< Back Iconoclast: A Sean McPherson Novel Laurie Buchanan August 29, 2022 A trained killer without a drop of human compassion shows up early in Laurie Buchanan’s second Sean McPherson thriller (Iconoclast (Spark Press 2022)). She has no problem murdering a woman and taking her place at a writer’s retreat in beautiful Washington State. But she’s controlled by a Seattle-based crime family that is spreading its tentacles across the Bellingham Bay, a perfect location for trafficking drugs and people across the Pacific Ocean. The book opens with the murder of a priest, who turns out to be the brother of the retreat’s proprietor, and a gourmet cook. The lovely Pine and Quill offers several cabins, one for each writer, and enticing-sounding gourmet meals. The iconoclast is there to kill someone who might know too much, and it takes some time before Sean McPherson, a former cop, is pulled in. Can he save his fiancé and protect the other guests? Laurie Buchanan, who earned a PhD in Holistic Health with a emphasis in energy medicine from National University of Natural Medicine in Portland, Oregon, writes the Sean McPherson novels— fast-paced thrillers set in the Pacific Northwest that feature a trifecta of malice and the pursuit and cost of justice. A cross between Dr. Dolittle, Nanny McPhee, and a type-A Buddhist, Buchanan is an active listener, observer of details, payer of attention, reader and writer of books, kindness enthusiast, and red licorice aficionado. Her books have won multiple awards, including Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Gold Winner, International Book Award Gold Winner, National Indie Excellence Awards Winner, Crime Fiction/Suspense Eric Hoffer Awards Finalist, PenCraft Award for Literary Excellence, and CLUE Book Awards finalist Suspense/Thriller Mysteries. In addition to reading, her passions include long walks, bicycling, camping, and photography— because sometimes the best word choice is a picture. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back The Merciful Jon Sealy February 2, 2021 In The Merciful (Haywire Books, 2021) by Jon Sealy nineteen-year-old Samantha James is killed while riding her bike home from work in a small coastal town one dark summer night in South Carolina. It’s a hit and run, and when they learn who did it, the townspeople want Daniel Hayward, the alleged driver, to pay for his crime. The headlines are compelling, but the truth is unclear. Everyone has an opinion - the media, the prosecutor, the defense attorney, Daniel, and Samantha’s family. Delving into each of the characters, the author pauses to reflect on culture, social pressures, family, and history. Ultimately, The Merciful is a morality play about one moment, one accident, one decision, and the way an instant can change the course of a life forever. Jon Sealy is the author of The Whiskey Baron , The Edge of America , and The Merciful , as well as the craft book So You Want to Be a Novelist . An upstate South Carolina native, he has a degree in English from the College of Charleston and an MFA in fiction writing from Purdue University. He currently lives with his family in the suburbs of Richmond, Virginia, where he is the publisher of Haywire Books. When he's not writing or editing, you'll probably find him lifting weights in his garage, playing "swing monster" with his kids, or rafting on a river. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< 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

< Back Three Muses Martha Anne Toll September 20, 2022 In Three Muses (Regal House Publishing, 2022) by Martha Toll, John Curtin survives the Holocaust by singing for the entertainment of the kommendant who murdered his family. He’s sent to America, probably by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, to be adopted by a family whose son was killed fighting the war. The nourishment, love, and kindness of his new parents allows him to thrive. Years later, John is forced by Dr Roth to relive the worst moments of his life during therapy he’s required to do as part of his psychiatric training. Meanwhile, after seven-year-old Katherine loses her mother, her aunt enrolls her in ballet classes, never realizing how it will change Katherine’s life. The first thing to change is her name – Boris Yanakov, the director and choreographer, changes her name to the more Russian-sounding Katya Symanova. He seduces Katya and makes her a star, but also controls her every movement. When John sees Katya perform in Paris in 1963, he’s bewitched and can’t stop thinking about her. The next time they meet, in New York, John thinks he’s found the love of his life, but Katya is still under Boris’s control. John’s experience with the three muses of Song, Discipline, and Memory is completely different