a fisherman, find a string of mysterious islands surrounded by teeming ocean life that will change the fortune of his family and neighbors. Listen to Episode Buy Book February 21, 2023 In the Fall They Leave: A Novel of the First World War Joanna Higgins 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. Listen to Episode Buy Book January 31, 2023 Song of the Storyteller C.P. Lesley Today I talked to C. P. Lesley about Song of the Storyteller (Five Directions Press, 2023). Listen to Episode Buy Book January 24, 2023 The Kudzu Queen Mimi Herman 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. Listen to Episode Buy Book January 17, 2023 I Meant to Tell You Fran Hawthorne 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. Listen to Episode Buy Book November 29, 2022 We are All Together Richard Fulco 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. Listen to Episode Buy Book November 15, 2022 The Lindbergh Nanny Mariah Fredericks 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. Listen to Episode Buy Book March 26, 2019 The Lake on Fire Rosellen Brown 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. Listen to Episode Buy Book March 25, 2019 Song of the Siren C.P. Lesley Since being sold into slavery as a child and working her way up to becoming concubine and mistress for several different men, Lady Juliana's survival has depended on her allure. Then her place in the world is shattered by a debilitating illness and she is spurned by the entire Polish royal court. Listen to Episode Buy Book October 11, 2019 The Flavia de Luce Mystery Series Alan Bradley This book introduced the intrepid 11-year-old protagonist, Flavia de Luce, who lives in an enormous manor house in England, with her widowed father and two sisters. It’s 1950, and England is still rebuilding itself after WWII. Listen to Episode Buy Book Load More

NBN Podcast Episodes Hosted by G. P. Gottlieb ​ Off to Join the Circus Deborah Kalb In Deborah Kalb’s debut adult novel Off to Join the Circus (Apprentice House Press 2023) it’s 2018, Howard Pinsky’s sister Adele, who ran away in 1954, as his parents said, “to join the circus,” is suddenly, 64 years later, in Bethesda wanting to be a part of the family. Listen to Episode Buy Book March 19, 2024 The Stark Beauty of Last Things Céline Keating The Stark Beauty of Last Things (She Writes Press, 2023) is set in Montauk, the far reaches of the famed Hamptons, an area under looming threat from a warming climate and overdevelopment. Now outsider Clancy, a thirty-six-year-old claims adjuster scarred by his orphan childhood, has inherited an unexpected legacy: the power to decide the fate of Montauk’s last parcel of undeveloped land. Listen to Episode Buy Book March 5, 2024 Inside the Mirror Parul Kapur INSIDE THE MIRROR centers on twin sisters growing up in 1950s Bombay, who aspire to become artists. The family is still recovering from the Partition of India in 1947, especially the twins’ grandmother, who once fought for justice against the British regime. Listen to Episode Buy Book February 20, 2024 Secrets of the Sun Mako Yoshikawa Mako Yoshikawa's Secrets of the Sun: A Memoir (Mad Creek Books 2024) contains a host of essays about her difficult, brilliant father. Shoichi Yoshikawa grew up in a wealthy family in 1930s Japan, but his mother died when he was five, and he died alone on the eve of Mako’s wedding. Listen to Episode Buy Book February 13, 2024 Cravings Garnett Kilberg Cohen Garnett Kilberg Cohen’s 4th story collection is about people of all kinds who confront past failures, previous mistakes, or moments they wish they could do over. A man recalls a fall that changed his family’s life, a woman thinks about an abortion that went bad, an aging hippie confronts the death of his best friend – these are detailed, well-told, poignant stories that will stay with you. Listen to Episode Buy Book February 6, 2024 Mrs. Lowe-Porter Jo Salas Mrs. Lowe-Porter is a fictional retelling of the life of the author’s grandmother-in-law, who sidestepped the boundaries placed on women of the early 20th century to spend over three decades translating the books and stories of literary giant, Thomas Mann. Lowe-Porter’s translations led to worldwide acclaim that earned Mann the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929, but she dreamed of being a published author in her own right and struggled to find her own voice. Listen to Episode Buy Book January 30, 2024 The Half-White Album Cynthia Sylvester Cynthia Sylvester's The Half-White Album (University of New Mexico Press 2023) is a collection of stories, flash fiction, and poems revolving around the journey of a travelling band, The Covers. Listen to Episode Buy Book January 23, 2024 Nadiia Christine Evans Nadia is a young Bosnian refugee who has lost everyone she’s loved. In 1997 she gets into England on a fake passport and finds temp work in a shady office that might be doing something illegal. A new temp shows up and Nadia knows he’s from her country even though he says he’s Armenian. She can tell that he’s Serbian, perhaps the kind that hunted down Bosnians like her. Nadia sees danger everywhere. Listen to Episode Buy Book December 19, 2023 American Ending Mary Kay Zuravleff It’s the early 1900s in an Appalachian town filled with immigrants, and Yelena is the first American born to her Old Believer Russian Orthodox parents. She can cook, clean, and take care of her baby siblings by age nine, but she loves school and wants something different that all the other girls, who get married by 13 or 14, and start having more babies than they can feed. Listen to Episode Buy Book December 5, 2023 The Shining Mountains Alix Christie Angus McDonald had to escape from Scotland or risk arrest. In 1838, he contracted with the Hudson Bay Company to trade in the Pacific Northwest. There he discovers majestic mountains, raging rivers, and buffalo. Listen to Episode Buy Book November 28, 2023 The Lost Archive Lynn C. Miller The Lost Archive is a collection of stories that delve into universal themes of resentment, betrayal, and redemption.Some stories are about friendship, relationships, lost chances, and the search for love, others are about mysterious happenings, mistaken identities, and end of life decisions. Listen to Episode Buy Book November 21, 2023 Tandem Andy Mozina 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. Listen to Episode Buy Book November 14, 2023 Paradise Undone: A Novel of Jonestown Annie Dawid 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. Listen to Episode Buy Book November 7, 2023 The Good Time Girls Get Famous KT Blakemore It’s 1905, and there’s a bounty on the heads of Ruby Calhoun and Pip Quinn for trumped-up crimes they didn’t commit in Kansas. When a wannabe movie producer convinces them to star in a moving picture about their exploits, everyone’s lives are put in danger, but Ruby and Pip refuse to back down in this charming, light-hearted series about 1900s life in the west, the early movie industry, and the bonds of friendship. Listen to Episode Buy Book October 31, 2023 A Coup: Turkish Trilogy Book 3 Phyllis Skoy It’s 2016, after an attempted coup against Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and because of a tip, the police suddenly show up at the office of a young journalist. Nuray, her fellow journalists, and her visiting friend Adalet are thrown into a notorious prison. They’re placed in separate, filthy and horrifying cells, and Adalet has to confront the possibility of never getting out alive. Her Jewish boyfriend has already left Istanbul and is trying to get her to marry him, but Adelet loves her country. Nuray is alone in the world, but she has to confront the father who disappeared from her life and the soldier who wants to see her punished. This is a novel about regular people trying to live their lives in the aftermath of Turkey’s takeover by a populist, authoritarian leader. Listen to Episode Buy Book Load More

