A widow in 17th century Spain discovers that her beloved niece, Juliana, has suddenly disappeared. Juliana records her forced journey in the diary she received from Tia Ana. Years later, when she feels herself to be nearing the end of her life, she writes to Ana, explains why she fled, and tells her that she is a nun in the new world. < Back The Lines Between Us Rebecca D'Harlingue May 18, 2021 Today I talked to Rebecca D’Harlingue about her novel The Lines Between Us (She Writes Press, 2020). A widow in 17th century Spain discovers that her beloved niece, Juliana, has suddenly disappeared. Juliana records her forced journey in the diary she received from Tia Ana. Years later, when she feels herself to be nearing the end of her life, she writes to Ana, explains why she fled, and tells her that she is a nun in the new world. Ana’s response provokes Juliana into sharing her life story and demanding that Mercedes, a nun who hasn’t yet taken her vows, leave the convent. The years pass, and Mercedes, near the end of her own life, passes Juliana’s packet to her granddaughter with a demand that the mothers among her descendants keep the secret of this packet from their own daughters, only passing it to one granddaughter in each generation. Three hundred years later and we’re in 20th century America, when a college Spanish professor finds the packet while cleaning out her mother’s closet after her mother’s untimely death. She wonders if the secret is still worth keeping. Rebecca D’Harlingue was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, and never got used to the humidity. Growing up, her mother read every spare moment, and her father often just had to read out loud some new passage from a book he was immersed in. Her high school English teacher inspired her to read on a deeper level, with some unexpected choices like Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles, and T.H. White’s The Once and Future King , which fed into D’Harlingue’s enchantment with all things Arthurian. She also loves languages, having studied Spanish, German, Russian, Italian, and even taking an ill-fated stab at Mandarin. She had completed all but her dissertation for a PhD in Spanish language and literature when she had her first child, felt reality strike, and went back to school to get an MBA in health services administration. After working in that field for a number of years, she quit her job to start her novel, but abandoned it, only to pick it up twenty years later, after having taught English as a Second Language to adults for many years. She lives in Oakland, California, with her husband, Arthur. D’Harlingue’s debut novel, The Lines Between Us , won in New Fiction in the 2021 Independent Press Awards, and was a finalist in Best New Fiction in both the 2020 International Book Awards and the 2020 Best Book Awards. It was also a finalist in the 2020 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards in Historical Fiction. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

After Amala’s parent are killed in the violence following the partition of India in 1947, she and her brother manage to survive until they reach Calcutta. < Back Victory Colony, 1950 Bhaswati Ghosh July 12, 2022 Victory Colony, 1950 (Yoda Press, 2020) by Bhaswati Ghosh is a story of resilience about East Pakistani refugees who were forced to leave their homes in East Pakistan because of their Hindu faith. After Amala’s parent are killed in the violence following the partition of India in 1947, she and her brother manage to survive until they reach Calcutta. Within moments of disembarking from their train, Amala loses Kartik, and comes close to being hauled off by groping policemen. She’s saved by several young volunteers who steer Amala away and into a refugee camp. Manas, a student and the volunteer leader, comes from a privileged, wealthy family that doesn’t approve of fraternizing with refugees. But he cares about these poverty-stricken people, especially Amala. When conditions start deteriorating in the refugee camp, a group men and women manage to occupy a vacant plot of land nearby. There they begin to rebuild their lives with backbreaking work, in a society of their own making. Bhaswati Ghosh has written and translated fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from Bengali into English, and is the recipient of the Charles Wallace Trust Fellowship for Translation, for My Days with Ramkinkar Baij . Her writing has appeared in several literary journals including Literary Shanghai, HELD, Cargo Literary, Pithead Chapel, Warscapes, The Maynard as well as Indian Express, Scroll, The Wire, and the Dhaka Tribune. Bhaswati lives in Ontario, Canada and is currently working on a nonfiction book on New Delhi, India. The pandemic-induced lockdown inculcated a strange new interest -- watching a day-in-the-life vlogs of single Asian women -- mostly Japanese and South Korean. The presenters record their everyday lives -- cooking, cleaning, working at home or office; the unhurried ordinariness and simplicity of the videos helps Bhaswati relax and stay grounded even as the world keeps spinning into chaos and uncertainty. She also likes to sing, birdwatch, and explore new cuisines. Victory Colony 1950 is her debut novel. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

