After Elias is one of the most beautifully-written books I’ve read recently. It’s also a genre-breaker, gracefully combining a fractured romance with elements of a thriller and psychological drama. One week before their wedding, Coen Caraway loses Elias Santos, the...
The Song of Achilles retells the story of Achilles from the point of view of his lover, Patroclus. With all the verve of Mary Renault, Miller gives new life to The Iliad as well as developing a sweet, tender love story between the two men. As a child, I read the Greek...
Today I'm happy to introduce author and historian Deb Hunter. She writes as Hunter S. Jones. She is passionate about the history of romance, science and music, a.k.a. sex, drugs and rock & roll. She has been involved in academic projects at Harvard University, The...
After Kilimanjaro is Gayle Woodson’s debut novel, and one I thoroughly enjoyed reading. Her descriptions of the wilds of the Serengeti and the cities of Arusha and Dar Es Salaam are so accurate I sensed we’d stood in one another’s footsteps, particularly in parts of...
I am thrilled today to welcome Hend Hegazi. It's definitely a Covid-safe interview because she's based in Egypt. Send was born and raised in Southeastern Massachusetts. Despite her desire to pursue writing as a profession, she graduated from Smith College with a...
Wild Land is Rebecca Hodge’s debut novel. I read it in part because I had read parts of it in a writing class some time ago and wanted to see how the novel had turned out. Also, I was intrigued that Hodge had chosen a middle-aged female with breast cancer as her...
When the Coin Is in the Air is John Young’s debut novel. It reads like a coming-of-age memoir. The protagonist, Jason Blake, grows up caught between a mercurial father who is often violent and emotionally abusive, and an older brother who is very competitive yet...
I'm so pleased to chat with Mary Helen Sheriff today, the author of Boop and Eve’s Road Trip, which will be released by She Writes Press on October 6, 2020. She spent fourteen years in classrooms teaching elementary school, middle school, college, and professionals....
Mirador is set in the United States and Mexico. The time is 1993. The North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is waiting to be ratified by the three countries involved: Canada, Mexico, and the US. To open the way to the potential economic expansion, Mexico has...
Rashi Rohatgi’s literary debut is Where the Sun Will Rise Tomorrow. It is set in 1905 which is the early Edwardian era of Great Britain and her colonies. Britain still occupies India, and that colors everything in Indian life. Years ago I read An Autobiography or the...
Master Class takes a dark look at how a near-future America slides into totalitarianism and eugenics. The system relies completely on a system of Q scores which encompass each person’s intelligence, economic status, etc. The higher one’s Q score, the more privileges...
Joining me today in a Covid-distanced interview is author Natalee Cooper. While writing heartwarming romance is her passion, baking is a close second. And eating said baked goodness. Like bread. Homemade, warm, delicious bread. She's lived along the Wastach Front most...
Concealed is an amazing memoir. So often I find that memoirs are really authors’ ego trips, and they never derive any life-changing conclusions from their stories. Concealed avoids that trap quite nicely. Of Persian Jewish descent, Esther grows up in Queens, New York...
The Best Part of Us is a powerful novel about family dynamics and the human need to be true to one’s inner self. Beth, the protagonist, is a tweenager—she feels left out in her family; she’s too old for kid stuff and too young for everything else. Her older brother...
Eddy Boudel Tan is the author of two novels, After Elias, to be released this week on September 12, 2020 and The Rebellious Tide, due out in the spring 2021. His work depicts a world much like our own—the heroes are flawed, truth is distorted, and there is as much...
Victorine is Drema Drudge’s debut novel, and a delight it is. She's captured the spirit of Belle Époque France from the time of the American Civil War in the 1860s through the Siege of Paris by the Prussians in 1870-1871 and artist Manet’s death in 1883. Victorine...
Jody A. Forrester and I are both "women of a certain age." She was born and raised in Los Angeles during the uneasy Fifties and tumultuous Sixties; I was raised in conservative West Texas during that same time frame. She graduated from high school in 1969, when the...
Scorpionfish, released July 7, 2020 by Tin House Books, is a lovely novel about the a woman finding herself. Mira, a Greek-American academic returns to Athens to clean out the apartment of her recently-dead parents. While there, her long-term boyfriend breaks up with...
Today I have the pleasure of interviewing a new-to-me author, Peggy A. Wheeler. Her non-fiction articles have appeared in numerous magazines. Her poetry appears in small press magazines and women’s anthologies dating back to the early 1980s. She has a B.A. in English...
Bayou City Burning is the first in a series of father/daughter detective stories, the Harry and Dizzy Lark Books, by D.B. Borton. It’s set in Houston with an authentic sense of place complete with the stench of Texas oil refineries, arrow-straight stretches of...
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