NBN Podcast Episodes Hosted by G. P. Gottlieb Memoir February 20, 2024 Secrets of the Sun Mako Yoshikawa Mako Yoshikawa's Secrets of the Sun: A Memoir (Mad Creek Books 2024) contains a host of essays about her difficult, brilliant father. Shoichi Yoshikawa grew up in a wealthy family in 1930s Japan, but his mother died when he was five, and he died alone on the eve of Mako’s wedding. Listen to Episode Buy Book September 5, 2023 I Surrender: A Memoir of Chile's Dictatorship, 1975 Kathleen M. Osberger In 1975, Kathleen Osberger, who’d just graduated from Notre Dame University, flew to Chile to teach in a Catholic school in Santiago. She was assigned to live with several religious women, and when she arrived, was told that they would sometimes shelter dissidents who were wanted by the secret police. Listen to Episode Buy Book June 27, 2023 Set Adrift: A Mystery and A Memoir Sarah Conover When racing yacht “The Revonoc” went down in the Bermuda Triangle’s Sargasso Sea during a freakish storm in January of 1958, the sailing world was dumbfounded. The boat and five people on board, all well-known in the sailing world, completely vanished. Listen to Episode Buy Book June 6, 2023 Dreaming in Spanish Sara Alvarado Sara Alvarado tells the story of growing up in Madison, studying Spanish, and escaping alcoholism, substance abuse, men, and sexual assault by moving to Puerto Vallarta in Mexico. Listen to Episode Buy Book March 21, 2023 The Field Victoria Garza Victoria Garza begins her poetic memoir with her ten-year-old self learning that her little sister and cousin have died in a car accident. She painstakingly recalls lovely moments with her sister as they faced their parents’ divorce, their new lives surrounded by family members, their Mexican American culture and celebrations. Listen to Episode Buy Book April 4, 2023 The Wandering Womb: Essays in Search of Home S.L. Wisenberg As a child, S. L. Wisenberg worried about being outside, not being able to breathe, and Nazis coming through the window of her Houston home. Listen to Episode Buy Book November 22, 2022 Hysterical Elissa Bassist 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. Listen to Episode Buy Book November 1, 2022 Maybe It's Me: On Being the Wrong Kind of Woman Eileen Pollack Eileen Pollack covers her life in snippets or by delving into history, but the overall picture is of an extremely talented writer, a brilliant woman with a degree in physics and a long list of respected publications who is still somewhat bewildered to find herself alone. Listen to Episode Buy Book July 27, 2021 The Thin Ledge Daniel Shapiro Daniel Shapiro was a successful attorney in his early forties when his wife, Susan, suffered a brain bleed and a diagnosis that her future was uncertain. Stunned, and with three young children, the couple made the most of the few years that followed, before a massive second hemorrhage changed everything. Listen to Episode Buy Book Load More

NBN Podcast Episodes Hosted by G. P. Gottlieb Paranormal Fiction June 8, 2021 One Kind Favor Kevin McIlvoy Based loosely on a tragic real-life incident in 2014, One Kind Favor (WTAW Press 2021) explores the consequences of the lynching of a young black man in rural North Carolina. Listen to Episode Buy Book June 28, 2022 Proof of Life Sheila Lowe Proof of Life (Write Choice Ink 2021) is the second book in author Sheila Lowe’s Beyond the Veil paranormal suspense series. Listen to Episode Buy Book Load More