It’s 1905, and there’s a bounty on the heads of Ruby Calhoun and Pip Quinn for trumped-up crimes they didn’t commit in Kansas. When a wannabe movie producer convinces them to star in a moving picture about their exploits, everyone’s lives are put in danger, but Ruby and Pip refuse to back down in this charming, light-hearted series about 1900s life in the west, the early movie industry, and the bonds of friendship. < Back The Good Time Girls Get Famous KT Blakemore November 7, 2023 K.T. Blakemore’s Wild-Willed Women of the West Series (The Good Time Girls and The Good Time Girls Get Famous) opens when Ruby Calhoun’s former dancehall partner Pip Quinn, shows up at Ruby’s cigar shop in Kansas to tell her that Cullen Wilder, her former lover, wants them both dead. Ruby and Pip plan to warn Verna, a third woman at risk, and embark on an exhausting trip filled with blunders, con-men, cheating, and the breaking of several laws. Now there’s a bounty on their heads and Cullen’s henchmen are looking for them. As they struggle past challenges, Ruby recalls her former life in the Arizona Territory. In the second book, Ruby and Pip are still running from the law, but they can’t pass up the money they’ll earn by starring in a moving picture about how they survived their encounter with a notorious outlaw. After they get the money, their plan is to head for Mexico, but that’s as much as they know. K.T. Blakemore grew up in the west and never left. Her novels The Good Time Girls and The Good Time Girls Get Famous are the first two adventures in the Wild-Willed Women of the West Series, featuring women who take no prisoners and succeed through sheer grit, determination, humor, and a parcel of luck. Her award-winning historical thrillers and young adult historical fiction, written under the pen name Kim Taylor Blakemore , have been awarded a Silver Falchion Award, Tucson Festival of Book Literary Award, and a Willa Award for Best YA Fiction. The Good Time Girls was honored as a New Mexico-Arizona Book Award Finalist. She is a member of Historical Novel Society, Women's Fiction Writers Association, and Women Writing the West. In addition to writing, she is a developmental editor and founder of Novelitics Writers Collective . She teaches editing and creative writing workshops to writing groups around the United States, Canada and the UK. She has hung her hat in California, Colorado, and currently the Pacific Northwest. The rain does not deter her research whether it be train timetables from 1905 or the best way to catch a loose horse. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

Lydia Warren has a particular kind of amnesia. She vaguely recalls arriving in Santorini with a one-armed man whom she calls David Copperfield, who takes care of her. Lydia spends her days watching the sea and the changing light, trying to remember who she is. < Back The Weary God of Ancient Travelers Jessica Stilling November 2, 2021 Lydia Warren has a particular kind of amnesia. She vaguely recalls arriving in Santorini with a one-armed man whom she calls David Copperfield, who takes care of her. Lydia spends her days watching the sea and the changing light, trying to remember who she is. She takes walks, befriends a kindly old antiques dealer who might have been a Nazi and a French woman who helps people remember their past lives. Bits and pieces of what might or might not have been past lives appear in brief visions. A lamp she buys from the antiques dealer reminds her of an New York apartment she once lived in, but it’s the 1960’s, well before she was born. Then she’s visited by someone from The Hague investigating war crimes, and she learns that she has an uncle who lives like a hermit behind a monastery, also somewhere in Greece. This is a story about memory, the mysterious workings of the brain, and the human capacity for forgiveness. Jessica Sticklor earned a BA from the New School and an MFA in Creative Writing from the City University of New York. Before The Weary God of Ancient Travelers, she wrote The Beekeeper’s Daughter (Bedazzled Ink Press), Betwixt and Between (IG Publishing), Nod, and the young adult Pan Chronicles Series (D.X. Varos). Her short stories have appeared in The Warwick Review, The Hawaii Pacific Review and Wasifiri, and her nonfiction has appeared in The Writer Magazine, Ms. Magazine, and Tor.com. She has worked as an editor at THe Global City Press and the The Global City Review and has taught creative writing at both high school and university level. She has published young adult fantasy under the name J.M. Stephen, lives in southern Vermont, and writes for the very local newspaper, the Deerfield Valley News. Jessica grew up in the Chicagoland area. She has lived in New York City and Southwestern Vermont. She loves skiing, hiking, Virginia Woolf and anything Icelandic. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

