Set in 1898, Harriet Morrow is 21, supports her 16-year-old brother, and has been accepted as the first female detective at the Prescott Agency. < Back The Case of the Missing Maid Rob Osler December 24, 2024 Set in 1898, Harriet Morrow is 21, supports her 16-year-old brother, and has been accepted as the first female detective at the Prescott Agency. She’s given one week to find Agnes, maid to the wealthy Pearl Bartlett, who lives in one of the Prairie Street mansions on the south side of Chicago. Harriet, who prefers wearing men’s shoes and hats and has no intention of ever getting married, immediately notices that Agnes has been taken, probably by force, from her attic apartment. Harriet visits Agnes’s family and neighborhood and riding her trusty bicycle begins searching for clues across the city while grappling with someone in the agency who is trying to sabotage her. If she doesn’t solve the case, she’ll be booted from the agency, and Harriet Morrow can’t let that happen in Rob Osler’s charming novel, The Case of the Missing Maid (Kensington Books Publishing 2024). Rob Osler was born and raised in Boise, Idaho and earned a B.A. in Philosophy at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA. Soon after, he moved to Chicago and began a decade-long career as an advertising copywriter, creating television campaigns for Kellogg’s and Tropicana, among others. After a transition to brand strategy and returning to school for an MBA at the University of Washington in Seattle, he spent two decades in senior roles at agencies and corporations in Seattle and San Francisco. Writing throughout, his focus was on business communications and brand strategy, with published articles in The Journal of Brand Management. Rob turned to fiction writing in his fifties. His first-ever publication was a short story, ANALOGUE, set in Seattle’s tech industry, published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. The story won the 2022 Mystery Writers of America Robert L Fish Award. His debut novel, DEVIL’S CHEW TOY, also set in Seattle and published the following year, was a finalist for the 2023 Anthony, Agatha, Lefty, and Macavity Awards and was A Year’s Best by CrimeReads. His second-ever published short story, MISS DIRECTION, set in Palm Springs, CA, and appearing again in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, was a finalist for the 2024 Edgar Allen Poe Awards. His new historical series “Harriet Morrow* Investigates,” set in Chicago during America’s Progressive Era, launches with THE CASE OF THE MISSING MAID, which earned a Publishers Weekly Starred Review and is an Amazon Editors Pick for Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense. After living in Boise, Chicago, and Seattle, Rob now resides in California with his husband and a tall gray cat, who, depending on the day, goes by the name Noodles, Mr. Chomps, or Monkey. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

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. < Back Because I Loved You Donnaldson Brown April 11, 2023 Today I talked to Donnaldson Brown about her new novel Because I Loved You (She Writes Press 2023). 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. Seventeen-year-old Caleb McGrath plays football with Leni’s beloved older brother Foy, and dreams of a future far from East Texas. Leni and Caleb fall in love and make the plans of young lovers, but they’re both torn between their desire and following their dreams. Tragedy strikes and turns everyone’s world apart, Caleb’s brother Hank has just returned from Vietnam filled with rage, and Leni needs Hank’s help to escape. Leni and Caleb build their lives separately until they’re pulled together again in New York City in the 1980s. Passion isn’t quite enough in this wide-ranging tale of young love, consequences, and finding home. An attorney and former screenwriter, Donnaldson Brown ran the New York office of Robert Redford’s film development company for several years. A student of theater (and clowning), her spoken word pieces have been accepted for performance by The Deep Listening Institute’s Writers in Performance and Women & Identity Festivals in New York City, and in the Made in the Berkshires Theatre Festival in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. She’s been awarded multiple residencies. She is a longtime resident of both Brooklyn, New York, and western Massachusetts, and grew up riding horses on a family ranch in northeast Texas and in her native Connecticut. Ms. Brown is currently a facilitator and trainer with The Equus Effect, offering somatic based experiential learning with horses for veterans, first responders and others struggling with post-traumatic stress injuries. She is certified to teach meditation and several forms of yoga. Ms. Brown is also a proud mother who loves to sing, and cycle, and hike with her dogs. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

