Today I talked to Esinam Bediako about here novel Blood on the Brain (Red Hen Press, 2024). < Back Blood on the Brain Esinam Bediako October 8, 2024 When Akosua, a 24-year-old grad student in New York, falls and bangs her head, she has too much drama in her life to pay attention to her headaches and exhaustion. She’s just broken up with Wisdom, her boyfriend, she learns that her long-estranged Ghanian father is in New York, and she’s worried that dropping so many graduate classes means that she’ll lose her scholarship and work-study job in the library (where she met Daniel, her new crush). As she grapples with her Ghanian-American identity, her mother’s wishes for her, her troubled relationship with the father who left when she was a child, and her coursework, Akosua’s head injury worsens, and she wakes up in the hospital, forced to confront her own history, memory, dreams, and desires. Esinam Bediako is a Ghanaian American writer from Detroit. She writes fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, including awkward third-person autobiographies. A graduate of University of Southern California (M.A.T. in Secondary English), Sarah Lawrence College (M.F.A. in Fiction), and Columbia University (B.A. in English and Comparative Literature), she has worked as a high school English teacher and administrator, a textbook editor, and, during one nerve-wracking summer, a pharmacy technician. She currently writes and edits for the Spondylitis Association of America. She is the author of the Ann Petry Award-winning novel, Blood on the Brain (Red Hen Press, 2024), as well as the essay/poetry chapbook, Self-Talk (Porkbelly Press, 2024) and you can find some of her recent work in Porter House Review, Cathexis Northwest press, Great River Review, North American Review, and Southern Humanities Review. Esi lives in Claremont, CA with her husband and their two sons, who create stories, videos, and other artwork with enviable speed and imagination. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

< Back Rhys Bowen Molly Murphy Series, Royal Spyness Series Rhys Bowen Over twenty years ago, before e-readers and long before I considered writing mysteries, I'd randomly choose three or four books at the library each week. After picking up Murphy’s Law (on the new books shelf for 2001), I was swept into the world of Rhys Bowen. Since then, I’ve read many of the charming Molly Murphy books (about an Irish maid in early 20th-century New York City), and also enjoyed several of her lighter, Royal Spyness series, about sharp Lady Georgie, who is 35 th in line to the British Crown. Of her stand-alone books, the last one I read was Venice Sketchbook. Then, I went back to reading books in her series. Rhys Bowen (winner of Anthony, Agatha, and Macavity awards) is the pen name for Janet Quin-Harkin (b 1941 in Bath, England). She has won dozens of awards, is a best-selling author, and all my mystery-writing friends adore her. She and her husband, John Quin-Harkin, move between California and Arizona. I was delighted to meet Rhys (and her daughter Clare Broyles, who has continued writing the Molly Murphy series) in person at the 2023 Left Coast Crime conference in Tucson, when I was invited to join the Desert Sleuth chapter of Sisters in Crime for drinks. I usually don’t care about getting autographs or meeting famous movie stars and authors – I prefer to preserve the magic of their art – but the thrill of hugging Rhys Bowen will stay with me forever. Anyone who loves cozy mysteries or wants to learn how to write solid mysteries must read at least one of Rhys Bowen’s novels. Previous Next

Lemai never forgets the humiliation of her teachers and the burning of books during the Cultural Revolution. < Back The Immortal Woman Su Chang March 11, 2025 Lemai never forgets the humiliation of her teachers and the burning of books during the Cultural Revolution. She uses her position as a student Red Guard leader in 1960s Shanghai to find books, has one friend she can trust, and is tormented by her older brother. After being involved in the violence of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, she loses hope in China and raises Lin, her daughter, to pursue a life in the West. Both Lemai and Lin suffer from unnamed mental anguish at various points in their life and are both haunted by the past. In Shanghai, Los Angeles, and Toronto, they grapple with people from their former lives, and Lin’s attempts at erasing her Chinese identity nearly make her go mad. This is a passionate debut novel about the mother-daughter bond, Chinese cultural identity, and the struggles of being a foreigner in America. SU CHANG is a Chinese Canadian writer, born and raised in Shanghai. Her fiction has been recognized in Prairie Fire’s Short Fiction Contest, the Canadian Authors Association National Writing Contest, the ILS/Fence Fiction Contest, and the Masters Review’s Novel Excerpt Contest. Her plays have been performed in various festivals and theatres across Canada. More essays and fiction are forthcoming in the Toronto Star, Electric Literature, Hamilton Review of Books, Ex-Puritan, Open-Book, 49th Shelf, etc. Su is a graduate of the Humber School for Writers and a member of the Writers’ Union of Canada and the Canadian Authors Association. She devotes her interstices of time between writing and a full-time job to reading, playing the piano, nature walks, and wrestling with her children. Connect with her at https://www.instagram.com/suchangwrites/ . Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

