< Back Wanting Radiance Karen Salyer McElmurray June 29, 2021 Today I talked to Karen Salyer McElmurray about her novel Wanting Radiance (UP of Kentucky, 2020). Fifteen-year-old Miracelle Loving hears the gunshot that kills her mother, and runs to hold her while she dies. She spends the next two decades roaming, fortune telling and picking up odd jobs. Then, as if in a dream, she hears her mother’s voice urging her to seek answers about where she came from. Miracelle finds love, but isn’t ready for it, and she finds a possible path, but doesn’t recognize it. She embarks on a solitary journey that no amount of fortune telling can prepare her for and discovers a home she never knew, a father she never met, and a grandfather she didn’t know existed. Perhaps the most important thing she learns is that she can’t love another person if she doesn’t love herself. Karen Salyer McElmurray earned an MFA in Fiction Writing from the University of Virginia, an MA in Creative Writing from Hollins University, and a PhD from the University of Georgia, where she studied American Literature and Fiction Writing. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back The Good Luck Stone Heather Bell Adams February 23, 2021 Heather Bell Adams’ first novel, Maranatha Road (West Virginia University Press 2017), won the gold medal for the Southeast region in the Independent Publisher Book Awards and was selected for Deep South Magazine’s Fall/Winter Reading List. Her short fiction, which has won the James Still Fiction Prize and Carrie McCray Memorial Literary Award, appears in The Thomas Wolfe Review , Atticus Review , Pembroke Magazine , Broad River Review , The Petigru Review , Pisgah Review , and elsewhere. Originally from Hendersonville, NC, Heather lives in Raleigh with her husband and son. She works as a lawyer and volunteers on the Raleigh Review fiction staff. She loves hot yoga and does not love cooking. The Good Luck Stone (Haywire Books, 2020) appears on Summer Reading Lists for Deep South Magazine , Writer’s Bone , The Big Other and Buzz Feed. The story opens in Savannah, Ga with ninety- year-old Audrey Thorpe living in her historic mansion on palm-tree-lined Victory Drive, determined to retain her independence. When her health begins to fade and she stumbles at a fund-raising event, her granddaughter hires fellow mom Laurel to be a part-time caregiver. Laurel and Audrey seem to bond—until Audrey disappears. As the story moves between the verdant jungles of the war-torn Philippines, where Audrey served as a nurse, and glittering modern-day Savannah, friendships new and old are tested. Along the way, Audrey grapples with one of life’s heart-wrenching truths: You can only outrun your secrets for so long. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back The Dependents Katharine Dion January 22, 2020 Gene is newly widowed and haunted by his memories. As he bumbles through long days, he questions his wife Maida’s sudden death, his daughter’s motives, and the enduring and meaningful friendship of best friends Ed and Gayle Donnelly. He tries to resurrect the good memories of the two couples raising children in a New Hampshire town and vacationing together every summer at a lake house owned by the Donnellys. He tried to come to terms about his relationship with his only daughter, Dary, who has chosen to raise a fatherless child, has made her home on the other side of the country, and who challenges Gene’s happy memories of everything that happened in their lives. She even challenges his view of her mother. Moving between Gene’s fraught current life and memories of his childhood, coming of age, courtship, marriage, and career, The Dependents (Back Bay Books, 2019) is a sensitive novel about love, parenthood, friendship, and finding contentment. Katharine Dion is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was awarded the Iowa Arts Fellowship. She is also a MacDowell Fellow and the recipient of a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation. In her early twenties, Dion founded a nonprofit organization called Peer Health Exchange that (still) trains college students to teach a comprehensive health curriculum in public high schools. And she has spent two summers living in a Zen monastery working as a cook. Dion’s introduction to Buddhism came from living several summers at Tassajara, a monastery in the Ventana Wilderness; she is lay ordained in the Soto Zen lineage and helps people meet the grief of ecological destruction as a Buddhist Ecochaplain . She was born in Oakland and lives in Emeryville, California. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Hotel Cuba Aaron Hamburger May 16, 2023 Today I talked to Aaron Hamburger about his new novel Hotel Cuba (Harper Perennial, 2023). 