than Katya’s, but they are both forced to claw their way through doubt, despair and loneliness. Martha Anne Toll, whose debut novel, Three Muses , won the Petrichor prize for Finely Crafted Fiction, writes fiction, essays, and book reviews, and reads anything that’s not nailed down. Martha brings a long career in social justice to her work covering BIPOC and women writers. She is a book reviewer and author interviewer at NPR Books, the Washington Post, The Millions, and elsewhere; and publishes short fiction and essays in a wide variety of outlets. She has recently joined the Board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. When she’s not interviewing or writing Martha likes to have lunch with friends, swim, walk, and spend time with her family. She lives just outside Washington D.C. area. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Almond Zucchini Apple Fritters February 12, 2023 Prep Time: 10 minutes Cook Time: 15-20 minutes Serves: 4-5 Tags: ​ About the Recipe I've got a zillion variations of the theme of fritters - try switching out vegetables or replacing apple with banana. Ingredients 1 cup almond flour, 1 grated apple ½ cup grated zucchini Optional: chopped sweet red peppers ½ cup olive oil 2 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp flax meal 1 tsp pure vanilla extract ¼ tsp salt Preparation Stir everything together in a bowl and let sit for 10 minutes. Heat a non-stick frying pan to medium. When hot, drop 1 Tablespoon size pancakes and turn when they start to bubble. Previous Next

< Back What Storm, What Thunder Myriam J. A. Chancy January 18, 2022 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. Award-winning author Myriam J. A. Chancy masterfully charts the inner lives of the characters affected by the disaster--Richard, an expat and wealthy water-bottling executive with a secret daughter; the daughter, Anne, an architect who drafts affordable housing structures for a global NGO; a small-time drug trafficker, Leopold, who pines for a beautiful call girl; Sonia and her business partner, Dieudonné, who are followed by a man they believe is the vodou spirit of death; Didier, an emigrant musician who drives a taxi in Boston; Sara, a mother haunted by the ghosts of her children in an IDP camp; her husband, Olivier, an accountant forced to abandon the wife he loves; their son, Jonas, who haunts them both; and Ma Lou, the old woman selling produce in the market who remembers them all. Artfully weaving together these lives, witness is given to the desolation wreaked by nature and by man. Brilliantly crafted, fiercely imagined, and deeply haunting, What Storm, What Thunder: A Novel (Tin House Books, 2021) is a singular, stunning record, a reckoning of the heartbreaking trauma of disaster, and--at the same time--an unforgettable testimony to the tenacity of the human spirit. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Under a Veiled Moon Karen Odden November 8, 2022 Today I talked to Karen Odden about her new book Under a Veiled Moon (Crooked Lane Books, 2022). When the Princess Alice pleasure boat collides with a huge iron-hulled cargo ship on the Thames River, it’s split in half, and only 130 of the 650 passengers and crew members survive. It’s 1878, and clues point to sabotage by the Irish Republican Brotherhood, which has already used violence in hopes of restoring Home Rule. Inspector Michael Corravan, who was born in Ireland, orphaned, and raised in London by an Irish family, knows that the British will never allow Home Rule in Ireland if the IRB is to blame for the disaster. Meanwhile, violence is rising in his old neighborhood, and Colin Doyle, the youngest of his adopted family, has joined one of the violent Irish gangs. He refuses Corravan’s offer of help, which puts the entire family in danger. With support from colleagues, his good friends Mr. Gordon Stiles and Mrs. Belinda Gale, Inspector Corravan presses on to uncover the truth. KAREN ODDEN received her Ph.D. in English literature from New York University, writing her dissertation on Victorian railway disasters and the origins of PTSD. She has taught at UW-Milwaukee, written essays for numerous books and journals, and edited for the journal Victorian Literature and Culture (Cambridge UP). She freely admits she might be more at home in Victorian London than today, especially when she tries to do anything complicated on her iPhone. All of her mysteries are set in 1870s London. Her first novel, A LADY IN THE SMOKE, about a young woman in a 1874 railway crash, was a USA Today bestseller. In A DANGEROUS DUET, Nell Hallam, an ambitious young pianist stumbles on a notorious crime ring while playing in a Soho music hall. In A TRACE OF DECEIT, Annabel Rowe, a young painter at the Slade School of Art, must delve below the glitter of the art and auction world to uncover the truth about her brother's murder. A member of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime, Karen was awarded a 2021 Grant from Arizona Commission on the Arts. Under a Veiled Moon is the second novel in her Inspector Corravan series, following Down a Dark River. An avid desert hiker, Karen lives in Scottsdale, Arizona with her family and her rescue beagle muse, Rosy. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back The Tenth Muse Catherine Chung January 12, 2021 Katherine recalls being young and friendless. While growing up in the 40’ and 50’s, she remembers when her mother packed up and left, her father remarried, and she was left to focus on her studies – she was an exceptional mathematician. But she’d been wrong about her family – she later learned that the woman who gave birth to her had been murdered by the Nazis during WWII. In graduate school pursuing a doctorate in mathematics, Katherine gets involved with her brilliant teacher and travels to Germany for a year of research and introspection. She follows a few clues about her mother, most with dead ends, and discovers snippets of the truth. Nothing is as it seems, and she is nearly derailed time and again. The Tenth Muse (HarperCollins, 2019) is an engrossing tale about identity and the passion for knowledge. Catherine Chung earned an undergraduate degree in mathematics at the University of Chicago and an MFA at Cornell University. She has worked at a think tank and has gotten encouragement from a number of foundations and family members. Recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and a Director’s Visitorship at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. she was a Granta New Voice and won an Honorable Mention for the PEN/Hemingway Award with her first novel, Forgotten Country , which was a Booklist, Bookpage , and San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2012. Chung has published work in The New York Time s, The Rumpus, and Granta . She lives in New York City. Before the pandemic, she loved traveling, skiing, hiking, and eating foods prepared by other people. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Conversation with Johnny Anthony Valerio May 25, 2021 Back in 1997, when Anthony Valerio’s Conversation with Johnny was first published, the world hadn’t yet seen The Godfather, The Sopranos, or Goodfellas. In this slim volume, Valerio explores two distinct Italian American stereotypes: the dashing man about town and the successful gangster. Nicholas, the descendant of parents who emigrated to America, goes back to the old Italian New York neighborhood where Johnny, the old but still powerful gangster resides, surrounded by acolytes and luxury. The source of Johnny’s power and wealth is assumed to be crime, but he is is a caring and nurturing godfather, listening closely as Nicholas cries about his married, lover calling it quits. He is also a ruthless don who can shower Nicholas with wealth, get him a job as a maître-d at a famous restaurant, or create a retirement home for Italian American Writers. But he can’t promise Nicholas an Italian-American culture that focuses on solely on art as if organized crime never happened. Anthony Valerio is the author of 12 books of fiction and non-fiction. As a book editor in major publishing houses, including McGraw-Hill, he was fortunate to have edited great writers such as Toni Cade Bambara, Shel Silverstein and others. His short stories have appeared in the Paris Review and have been published in anthologies by Random House, the Viking Press, and William Morrow. He has taught undergrad and post-grad writing at New York University, City University of New York, and Wesleyan University, and he has been a fiction judge at PEN's Prison Writing Committee. He works every day, is a jazz afficionado, and a passionate golfer who tries to get out in nature and on the links. About Anthony Valerio’s work, his friend and legendary children’s book author, the late Shel Silvertein said: "He knows his craft: he gets in, tells his story and gets out. It’s what good writing should be." Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Black Cloud Rising David Wright Faladé June 14, 2022 In Black Cloud Rising (Grove Press 2022), 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.” Later recognized as a state hero, Etheridge is a young man when he joins the brigade in late 1863. Led by the one-armed General Edward Augustus Wild and Captain Alonzo G. Draper, the mission is to flush out rebel guerrillas, “bushwackers,” who continue to fight in Union-won territory. Their other mission is to prove that freed slaves can be trusted as combat soldiers. Set mostly in the swampy barrier islands of northeastern North Carolina, Richard is the son of the master of the house and a black slave. As children, he played with his cousins Patrick (Paddy) and Sarah, until they learned that he was a slave, and they the masters. The Etheridge family sign loyalty to the Union, but Paddy joins the Confederate Partisan Rangers. As the African Brigade moves forward, their raids free those still being held as slaves, and Richard moves closer to reuniting with his childhood love, Fanny. This is a novel about identity, integrity, and the fight for human dignity. David Wright Faladé is a Professor of English at the University of Illinois and the Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellow at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. Raised in the Texas panhandle, he’s the recipient of the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Award, and has written for the New Yorker, the Village Voice, the Southern Review, Newsday, and more. Faladé is co-author (with Luc Bouchard) of the young adult novel Away Running and coauthor (with David Zoby) of the nonfiction book Fire on the Beach: Recovering the Lost Story of Richard Etheridge and the Pea Island Lifesavers (a New Yorker Notable Selection and the St Louis-Post Dispatch Best Book of 2021). Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Side Effects of Wanting Mary Salisbury February 14, 2023 In Side Effects of Wanting (Main Street Rag, 2022), author Mary Salisbury spent nearly twenty years gathering together the pieces of humanity she saw reflected in the lives around her and distilled them into a poetically written, beautifully curated short story collection. In this debut, small-town stories speak of love and belonging, longing and regret. The people who populate these tales yearn for companionship and comfort, but face the trauma of fractured relationships and the ache of not quite becoming the person they hoped to be. Mary Salisbury’s short fiction and essays have been published in Fiction Southeast , The Whitefish Review , Flash Fiction Magazine , Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts , and Cutthroat’s Truth to Power . Her chapbooks Come What May and Scarlet Rain Boots were published by Finishing Line Press , and her poetry has appeared in Calyx: A Journal of Art and Literature by Women . Salisbury is an Oregon Literary Arts Fellowship recipient and a graduate of Pacific University’s MFA in Writing Program. She is passionate about spending time with her two grandchildren. Monroe is almost four and Roscoe is one and a half—they play hide and seek and read picture books together. She lives in Portland, Oregon. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back The Authenticity Project Clare Pooley October 26, 2021 Today I talked to Clare Pooley about her novel The Authenticity Project (Penguin, 2020). In this chatty, very British story, a few personal lines written in a “pale-green exercise book like the one Monica had carried around with her at school,” inadvertently trigger enormous personal change in a group of strangers. Monica owns the café where Julian, an aging, lonely artist, has left a few words about himself in the exercise book. Julian hopes that whoever finds it might want to share their own truth and pass it along, and surprisingly, some do. Monica writes in it and leaves it for the next person, Hazard, a coke-snorting, financially high-flying jackass. Hazard takes it to Thailand and gives it to Riley, a cute young Australian gardener. And so on, but everyone ends up back Monica’s café, grappling with the challenges of finding love, or raising a baby, or getting sober. The Authenticity Project will bring you up to date on popular culture back in 2018, when slapdash gatherings, art classes in cafes, raising a glass with friends, and jumping on a plane to Thailand were all part of everyday life. Though not literary, this is a cute, charming story, and don’t be surprised if it turns into an even cuter movie. Clare Pooley was a backup singer with ABBA when she was eleven, and later studied economics at Cambridge University, where she constantly raided the bookshelves of the English students. For years, she was passionate about drinking wine, which led to a chronic alcohol addiction. She quit drinking and started an anonymous blog called Mummy was a Secret Drinker. The blog went viral and became a memoir, The Sober Diaries, which sold over 150,000 copies worldwide. She also gave a TEDX talk on the shame associated with alcohol addiction that has been viewed over 200,000 times. Before becoming a full-time writer, Pooley spent twenty years in the heady world of advertising. She lives in Fulham, London with her husband, three children, and two border terriers. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next