Add an avocado for garnish or sprinkle with a little cheese for the perfect dish! < Back Sweet Potato Black Bean Soup February 11, 2020 Prep Time: 15 Minutes Cook Time: 45 Minutes Serves: 6 Servings Tags: Soup, Vegetarian, Vegan, Entrees About the Recipe Smothered: A Whipped and Sipped Mystery p.96 The Sweet Potato Black Bean Soup sold out even though it was the middle of a hot summer and that Friday was sweltering. Alene put the pot in the sink and showed Ruthie the text from Frank, who’d written: “Still on for later tonight. Drinks or a walk?” “Wait just a minute,” Ruthie said, glancing at her watch. She always left at 2:00pm on Fridays. “Why isn’t Frank taking you out to dinner? Why is he suggesting drinks or a walk?” “Neal is coming to get the kids at nine,” Alene said, “and I think a walk sounds great.” Ingredients 1 TBSP olive oil 1 yellow onion, chopped 2 cloves garlic, minced 2 stalks celery, chopped 1 TBSP any olive oil 1 large onion, chopped 2 cloves garlic, minced (or 2 tsp ground garlic) 2 stalks celery, chopped 2 carrots, chopped or sliced 32 oz of water or vegetable stock (plus extra if needed) 1 large or two medium sweet potatoes, cut into ½ inch pieces 15 or 15.5 ounce can of black beans, drained (some brands have different amounts) 14.5 oz can chopped or diced tomato 2 tsp cumin 2 tsp dried basil 1/2 tsp smoked or regular paprika 1/2 tsp kosher or sea salt 1/4 tsp black pepper Preparation Heat a soup pot (medium heat) on the stove Stir chopped onion in olive oil until translucent Add garlic, celery, and carrots. Stir about 4-5 minutes Add everything else Bring to a boil and then let soup simmer for about 45 minutes Chop an avocado for garnish, or sprinkle with chopped parsley/cilantro – everything works, including just serving the soup as is. Even better the next day. Can be frozen and reheated Previous Next

After their mother dies, Jackson Jones is too busy selling drugs and bedding young women to pay attention to his two motherless children. < Back Naked Girl Janna Brooke Wallack February 18, 2025 After their mother dies, Jackson Jones is too busy selling drugs and bedding young women to pay attention to his two motherless children. Sienna and her little brother Siddhartha grow up in a Miami Beach mansion without schools, doctors, or attention. It’s the 1980s and their dad uses the mansion, with its dock on the water, as a base for his drug dealing and to house the seekers and lost souls who follow his lackadaisical cult, leaving Sienna and Siddhi to raise themselves. Their dotty grandmother and distant occasionally picks up some slack but won’t take responsibility for her son’s failings as a father. Sienna realizes that she and Siddhi have to raise themselves in this intriguing and unusual story about siblings helping each other survive a dysfunctional family. Janna Brooke Wallack’s stories have been published by literary publications such as Hobart , Upstreet , Glimmer Train Press , American Literary Review , and more. Her short story "Campaigning" was a finalist for the Lascaux Prize in Short Fiction. Naked Girl’s prologue "Five Pictures" was a finalist for Glimmer Train Press's Short Story Award for New Writers, and her story "Cat and Rose" received a Pushcart nomination by The MacGuffin. Naked Girl was named a semifinalist for the 2024 Publishers Weekly Book Life Prize in Fiction. In addition to her writing career, Wallack has worked as a grant writer, a substance abuse prevention counselor, a wetlands manual editor, a theatre production assistant and an actress. After spending a couple of years in Hong Kong, she moved to Hoboken, NJ, raised five children and moved to Stone Ridge in the Catskills of New York, where she ran a permaculture gentleman’s farm. For more about Janna, visit https://jannabrookewallack.com/ . Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

