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...
Michael Cordell has been a writer for many years. After having had a play produced by several theatre companies in the Midwest, Cordell turned his attention to screenwriting. He sold three screenplays to Hollywood, one of which was produced starring Harvey Keitel and...
Until I Find You by Rea Frey was released on August 11 by St. Martin's Press. It is an emotional, poignant novel written in the points of view of Rebecca—a nearly-blind woman, a recent widow, and a new mother—and that of Crystal, a friend of Rebecca’s who lives...
Joining me today is Barbara Conrey, author of Nowhere Near Goodbye, released August 4, 2020 by Red Adept Publishing. She worked in the health care industry for many years before opting for an early retirement, which lasted all of three months. She then accepted a...
Megan Collins’s debut novel, The Winter Sister, was filled with gorgeous prose and a story that was spellbinding, atmospheric, and deeply touching. On August fourth, Atria Books released Collins's sophomore novel, Behind The Red Door. It doesn’t disappoint. Collins’s...
Diane Zinna joins me virtually today. She received her MFA from the University of Florida and went on to teach creative writing for ten years. She was formerly the executive co-director at AWP, the Association of Writers & Writing Programs, which hosts the largest...
Uncovered by Leah Lax is her memoir of leaving her Hasidic Jewish community and becoming herself. It might be read in conjunction with Concealed by Esther Amini, also a memoir of leaving a fundamental Jewish family and becoming an integrated person. Lax, a Texan with...
If you love literature, art, photography, exclusive sneek peaks, author giveaways, and things that light up the soul, you will want to sign up for Suanne's low-volume newsletter...