With gripping portrayals of fathers and sons, mothers and siblings, passion and pain – this is a moving, non-linear novel about the relationships to family and society upon which all humanity rests. < Back A Song from Faraway Deni Ellis Béchard October 27, 2020 A young man visits his half-brother in Vancouver and steals a book that changes his life. An archeology student is befriended and brought to Iraq by a brother and sister who need his help in assessing a family art collection. A man who fought for the British in South Africa’s Boer War enlists as an American to fight in WWI Germany. Spanning decades and continents, the stories in Béchard's haunting novel A Song from Faraway (Milkweed Editions, 2020) slowly reveal themselves to be connected. In these pages, the lies of one generation are inherited by the next, homes are burnt to the ground, wives are abandoned, and innocent people suffer. With gripping portrayals of fathers and sons, mothers and siblings, passion and pain – this is a moving, non-linear novel about the relationships to family and society upon which all humanity rests. Deni Ellis Béchard is the author of eight books of fiction and nonfiction, including Vandal Love (Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book); Into the Sun (Midwest Book Award for Literary Fiction and chosen by CBC/Radio Canada as one of 2017’s Incontournables and one of the most important books of that year to be read by Canada's political leadership); Of Bonobos and Men (Nautilus Book Award for investigative journalism and Nautilus Grand Prize winner); Cures for Hunger (an IndieNext pick and one of the best memoirs of 2012 by Amazon.ca); Kuei, my Friend: a Conversation on Racism and Reconciliation , (coauthored with First Nations poet Natasha Kanapé-Fontaine). A traveler by nature, Béchard has a habit of changing homes as often as every three months, and the place he has lived in the longest over the past ten years was a community circus. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

Set around the globe in the U.S., Europe, and Israel, Leegant’s characters face loneliness, illness, difficult relationships, horrible memories, unfaithful husbands, and uncaring or dying parents. These are moving stories about recognizable people, all facing displacement in one way or another, trying to live their lives. < Back Displaced Persons: Stories Joan Leegant June 4, 2024 Joan Leegant’s new story collection, Displaced Persons (New American Press 2024) delves into human stories of living in the 21st century. Characters transform after illness or divorce, move to a new city or a new country, get caught between different cultures and traditions, or stumble into scary situations. People can be resilient about change and might rebuild themselves after loss, suffering, and illness, but they don’t all bounce back with equal fervor. Characters struggle with Jewish identity, family issues, social expectations, and health, and stories are set now and, in the past. Some stories are in the states, others are in Europe and Israel. This is a brave collection during a time when antisemitism is bubbling up again, and memories of times past seem surprisingly current. Joan Leegant’s first book of stories, An Hour in Paradise: Stories (W.W. Norton, 2003), won the PEN/New England Book Award and the Edward Lewis Wallant Award, and was a Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick. She is also the author of a novel, Wherever You Go (W. W. Norton, 2010). Her prize-winning stories have appeared in over two dozen literary magazines and anthologies. She has also written essays and pieces on writing craft. Formerly an attorney, she taught at Harvard, Oklahoma State, and Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle where she was also the writer-in-residence at Hugo House. For five years she was the visiting writer at Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv where she also lectured at Israeli schools on American literature and culture under the auspices of the U.S. Embassy, and taught English to African refugees and asylum seekers. She lives in Newton, Massachusetts with her husband, Allen Katzoff, who works in nonprofit administration. When she’s not working, Joan spends a lot of time at the piano playing show tunes, light jazz, and klezmer. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

We meet Lenny after he’s stolen money and a skiff in an attempt to escape his abusive older brothers and ride the rivers until reaching the Atlantic Ocean. < Back Live Caught R. Cathey Daniels April 26, 2022 In Live Caught (Black Lawrence Press 2022) by R. Cathey Daniels, we meet Lenny after he’s stolen money and a skiff in an attempt to escape his abusive older brothers and ride the rivers until reaching the Atlantic Ocean. Lenny is fourteen, and his family farm in western North Carolina has become a nightmare – he’s already lost an arm and isn’t sure which of his brothers’ experiments is going to kill him. But he doesn’t get very far when his boat and all the money he’s stolen sink in a huge storm. If not for a crazy old priest who pulls him out from under a log, he’d be dead. Now the priest provides Lenny with a home and work. Lenny makes friends, especially with a stoner who seems to be drugging his own baby daughter. It soon becomes clear that the priest is running an illegal drug operation to provide for the poor people in his struggling parish. And a crooked local cop wants to collect a tax on the illegal drugs. Just like at home, Lenny’s not sure he’s going to survive. R. Cathey Daniels grew up in the mountains of Western North Carolina, attended Breward College and graduated from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill with a master’s degree in education. She is a 2016 graduate of the Stanford University Novel Writing Program. She was a semi-finalist in the North Carolina Writers’ Network Doris Betts Fiction Prize in 2021, a semi-finalist for the 2020 University of New Orleans Press Novel Contest, and won first prize in the 2018 Retreat West First Chapter Competition. When Daniels isn’t writing, she can be found in her garden, hiking, or shooting hoops with her grandchildren in her backyard in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