Discover insightful essays by G. P. Gottlieb and explore a world of media. Dive into essays by G. P. Gottlieb today and get inspired. Essays & Media Porker, Fidgeter, Dulcitor We had advice columns and other such offerings back in the last century, but today, the advice is relentless and requires a monthly subscription. Also, I’ve apparently spent all these decades living incorrectly. Read More Book Q and As with Deborah Kalb Q: Charred is the third in your Whipped and Sipped mystery series--do you think your character Alene has changed over the course of the series? Read More Lessons Learned in Publishing: Reflecting on My Journey to Becoming a Culinary Mystery Author The moment I got the email offering to publish my first culinary mystery is unforgettable. I hurried into my husband's study, my excitement barely contained. After facing rejection and ghosting from over 100 agents for a year, it felt like winning the lottery. Read More An Introduction to Cozy Mysteries I didn’t realize I was reading an early cozy mystery when I first picked up a Diane Mott Davidson novel in 1990, but it was a pleasure to read about a crime that didn’t involve hardboiled grit, disgusting descriptions of blood and guts, and moments of spine-chilling fear. Instead, it centered on a divorced caterer worrying about the flakiness of her pie crust as she solved a tricky murder in a small, fictional mountain town in Colorado. Read More Culinary Cozy Mysteries and the Murder Rate Paradox Why are there endless murders in so many cozy mystery towns? Cozy mystery readers might eventually notice that safe and sweet fictional villages have very high murder rates. Those murder rates are even more distracting than the children who never grow older and cozy protagonists who never marry their sweethearts. As an avid reader and the author of the Whipped & Sipped culinary cozy mystery series set in Chicago, I probably think about murder more than most people. Read More What Makes me Buy a Cozy Mystery: Trusting Recommendations From Authors I Admire As a host for New Books in Literature on the New Books Network, I usually look for ambitious, character-driven fiction. These novels, whose authors I interview, span the decades and explore human suffering, resilience, and transformation. In between reading gorgeous novels for NBN, I like to refresh my palate with an excellent cozy mystery. Read More Almost as Interesting as Poop When I remarried years ago, I chose Villeroy and Bach’s Frutteto pattern for our dairy dishes. The beautiful porcelain plates, bowls, and serving platters edged with warm-colored fruits and vegetables, served us for over twenty-five years until many were scratched and chipped and no longer made me happy. Read More Ten Favorite Historical Mystery Series I love historic cozies because there’s something about diving into the protagonist’s community, eavesdropping on the protagonist’s inner thoughts, and watching her (because cozy protagonists are mostly women) solve what at first seems to be an unsolvable crime. Read More This is Good Long before I started writing books, when I was focused on creating, teaching, and performing music, I was plagued by a little voice continuously telling me I wasn’t good at any of it. That voice never shut up. When I was raising children, I never felt like I was the best mother, and years later, when I began inventing recipes, I questioned whether I had it in me to get the flavors right. Read More Five Cozy Mystery Series with Slightly Unusual Protagonists Cozy mysteries got me through cancer. Maybe medical intervention did most of the work, but I spent over a year exhausted, foggy, and barely functioning. I’d lie on the couch devouring cozy mysteries about aristocrats, ancient Roman informers, or butterfly collectors, and the hours would speed by. Tales of amateur sleuths baking a peach pie or cooking for a crowd could make me feel better. Read More Why I Couldn't Sleep Last Night Thanks to Claude AI I’m just recovering from a bad night filled with bad dreams about a short but enervating fling I had in the early nineties. I should have known the guy would turn out to be controlling when he commented on my hat the first time we met. Read More The Queen of Jazz and Me Unless you knew that we shared a birthday, you'd think that I have little in common with the First Lady of Song! Read More Interview with Alene Baron What words or phrases do you overuse? Alene Baron probably uses the word “annoy” a little to often (as does her creator). Read More How My Dad Inspired a Character The last time I saw my father, Alex, was in 2021 during the pandemic, when only hospice nurses were allowed inside. My parents lived on the third floor, so we only got to see Dad if our mom was able to wheel his chair to the window. That day, I stood outside the building, waving up at their balcony. He was too weak to wave, but I think he smiled. I’ve held onto that memory. Read More Respect and Other Ingredients Ruthie Rosin, the pastry chef in my Whipped and Sipped Mystery series, is sweet-natured, quick-witted, and spiritual. She observes centuries-old Jewish traditions but lives in the contemporary, real world with her husband and three children. Read More Load More