Already in her late twenties, Tara is relieved when her parents arrange a marriage with a man who lives across the world in Atlanta. But she understands quickly that her husband doesn’t love her or even want her. < Back Purple Lotus Veena Rao March 2, 2021 Already in her late twenties, Tara is relieved when her parents arrange a marriage with a man who lives across the world in Atlanta. But she understands quickly that her husband doesn’t love her or even want her. The ensuing loneliness brings up memories of being left at age eight with her grandparents and mentally ill uncle when her family moved to Dubai. Now, as her husband isolates her and becomes increasingly abusive, she accepts the help of American strangers to leave and set up a life of her own. The scandal, even across oceans, is insurmountable, and she’s pressured into moving back into her husband’s house. This time when the violence escalates, Tara finds the strength, despite fear of being shunned, not only to leave, but to seek love outside the community. Purple Lotus is a story of a woman facing her fears and choosing her own path. Veena Rao is an award-winning journalist and author. Purple Lotus (She Writes Press, 2020), her recently released debut novel, is the winner of the She Writes Press and SparkPress Toward Equality in Publishing (STEP) contest. She is the founder, publisher, and editor-in-chief of NRI Pulse, an Atlanta-based news publication. She has been recognized by The Limca Book of Records (the Indian version of the Guinness Book of Records) as the first Indian woman to edit and publish a newspaper outside India. When she is not writing or meeting press deadlines, you will find her meditating or photographing the flora and fauna on her wooded walk route. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

Based loosely on a tragic real-life incident in 2014, One Kind Favor (WTAW Press 2021) explores the consequences of the lynching of a young black man in rural North Carolina. < Back One Kind Favor Kevin McIlvoy (1953-2022) June 8, 2021 Based loosely on a tragic real-life incident in 2014, One Kind Favor (WTAW Press 2021) explores the consequences of the lynching of a young black man in rural North Carolina. After the lynching of Lincoln Lennox is discovered and subsequently covered up in the small fictional community of Cord, North Carolina, the ghosts who frequent the all-in-one bar and consignment shop take on the responsibility of unearthing the truth and acting as the memory for the town that longs to forget and continues to hate. A reimagined Kathy Acker, the groundbreaking literary icon, engages Lincoln in a love triangle and brings a transgressive post-punk esthetic to the mission. The down-the-rabbit-hole satirical storytelling of One Kind Favor, Kevin McIlvoy’s sixth novel, echoes Appalachian ghost stories in which haunting presences will, at last, have their way. Kevin McIlvoy has published five novels, A Waltz (Lynx House Press), The Fifth Station (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill; paperback, Collier/Macmillan), Little Peg (Atheneum/Macmillan; paperback, Harper Perennial), Hyssop (TriQuarterly Books; paperback, Avon), At the Gate of All Wonder (Tupelo Press); a short story collection, The Complete History of New Mexico (Graywolf Press); and a collection of prose poems and short-short stories, 57 Octaves Below Middle C (Four Way Books). His fiction has appeared in Harper's, Southern Review, Ploughshares, Missouri Review, and other literary magazines. He has taught fiction at Warren Wilson College and New Mexico State University and received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in fiction. For twenty-seven years, McIlvoy worked as fiction editor and editor in chief of the literary magazine, Puerto del Sol. He lives in Asheville, NC, plays blues harmonica, takes ballroom dancing classes with his wife, and has been a serious gardener for four decades. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