Today I talked to Benjamin Resnick about his novel Next Stop (Simon and Schuster, 2024) < Back Next Stop Benjamin Resnick November 12, 2024 A hole opens in the universe and suddenly consumes a building, then a neighborhood, and then the entire country of Israel. Conspiracies and antisemitic paranoia simmer, violence erupts, and life for Jews around the globe becomes even more hate filled. But Ethan and Ella, both Jewish, meet and fall in love in an unnamed American city. Their relationship has its challenges, including those involving Ella’s seven-year-old son, but their biggest struggle is trying to survive. Then thousands of airplanes disappear, borders close, and the world unravels more. Drones and robotic dogs patrol the streets and Jews are forced to live in a single neighborhood, slyly named after the historical Pale of Settlement. Some Jews escape to underground cities and others are join militias and resistance efforts, but Ella and Ethan are trying to find things to smile about in this thought-provoking, dystopian novel about cultural memory, societal crisis, and living in an upside-down world. Benjamin Resnick is a writer and the rabbi of the Pelham Jewish Center. Before joining the PJC in 2021, he served as Rav Beit HaSefer at Solomon Schechter Day School of Metropolitan Chicago and as Rabbi and Education Director at Congregation Ahavas Achim in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Resinick majored in Literary Arts at Brown University in 006 and was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary in 2014. He has written nonfiction for multiple publications, including the Washington Post, The Forward, Tablet, Modern Judaism and My Jewish Learning. Benjamin is married to journalist Philissa Cramer, who is currently editor-in-chief of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. They have two boys, Jonah and Gabriel. In his free time, he enjoys gardening, playing squash, and the Chicago Cubs. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

Ben Novotny was born with a rare chromosomal abnormality that caused profound mental retardation and seizures. He is severely limited but forms a tight bond with his older brother Hugo, who invents fun distractions and games that become dangerous as Ben gets older and bigger. Degrees of Difficulty follows the family over several decades as they each come to an understanding of how Ben affected their lives. < Back Degrees of Difficulty Julie Justicz October 21, 2019 Ben Novotny was born with a rare chromosomal abnormality that caused profound mental retardation and seizures. He is severely limited but forms a tight bond with his older brother Hugo, who invents fun distractions and games that become dangerous as Ben gets older and bigger. Ben’s mother, Caroline, a lit professor at Emory, is barely holding herself together with mind-numbing drugs. His father, Percy, a successful contractor in Atlanta, keeps hoping to find an institution that will provide the kind of care Ben needs. His sister, Ivy angrily longs to escape after graduation, and his brother, Hugo gives up his own dreams to take care of Ben. Degrees of Difficulty (Fomite Press, 2019) follows the family over several decades as they each come to an understanding of how Ben affected their lives. Born and raised in England, Julie Justicz moved to the Bahamas when she was ten, and then to the United States as a teenager. Julie comes from a family of Olympians: Her father George Justicz rowed for Great Britain in the 1960 Rome Olympics; her brother Robert competed in the Special Olympics as a swimmer; and Julie has been a proud participant as a triathlete in the Gay Games (formerly known as the Gay Olympics). She earned a law degree from the University of Chicago and received an MFA in creative writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. As an attorney and advocate, Julie currently works on civil rights issues in Chicago. She lives in Oak Park, Illinois with her spouse, Mary, and their two children. When she’s not trying to read, Julie likes to run - physical motion seems to result in creative composting. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

In Sari Rosenblatt’s collection, Father Guards the Sheep, by turns tender and hilarious, we see fathers who are bullies and nervous watchdogs, haunted by their own pasts and fear of the future they may never see. And who do their daughters become? < Back Father Guards the Sheep Sari Rosenblatt March 30, 2021 In Sari Rosenblatt’s collection, Father Guards the Sheep (University of Iowa Press, 2020), by turns tender and hilarious, we see fathers who are bullies and nervous watchdogs, haunted by their own pasts and fear of the future they may never see. And who do their daughters become? A substitute teacher who encounters mouthy students who believe she’s not real. Another lands a job on her city’s arson squad, researching derelict properties their owners might want to burn. A beleaguered mother, humiliated by the PTA’s queen bee, finds solace in an ancient piece of caramel candy. “I keep sucking,” she says, “until some flavor, no longer caramel, comes out.” In the end, this is what all these finely wrought characters want: to wring sweetness from what’s been passed down to them. Rosenblatt’s comic sensibility, so present in these stories, entertains and consoles, while seeming to say to her readers: you might as well laugh. Sari Rosenblatt earned an MFA (1984) from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has won awards for her stories from Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry , Glimmer Train, New Millenium Writings, and Ms Magazine . She has been published in the Iowa Review and has taught fiction writing at several schools, most recently the Educational Center for the Arts in New Haven. Her first book of short stories, Father Guards the Sheep, was winner of the 2020 Iowa Short Fiction Award. Sari has also completed a novel, "Daughter of Retail", based on the first short story in Father Guards the Sheep . Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