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. Older, practical sister Pearl knows they must leave the old world to survive and buys tickets to Cuba. Frieda, the younger sister, immediately starts complaining and longs to join her boyfriend from home who is now in Detroit. Havana is filled with rich Americans escaping Prohibition and poor Cubans selling fun, pleasure, and booze, but Pearl and Frieda are sheltered, penniless Jewish girls. After Frieda manages to get off the island, Pearl, who raised her baby sister starting at age nine, does whatever she has to do to escape “Hotel Cuba.” Aaron Hamburger is the author of a story collection titled THE VIEW FROM STALIN’S HEAD which was awarded the Rome Prize by the American Academy of Arts and Letters and nominated for a Violet Quill Award. He has also written three novels: FAITH FOR BEGINNERS, nominated for a Lambda Literary Award, NIRVANA IS HERE, winner of a Bronze Medal from the 2019 Foreword Reviews Indies Book Awards, and HOTEL CUBA, published by Harper Perennial in 2023. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Village Voice, Tin House, Michigan Quarterly Review, Subtropics, Crazyhorse, Boulevard, Poets & Writers, Tablet, O, the Oprah Magazine, Out, The Massachusetts Review, The Bennington Review, Nerve, Time Out, Details, and The Forward. He has also won fellowships from Yaddo, Djerassi, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and the Edward F. Albee Foundation as well as first prize in the Dornstein Contest for Young Jewish Writers, and his short fiction and creative non-fiction have received special mentions in the Pushcart Prizes. Hamburger has taught creative writing at Columbia University, George Washington University, New York University, Brooklyn College, and the Stonecoast MFA Program. In addition to writing and reading, he is an avid tennis player and baker. He actually has a babka recipe published in a new children's book by Leslea Newman. Also, every year he throws a holiday cookie blowout and bakes thousands of cookies for family and friends. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Charred: A Whipped and Sipped Mystery G.P. Gottlieb April 4, 2023 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. The vegan café she owns can serve only takeout, and her three kids complain constantly about school via Zoom and the near-absence of opportunities to interact with their friends. Alene’s ex-husband is, as ever, no help. Her aging father also requires assistance, a reality complicated when his usual caretaker falls ill with the virus. Alene struggles to find time even to visit the café, never mind bake. But with her livelihood at stake, she must keep showing up, no matter how many conflicting demands tug her in other directions. On the up side, Alene’s romance with Frank, a police officer, is progressing—although they have yet to make the relationship permanent. And conflict among her staff members has eased, even though they still argue about the best approach to the pandemic and the homeless man who regularly stations himself outside the café and insults staff and customers as they go in and out, among other issues. All that changes when Kofi, the boyfriend of a Whipped and Sipped staff member, stumbles over a charred corpse while searching for wood he can use in his artwork. Kofi’s girlfriend begs Alene not to involve the police, despite Alene’s protests that keeping secrets will undermine her relationship with Frank. Soon Alene has no choice but to find out what’s behind the mysterious death, even if it means delving into the long-buried secrets of her own family. G. P. Gottlieb hosts New Books in Literature, a podcast channel in the New Books Network. Charred is her third novel. C. P. Lesley is the author of two historical fiction series set during the childhood of Ivan the Terrible and three other novels. Her latest book, Song of the Storyteller, appeared in January 2023. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back The Anglophile's Notebook Sunday Taylor November 17, 2020 Californian Claire Easton, who writes a magazine column called “The Anglophile’s Notebook,” travels to England to do research for a book about Charlotte Brontë. She’s already in love with England, where her late mother grew up and where she plans to find some healing now that her marriage of twenty years is imploding. Claire is specifically interested in Charlotte Bronte, but she wants to read up on the people who are obsessed with the world’s most famous literary family, the Brontës. The three precocious Bronte sisters and their alcoholic brother lived in a chilly parsonage surrounded by a cemetery and the mysterious Yorkshire moors, and the novels they wrote between 1844-49 changed the course of English literature. Claire, while connecting with people who can help her research, manages to solve some mysterious goings on, connect her new friends to each other, rebuild her life, and fall in love with the man who might publish her as yet unwritten book. Today I talked to author Sunday Taylor about The Anglophiles's Notebook (Spuyten Duyvil, 2020). Taylor grew up in Pennsylvania and Connecticut and attended Bates College in Maine. A graduate of the Master of Arts program in English Literature at UCLA, she spent the last four decades in California and currently lives in Los Angeles. Taylor is married with two grown daughters and two granddaughters. She journeys to England every year and identifies as an Anglophile. This is her first novel. When not reading or writing, she serves on the Advisory Board of the Library Foundation of Los Angeles, grows old English Roses in her Los Angeles garden, and is currently searching for the best chocolate chip cookie recipe for her granddaughters. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back A Terrible Country Keith Gessen November 13, 2018 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. Andrei imagines the scholarly article he’ll write based on his grandmother’s stories of Soviet intrigue. He imagines himself protesting the Putin regime in the morning, playing hockey in the afternoon, and keeping his grandmother company in the evening. But his Russian is rusty, finding a place to play hockey is difficult, and the grandmother has dementia. As Keith Gessen explains in his wonderful novel A Terrible Country (Viking, 2018), Russia turns out to be something different than he expected. Keith Gessen is the founding editor of the literary journal n+1 and author of All the Sad Young Literary Men . He is also the editor of three nonfiction books and the translator, from Russian, of a collection of short stories, a book of poems, and Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich’s oral history, Voices from Chernobyl . A contributor to The New Yorker and The London Review of Books , Gessen teaches journalism at Columbia and lives in New York with his wife and sons. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< 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

< Back Night Came With Many Stars Simon Van Booy December 21, 2021 Night Came With Many Stars (Godine, 2021) ebbs and flows with people who only take or destroy, balanced by those who give or heal. And everything centers on a family. A Kentucky father treats Carol, his thirteen-year-old motherless daughter like a servant up to the moment he loses her in a poker game. It’s 1933, and Carol’s aching heart begins a novel of stories filled with heartache or joy that weaves back and forth across decades. Carol gets rescued on the side of the road and finds a home with two women who help pregnant teenagers, a woman survives a botched self-induced abortion, a Black family saves a starving white boy, and Carol’s grandson wins money playing poker. In this beautifully-written novel, characters are defined by what they do, not by what they are. Simon Van Booy is the award-winning and best-selling author of fifteen books that include: The Secret Lives of People in Love (short-listed for the Vilcek Prize), Love Begins in Winter (awarded the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award), Everything Beautiful Began After, The Illusion of Separateness, Tales of Accidental Genius, Father's Day, The Sadness of Beautiful Things (short-listed for the Edge Hill Short Story Prize), two novels for children, Gertie Milk & The Keeper of Lost Things and Gertie Milk & The Great Keeper Rescue, along with three anthologies of philosophy, Why We Fight, Why Our Decisions Don't Matter and Why We Need Love. He has has written for The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, National Public Radio, the BBC, and the Chinese edition of ELLE. His books have been translated into many languages and optioned for film. In 2013, he founded Writers for Children, a project which helps young people build confidence in their storytelling abilities through annual awards. He lives in New York with his wife and daughter. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Life Sentences Billy O'Callaghan March 22, 2022 Life Sentences (Godine, 2022) tells three interconnected stories about a family in his home country of Ireland. In lyrical, moving prose, with characters that reach across the years, Billy O’Callaghan describes births, deaths, war, and the life of his family. The book begins in the 1920’s with Jeremiah, who survived as a soldier in the Great War. He’s drunk and jailed on the night before his sister’s funeral to prevent him from killing his sister’s husband. “Life had its struggles,” he says as he muses about his family and experiences, “but we bore them in the way that our kind always do.” The second part goes back to the 1880’s, and Jer’s mother, Nancy, recounts being the only member of her family to survive the Great Potato Famine. Starving, she left her tiny island home to find work on the mainland and was wooed by Michael Egan, the man who fathered her two children and haunted her for years. The third section is in the voice of Nellie, Jer’s youngest daughter, who is nearing the end of her life. This is a beautifully written novel about family, home, poverty, loss, and the struggle to live in a difficult world. Billy O’Callaghan, from Cork, Ireland, is the author of four short story collections (In Exile , In Too Deep , The Things We Lose, The Things We Leave Behind , and The Boatman ) and the novels The Dead House and My Coney Island Baby . His work has been translated into a dozen languages and earned him numerous honours, including four Bursary Awards for Literature from the Arts Council of Ireland and, in 2013, a Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Award for the Short Story of the Year, as well as shortlistings for the COSTA Award and the Royal Society of Literature's Encore Award. His short stories have appeared in such literary journals and magazines around the world as: Agni, the Chattahoochee Review, the Kenyon Review, London Magazine, Los Angeles Review, Narrative Magazine, Ploughshares, the Saturday Evening Post and Winter Papers. A new novel, The Paper Man , will be published in the UK and Ireland by Jonathan Cape in 2023. When Billy isn’t reading or writing, he’s a big fan of Liverpool Football Club (called soccer in the U.S.). Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Geographies of the Heart Caitlin Hamilton Summie May 17, 2022 Three members of a loving Minnesota family have a voice in Caitlin Hamilton Summie’s new thought-provoking novel-in-stories, Geographies of the Heart (Fomite 2022). Sarah, the eldest daughter, Al, Sarah’s husband, and Glennie, Sarah’s younger sister take turns telling their story. The book begins with Sarah and Al’s courtship, their relationships with Sarah’s aging grandparents, their courtship trials, and their dream of being parents. There are moving chapters about Sarah and Glennie’s grandfather, his army buddies, his slow decline, and chapters about the family quilt, the aunt who disappeared, Sarah’s relationship with her grandmother. There are also heartbreaking chapters describing Sarah’s painful relationship with Glennie, her sister, whose dream of going to medical school and later career as an OB/GYN are all-consuming. Sarah is constantly disappointed by Glennie’s absence, until one day, everything changes. Everyone grows in one way or another throughout the course of this novel, which is ultimately about remembering and respecting the past, initiating or accepting forgiveness, and showing up for those we love. Caitlin Hamilton Summie earned an MFA with Distinction from Colorado State University, and her short stories have been published in Beloit Fiction Journal, Wisconsin Review, Puerto del Sol, JMWW, Mud Season Review, Belmont Story Review , Hypertext Magazine , and more. Her story collection, TO LAY TO REST OUR GHOSTS, won the fourth annual Phillip H. McMath Book Award, Silver in the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award for Short Stories, and was a Pulpwood Queen Book Club Bonus Book. GEOGRAPHIES OF THE HEART, her debut novel, was inspired by three stories in her story collection. She spent many years in Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Colorado before settling with her family in Knoxville, Tennessee. She co-owns the book marketing firm, Caitlin Hamilton Marketing & Publicity, founded in 2003. When she’s not writing or marketing books, Caitlin loves pending time with her family, including their Aussiedoodle. She also loves reading, movies, and taking walks. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back What You Don't See Tracy Clark September 22, 2020 Cass Raines left the Chicago Police force after a morally bankrupt cop nearly got her killed. Now she runs her own Private Detective agency. When her old CPD friend and partner, Ben Mickerson asks Cass to join him for a side gig, she’s happy to do it. Then she meets the client – the wealthy, powerful owner of a fast-growing media empire. Vonda Allen is loved by the public but hated by her employees and also by whoever is sending her death threats. Cass isn’t thrilled about babysitting a heartless diva, but when two of Vonda’s staff members are murdered, the case gets serious. Then, at one of Vonda’s book signings, a mysterious fan stabs Ben. Although Vonda fires her, Cass is worried that Ben won’t pull through. Now, there’s no way she’s going to sit this one out even though that same morally bankrupt cop and his friend are trying to trip her up. She’s hell bent on figuring out Vonda’s secrets and determined to get answers before anyone else, including Vonda, dies. Tracy Clark is the author of the highly acclaimed Chicago Mystery Series featuring ex-homicide cop turned PI Cassandra Raines, a hard-driving, African-American protagonist who works the mean streets of the Windy City dodging cops, cons, killers, and thugs. She received Anthony Award and Lefty Award nominations for her series debut, Broken Places, which was also shortlisted for the American Library Association’s RUSA Reading List, named a CrimeReads Best New PI Book of 2018, a Midwest Connections Pick, and a Library Journal Best Books of the Year. In addition to her Cass Raines novels, Tracy’s short story “For Services Rendered,” appears in the anthology Shades of Black: Crime and Mystery Stories by African‑American Authors. A native of Chicago, she works as an editor in the newspaper industry and roots for the Cubs, Sox, Bulls, Bears, and Blackhawks equally. She is a member of Sisters in Crime, PI Writers of America, International Thriller Writers, and a Mystery Writers of America Midwest board member. When she isn’t working, reading or writing, Tracy loves watching old movies, especially those involving monsters. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next