After finishing her teaching degree in Israel, Leah emigrates to the U.S. for a teaching position that she thinks of as temporary. She ends up staying for 5 decades. < Back Happy New Years Maya Arad November 11, 2025 In Happy New Years (New Vessel Press, 2025), after finishing her teaching degree, Leah emigrates to the U.S. for a teaching position that she thinks of as temporary. She ends up staying for 5 decades. She keeps up with her old classmates in an annual New Year’s letter that outlines mostly her triumphs, with brief allusions to her losses, her failures, and her misery. She tells the truth to just one friend who is still in Israel. We slowly come to understand Leah’s optimism and cheerfulness as she glides over the secrets and shame that turned her into who she is. Leah falls in love, is the object of vile gossip, gets unfairly maligned, makes some bad decisions, is alternately proud or aggravated about her sons, and is betrayed more than once. Despite the hardships and her flaws, Leah has moments of great joy, travels the world, and lives a full and rich life. Maya Arad is the author of twelve books of Hebrew fiction, as well as studies in literary criticism and linguistics. Born in Israel in 1971, she received a PhD in linguistics from University College London and for the past twenty years has lived in California, where she is writer in residence at Stanford University’s Taube Center for Jewish Studies. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

Everywhere young Russian noblewoman Darya Sheremeteva turns, someone in her circle of family and friends reminds her that she exists to serve a single purpose: to marry a powerful man selected by her male relatives and bear children, preferably sons, to continue his line. But after years in isolation nursing her elderly father, Darya questions whether marriage and motherhood constitute the best, never mind the only, future for a woman of twenty-five. < Back Song of the Sisters C. P. Lesley January 19, 2021 Everywhere young Russian noblewoman Darya Sheremeteva turns, someone in her circle of family and friends reminds her that she exists to serve a single purpose: to marry a powerful man selected by her male relatives and bear children, preferably sons, to continue his line. But after years in isolation nursing her elderly father, Darya questions whether marriage and motherhood constitute the best, never mind the only, future for a woman of twenty-five. Should she not instead take monastic vows and surrender her will to the soaring ritual of the Orthodox Church? When a cousin lays claim to her father's estate, Darya's decision acquires a new urgency. Because this cousin will stop at nothing to advance his career, and his most valuable asset is Darya herself. Years ago, C. P. Lesley decided to focus on sixteenth-century Russia. After all, they say, “write what you know,” and as a historian with a Stanford doctorate, that’s what she knew. It was also a time and place filled with exciting and dramatic events, some of which defy belief. The result was a mystery story set in 1530s Moscow about a young couple resolving a series of crimes by combining clues they pick up in the gender-segregated worlds of husbands and wives. Although she didn’t complete that novel, the original idea gave rise to The Golden Lynx , which became the basis of a series called Legends of the Five Directions and led to her becoming the host of New Books in Historical Fiction here on the New Books Network. After almost a decade spent creating an entire world of characters, she couldn’t bear to let them go, and the result is Songs of Steppe & Forest , a less tightly linked set of books that exist in the same story space five to ten years later and feature characters who, for one reason or another, took a back seat in the Legends novels. Songs of Steppe and Forest will answer the question, “What made Ivan the Terrible so terrible?”. When not thinking up new ways to torture her characters, C.P. Lesley edits other people's manuscripts, reads voraciously, maintains her website, and practices classical ballet. That love of ballet also finds expression in her Tarkei Chronicles series, "Desert Flower" and "Kingdom of the Shades." Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

After an injury to her hand derails her promising concert career, Camille retreats to her mother’s house and teaches piano to mostly desultory students. The years pass, and she finds Graciela, the talented daughter of her mother’s Mexican housekeeper, and Camille focuses on preparing her to live the life she herself was unable to live. < Back Lost in Oaxaca Jessica Winters Mireles July 15, 2020 After an injury to her hand derails her promising concert career, Camille retreats to her mother’s house and teaches piano to mostly desultory students. The years pass, and she finds Graciela, the talented daughter of her mother’s Mexican housekeeper, and Camille focuses on preparing her to live the life she herself was unable to live. Graciela has just won a prestigious piano competition and the chance to jump start her career, but two weeks before she’s supposed to perform with the LA Philharmonic, she disappears. Camille is determined to find her and bring her back before she squanders the opportunity of a lifetime, but a bus accident on route to Graciela’s family village outside of Oaxaca leaves her alone, unable to speak the indigenous language, and without a passport, money, or clothes. Camille, who grew up privileged, finally starts to learn just what it really means to be hungry. Born and raised in Santa Barbara, California, Jessica Winters Mireles holds a degree in piano performance from USC. After graduating, she began her career as a piano teacher and performer. Four children and a studio of over forty piano students later, Jessica’s life changed drastically when her youngest daughter was diagnosed with leukemia at the age of two; she soon decided that life was too short to give up on her dreams of becoming a writer, and after five years of carving out some time each day from her busy schedule, she finished Lost in Oaxaca (She Writes Press, 2020). Jessica’s work has been published in GreenPrints and Mothering magazines. She also knows quite a bit about Oaxaca, as her husband is an indigenous Zapotec man from the highlands of Oaxaca and is a great source of inspiration. She lives with her husband and family in Santa Barbara and has transformed her front yard into an English Garden.d Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