The story of how a book ends up decades later in Chicago is interwoven with train-jumping, alternate universes, and the heartbreaking tales of displaced people. < Back The Lost Book of Adana Moreau Michael Zapata February 13, 2020 In 1916, Adana Moreau’s parents are killed by American Marines. She flees to Santo Domingo and then to New Orleans. There, she marries a pirate, Titus Moreau, and gives birth to their son, Maxwell. While Maxwell wonders the streets, Adana spends hours at the library. She writes a book, Lost City , and it becomes a science fiction hit. Then she writes a follow-up book, which she and Maxwell definitely destroy, just before she dies. The story of how that book ends up decades later in Chicago is interwoven with train-jumping, alternate universes, and the heartbreaking tales of displaced people. Michael Zapata is the author of The Lost Book of Adana Moreau (Hanover Square Press, 2020). He is also a founding editor of MAKE Literary Magazine . He is the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Award for Fiction, the City of Chicago DCASE Individual Artist Program award, and a Pushcart nomination. As an educator, he taught literature and writing in high schools servicing dropout students. He is a graduate of the University of Iowa and, as an ardent wanderer, he's lived and traveled extensively through the Middle East, Europe, and Latin America. The place he reveres most on the Earth is the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve in Ecuador. Currently, he's catching up on the extraordinary sci-fi show 'The Expanse' and lives with his family in his hometown Chicago. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

Port Anna tells the story of a quiet town on the Maine coast that has attracted the attention of wealthy investors seeking a picturesque, windswept summer cottage overlooking the ocean. < Back Port Anna Libby Buck July 1, 2025 After Gwen Gilmore loses her adjunct teaching job, mother, and boyfriend, she leaves the south and heads for the cottage she’s just inherited on the Maine coast. It’s in the town her family visited every summer, people still remember her, and she has some old friends there, but it’s also filled with terrible memories of her sister’s drowning. And the old houses are slowly giving way to ugly condos and mini mansions. Anna grapples with a teenage runaway, a realtor trying to condemn her cottage, a handsome artist, and the ghosts of previous tenants who make their presence known. This is a beautiful novel about overcoming past failures, finding a community, and moving forward. Libby Buck earned her BA in English from the University of Virginia, her MA in art history from Columbia University, and PhD. in art history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. While her general area of expertise is Nineteenth Century France, her dissertation focused upon the Gustave Moreau museum and its challenge to traditional museology. She taught as a visiting lecturer for over a decade at various institutions, including Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She and her husband raised three daughters in North Carolina, where she still lives with her husband when she is not beside the sea in Downeast Maine. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

What do you do when you want to cook something special and filling for breakfast that is packed with vegetables and doesn't need eggs? < Back Almond Zucchini Apple Fritters February 12, 2023 Prep Time: 10 minutes Cook Time: 15-20 minutes Serves: 4-5 Tags: Baking, Breakfast, Vegetarian, Vegan 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

Today I talked to C. P. Lesley about Song of the Storyteller (Five Directions Press, 2023). < Back Song of the Storyteller C.P. Lesley January 31, 2023 It’s 1546, and Ivan the Terrible is about to be coronated and married off. Government nobles are given 6 weeks to choose the most beautiful, highborn, fertile, and politically expedient brides from around the country. Before Tsar Ivan makes his choice, 16-year-old Lyuba is forced to go through a series of examinations as a potential bride, but she’s in love with someone else and planning to do everything she can to make herself as unappealing as possible. But anything too obvious could backfire, and her family would pay the price if she was anything but delighted to be a candidate. C. P. Lesley was born in England and lived in the states from the age of eleven. She earned a PhD in Russian History from Stanford and has always loved telling stories. Author of The Not Exactly Scarlet Pimpernel , The Golden Lynx , The Winged Horse , The Swan Princess, The Vermilion Bird , and The Shattered Drum (Five Directions Press), she is currently working on the sixth book in her Songs of Steppe & Forest series, Song of the Steadfast . The series includes Song of the Siren (2019), Song of the Shaman (2020) Song of the Sisters ( 2021), Song of the Sinner ( 2022), and now Song of the Storyteller (2023). Lesley also hosts New Books in Historical Fiction , a podcast channel on the New Books Network. When not thinking up new ways to torture her characters, she edits other people’s manuscripts, reads voraciously, maintains her website, and practices classical ballet. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

