Henry Hayden is a great unreliable, unlikeable character with just enough good within him to be a somewhat likable soul, yet he wreaks a swath of destruction in his wake, from childhood on. Currently he manifests himself as a well-known, prolific writer; but his wife...
Ginny Friedlander Fite, an award-winning journalist and writer, joins me today for a Covid-safe interview. She is the author of five previous novels, a humorous book on aging, three collections of poetry and a collection of short stories. Nominated for a Pushcart...
The Windsor Knot was an interesting set-up of a mystery, somewhat akin to an Agatha Christie. The switch is that the detective is the Queen of England. As a queen and a nonagenarian, she has limitations on what she can do, both in terms of protocol and her advanced...
I'm welcoming Dave Patterson to the blog today in another Covid-safe interview. Dave holds an MA from the Bread Loaf School of English and an MFA from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast program. His work has appeared in Slice Magazine, Salon, Hot Metal...
Writers seem to be rediscovering the feminist and ace reporter Nellie Bly. A vibrant, stubborn young woman thirsted to become a female journalist during the 1890s when women were relegated to the home. Bly was truly an independent woman, one of the early pioneers of...
Joining me today is Densie (not Denise) Webb. She grew up in Louisiana, spent thirteen years in New York, and settled in Austin, TX, where it’s summer nine months out of the year. She's an avid walker (not of the dead variety, though she loves anything to do with...
It was refreshing to read a beach read in the winter. Though The Newcomer seems a bit long, I read it in one sitting. This is a classic fish-out-of-water story. The Newcomer revolves around Letty, formerly a Southern woman who now lives in NYC. When she finds her...
I’m trying to catch up on books lingering in the depths of my to-be-read pile and pulled this one out. The Gardener of Baghdad opens in a bookstore in Baghdad during modern times. With the current unrest and political fighting, Adnan, the owner of the bookstore, is...
Gayle Woodson is an award-winning writer and internationally-respected surgical educator. She began her career a time when female surgeons were an oddity and was one of the first women to train as a surgical resident at Johns Hopkins. She's been involved in...
Outlawed is an amazing speculative Western that really shakes up the Western genre by tackling the patriarchy, gender roles/identity, race, religion, fertility, and medicine in a unique way. The protagonist is irresistible: a no-nonsense, determined heroine, who has...
I read In a Town Called Paradox shortly after reading Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire, set in the same geographic area. Paradox is, in part, the story of how cowboy movies began to be made in Utah—which is diametrically opposed to Abbey’s vision of the West,...
Visiting with me in a safe distanced interview is Rea Frey. Rea is the celebrated author of Not Her Daughter, Because You're Mine, and Until I Find You as well as four nonfiction books, so she's been around the publishing block. Her passions include telling stories,...
Strange Deaths of the Last Romantic is a genre-breaking book with elements of thriller, science fiction, New Adult, and even romance. Which may or may not be a good thing. A boy commits suicide, but doesn’t die—he simply is transported to another location—sans...
With me today is John Cahill, a writer of historical fiction and the author of The Boschloper Saga, set on the frontier of seventeenth-century New York. Boschloper is Dutch for “runner in the woods” and refers to fur traders in general. John was born and raised in...
I read this book because I adored Anita Diamant's earlier novel, The Red Tent. Dogtown, a real community on Cape Ann, Massachusetts, was populated by the downtrodden in early 1800s. When its industry moved elsewhere, those who remained included widows, orphans, freed...
Karen Havelin is a writer and translator from Bergen, Norway. She attended Skrivekunst-akademiet i Hordaland, and has a Bachelor’s degree in French, Literature, and Gender Studies from the University of Bergen and University of Paris Sorbonne. She completed her MFA in...
A Question of Betrayal is the second in Anne Perry's spy series set just prior to World War II. I found it worked well as a stand-alone novel. Elena Standish’s grandfather, Lucas, has retired from British Intelligence, MI6. She follows in his footsteps, and on her...
Today I'm enjoying a virtual interview with Don Hartshorn, author of The Guilty Die Twice, which features a capital murder case deep in the heart of Texas and two lawyer brothers as opposing counsel in the trial. This definitely sounds like I should read it! SS: How...
I'm thrilled to announce that Hunting the Devil is a finalist in the Story Circle Network Sarton Awards for 2020. A Different Kind of Fire is a finalist in the Top Shelf Book Awards in the Social Issues category.
Waiting for the Night Song is a genre-breaking work—literary fiction blended with suspense, racial issues, and climate change. The protagonist, Cadie Kessler, is an entomologist studying beetles and how they kill trees, which in turn, because of the increase in fuel,...
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