Debra Spark’s latest novel was inspired by the life of Walt Kuhn, who introduced Americans to modern art, and also by an infamous east coast boarding school that was forcibly shut down in 2014. The novel twists and turns through the lives of an artist and his wife, a teenager forced to attend a horrifying boarding school, the artist and his wife’s lonely daughter after their deaths, and a divorced art appraiser studying the works of the dead artist. < Back Discipline Debra Spark April 15, 2025 Discipline (Four Way Books, 2024), Debra Spark’s latest novel was inspired by the life of Walt Kuhn, who introduced Americans to modern art, and also by an infamous east coast boarding school that was forcibly shut down in 2014. The novel twists and turns through the lives of an artist and his wife, a teenager forced to attend a horrifying boarding school, the artist and his wife’s lonely daughter after their deaths, and a divorced art appraiser studying the works of the dead artist. Discipline addresses teenagers whose lives are molded by thoughtless adults and women who struggle with loneliness or are taken advantage of by the unscrupulous. It’s a coming-of-age story, a mystery about an art theft, but this gorgeous novel is also about family, ambition, and suffering. DEBRA SPARK is the author of five novels, two collections of short stories, and two books of essays on fiction writing. Her most recent books are the novel Unknown Caller and the essay collection And Then Something Happened. With Deborah Joy Corey, she co-edited Breaking Bread, a book of food essays by Maine writers to raise funds for a hunger nonprofit. Her short work has appeared in Agni, AWP Writers’ Chronicle, the Boston Globe, the Cincinnati Review, the Chicago Tribune, Epoch, Esquire, Five Points, Food and Wine, Harvard Review, Huffington Post, Maine Magazine, Narrative, New England Travel and Life, the New England Review, the New York Times, Ploughshares, salon.com , the San Francisco Chronicle, the Washington Post, Yankee, and Yale Alumni Quarterly , among other places. In addition to writing book reviews, fiction, articles, and essays, she spent a decade writing about home, art, and design for Maine Home+Design, Decor Maine, Down East, Dwell, Elysian, Interiors Boston, New England Home, and Yankee . She writes a monthly book review column of French books in English translation for Frenchly.us. She has been the recipient of several awards including Maine’s 2017 READ ME series, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Bunting Institute fellowship from Radcliffe College, Wisconsin Institute Fellowship, Pushcart Prize, Michigan Literary Fiction Award, and John Zacharis/Ploughshares award for best first book. A graduate of Yale University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she is a professor at Colby College and teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. When she’s not working, Spark exercises, studies French, spends time with friends and family, bakes gluten-free, and belongs to a cookbook book club. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

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. < 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

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. < Back American Ending Mary Kay Zuravleff December 19, 2023 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. The boys quit school to work in the mines along with the dads, and the Old Believers help each get through one challenge after another. When the mine explodes, it’s just another calamity in their lives. Yelena dreams of the fairy tales and fables she grew up hearing in this satisfying tale about family, community, and surviving as an immigrant in America. Mary Kay Zuravleff is the award-winning author of American Ending (Blair, 2023), inspired by her Russian Orthodox Old Believer grandparents who lived in the coal-mining town of Marianna, PA. Her third novel Man Alive! was a Washington Post Notable Book, and she is the winner of the American Academy’s Rosenthal Award, the James Jones First Novel Award, and numerous DC Artist Fellowships. The Bowl Is Already Broken, her second novel, was described by the New York Times as “a tart, affectionate satire of the museum world’s bickering and scheming.” In fact, Mary Kay worked for several Smithsonian museums for a dozen years, and she will go to any museum on any topic anywhere she happens to be. This has included the Acme Music Museum in Michigan, the Bee Museum in Quebec, and the Museum of Osteology in Oklahoma. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

At the end of the 16th century, the powerful Medici family demanded that before marrying into the family, Vincenzo I Gonzaga, the Duke of Mantua, had to show his prowess by deflowering a virgin. This is her story. < Back The Maiden of Florence Katherine Mezzacappa June 11, 2024 Giulia is an orphan who has been cloistered since she was a baby. In 1584, the powerful Medici family demands a test of virility from the Grand Duke of Mantua before his marriage to Eleanora de Medici. Giulia, who knows nothing about the world of men, is offered a dowry and husband in exchange for one night with the prince. She doesn’t know what that night entails, or that the lecherous minister who arranges it will never set her completely free. The Maiden of Florence (Fairlight Books, 2024) is based on a true story. Katherine Mezzacappa is an Irish author currently living in Carrara, northern Tuscany. She holds a BA in History of Art from UEA, an MLitt in English Literature from Durham and a master’s in creative writing from Canterbury Christ Church University. Her debut novel (writing as Katie Hutton), The Gypsy Bride , made the last fifteen in the Historical Novel Society’s 2018 new novel competition. Her short fiction has been short- and longlisted in numerous competitions, and she has been awarded residencies at Cill Rialaig Artists village by the Irish Writers Centre in 2019 and at Hald Hovedgaard by the Danish Centre for Writers and Translators in 2022. When she is not writing, Katherine volunteers with a second-hand book charity of which she is a founding member. She also sews dresses and is learning Irish and German. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next