In 1979 during her freshman year at Denver East High School in 1979, Suzanne’s mother was murdered by an armed robber while working in her record store. < Back Anyone But Her Cynthia Swanson October 1, 2024 Today I talked to Cynthia Swanson about Anyone But Her (Columbine York, 2024). In 1979 during her freshman year at Denver East High School in 1979, Suzanne’s mother was murdered by an armed robber while working in her record store. Suzanne has always sensed ghosts, so she’s not surprised when soon after, she hears her dead mother warning her about her father’s new girlfriend. Now it’s 2004, and Suzanne is back in Denver with her husband, a mouthy teenage daughter, and a nine-year-old son with behavioral problems. The old record store space is available, and Suzanne follows her dream of selling women’s art and craft, but she can’t stop feeling like someone is watching her. At the same time, she starts researching her family history to figure out if there’s a genetic component to her son’s behavior. Suzann is strong, but she’s challenged in this suspenseful mystery about relationships, fidelity, and family secrets. Cynthia Swanson started out in college majoring in Architecture, because she's always loved design, and she thought she needed to pursue a "practical" career. (She can hear all the architects in the room laughing.) But after a few years, she returned to her first love—writing—changing her major to English and becoming a technical and marketing writer. Today, she writes psychological suspense, freelance edits, and occasionally teaches writing classes and seminars. She is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the novels The Bookseller , The Glass Forest , and Anyone But Her , as well as the editor of the Colorado Book Award winning anthology Denver Noir . She lives with her family in Denver, where in addition to writing, editing, and scoping out creepy locales for future books, she raises chickens and grows an extensive vegetable garden. Find Cynthia online and follow her on Facebook (Cynthia Swanson, Author) , Instagram (cynswanauthor) , and Threads (cynswanauthor) . Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

Thetis, the sea goddess who tried to make her son Achilles invulnerable by dipping him in the River Styx, is now faced with trying to shield him from being killed in yet another war. < Back Achilles's Wife Judith Starkston July 7, 2026 Thetis, the sea goddess who tried to make her son Achilles invulnerable by dipping him in the River Styx, is now faced with trying to shield him from being killed in yet another war. She hides him on a tiny island disguised as a girl, but in Judith Starkston’s latest novel, Thetis transforms him into a physiological girl. As Phyria, he befriends the King’s daughter, Mia, but when he’s discovered, Thetis transforms him back. He and Mia marry and have a son before he goes, as promised, to war. Sadly, the son is a miserable human being and Mia must make some difficult decisions in this well-researched, entertaining twist on a little-known character in Greek mythology. Judith Starkston writes historical fantasy and mythic retellings set in the Bronze Age of the Greeks and Hittites. Her six novels bring women to the fore—whether Deidamia or Briseis from the Trojan War cycle of myths or a remarkable Hittite queen whom history forgot, even though she ruled over one of the greatest empires of the ancient world. Judith traces her obsession with the ancient world and its stories—both historical and mythological –to her undergraduate days as a classics major at UC Santa Cruz and her graduate work at Cornell, which included a focus on Greek epic and tragedy. It’s true, as a college freshman, she decided to take ancient Greek on a whim, but once drawn in, she has never escaped. She taught high school English, Latin, and humanities for about twenty years until she decided she could not face grading another stack of dubiously argued essays. She blames her shift from historical fiction into historical fantasy on the nature of the ancient world, where gods and goddesses, rites the modern world would call magic, sorcerous curses, and hybrid mythical creatures are all part of the “normal” fabric of life. So, to portray the ancient Greeks or Hittites accurately, “fantasy” will necessarily be part of the story. These elements also make her novels more fun to write and read. Within the ancient world, the period Judith finds most engaging is the Late Bronze Age, about 1200 BCE, both in the Mycenaean world revealed in Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and in the Hittite world unveiled through the recent translation of excavated cuneiform tablets. Archaeology is another major source of knowledge about these two related cultures that flourished around the same time in Greece, the Aegean islands, and Anatolia. Researching these worlds requires specialized study and, fortunately, significant travel. From reading archaeological site reports and other archaeological analyses, examining museum collections, and visiting key excavation sites where her characters most likely lived, Judith researches and builds historically accurate, immersive worlds depicting both the intangibles like decisions and beliefs and the everyday items like food, clothes, and buildings. Learn more at JudithStarkston.com . Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next