After her mother dies in a tragic accident, Anna cleans out her closet and finds a striking painting that she’d never seen before. She also finds a trove of letters from Stefan Terre, a name she’s never heard. < Back After the Barricades Jessica Stilling May 23, 2023 Today I talked to Jessica Stilling about her new novel After the Barricades (DX Varos, 2023). After her mother dies in a tragic accident, Anna cleans out her closet and finds a striking painting that she’d never seen before. She also finds a trove of letters from Stefan Terre, a name she’s never heard. She travels to Paris for work and also to learn more about her mother, Bethany, who studied at the Sorbonne in 1968. That was a year of student protests and labor strikes by students and workers demanding better pay, workplace safety, and a more equitable society. Bethany never told Anna about her affair with Stefan, a Romanian Jew who survived the Holocaust, became a painter, and was working as a waiter when she met him in Paris. Now it’s 2019, and Anna wants Stefan to tell her about how her mother once wanted to change the world. Jessica Stilling earned a BA from the New School and an MFA in Creative Writing from the City University of New York. Before she published After the Barricades, she published The Weary god of Ancient Travelers, Between Before and After, The Beekeeper’s Daughter (Bedazzled Ink Press), Betwixt and Between (IG Publishing), Nod, and the Hugo Award nominated young adult Pan Chronicles Series (D.X. Varos). Her short stories have appeared in The Warwick Review, The Hawaii Pacific Review and Wasifiri, and her nonfiction has appeared in The Writer Magazine, Ms. Magazine, and Tor.com. She has worked as an editor at The Global City Press and The Global City Review and has taught creative writing at both high school and university level. She has published young adult fantasy under the name J.M. Stephen, lives in southern Vermont, with her family, which includes a dog, a cat, and many chickens, whose squawking sounds exactly like a T-Rex if you listen closely enough. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

Set mostly in a remote cabin in the foothills of Oregon’s Cascade Mountains, Trust Me is about a divorced dad who drives forty-five minutes to work and back each day. < Back Trust Me Scott Nadelson September 17, 2024 Today I talked to Scott Nadelson's novel Trust Me (Forest Avenue Press, 2024). After his divorce, Lewis moves into the cabin he bought as a vacation home towards the end of his marriage. It’s in the foothills of the Cascade mountains, a forty-five-minute drive from his twelve-year-old daughter’s school and his tedious government job in Salem, Oregon. In fifty-two short stories that alternate between Skye and her father’s viewpoint, we learn about a challenging, sometimes difficult year of hiking, fishing, reading, foraging for mushrooms, and cooking meals without television, computers, or cellphones to distract them from nature or each other. Their relationship changes over the months, but the love between father and daughter pulls them through the tragedy that changes everything. Scott Nadelson is the author of nine books, most recently the novel Trust Me and the short story collection While It Lasts . His work has appeared in Ploughshares, New England Review, Harvard Review , and The Best American Short Stories , and he teaches a range of creative writing classes, including introductory multi-genre, fiction, and creative nonfiction at Willamette University and in the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University. He earned a BA in English from the University of North Carolina, an MA from Oregon State University, and an MFA in creative writing from the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. When he isn't reading, writing, or teaching, he spends much of his time foraging for wild mushrooms in the foothills of Oregon's Cascade Mountains and cheering on his child's roller derby team. Listen to Episode Buy Book Previous Next

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. < 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