Joining me today is Pamela Humphrey, author of sweet romantic comedies. She was inspired to write after researching her genealogy. Intending to create a booklet for her mom and immediate family, she set about gathering stories and pictures of the Ramirez family. She...
Valentine begins on February 14, 1976 when a fourteen-year-old Mexican girl, Gloria Ramirez, is picked up at a drive-in by a young oil field worker, Dale Strickland. He's the son of a preacher from Arkansas and reported to be a "good boy." However, hepped up on...
The Library of Legends is a gorgeous novel, a unique blend of historical fiction—based on Ms. Chang’s family stories about the second-Sino Japanese war—mysticism, and folklore. The storytelling is enchanting. The book, due to its broad scope, is told in an omniscient...
Set in present-day Massachusetts, Hinterland is stark and poetic, with far more beneath the surface than the words indicate. It is the third book I’ve read by L.M. Brown, and as in her others, melancholy runs like a ribbon through the pages as does (it seems strange...
Joining me today is Heather Duerre Humann. She is the author of four books: Domestic Abuse in the Novels of African American Women: A Critical Study (2014), Gender Bending Detective Fiction: A Critical Analysis of Selected Works (2017), Another Me: The Doppelgänger in...
Take It Back is so engrossing I stayed up until two a.m. reading it, then spent the next few hours replaying it in my head. Wow! Such a great book with challenging situations and legal and moral quandaries. Mariska Hargitay (Lieutenant Olivia Benson on Law & Order...
Linda Strader joins me today to talk about her memoir, Summers of Fire. Originally from Syracuse, New York, Ms. Strader moved to Prescott, Arizona with her family in 1972. In 1976, she became one of the first women on a U.S. Forest Service fire crew in the Santa Rita...
Blind Vigil is the seventh book in Coyle's Rick Cahill private investigator series, but reads well as a stand-alone book with just enough back story splashed in to orient the reader. Cahill is not on the best of terms with the local law enforcement stemming from days...
On this December 1st, Christina Hoag joins me in a Covid-safe interview. She is a former journalist who has had her laptop searched by Colombian guerrillas, phone tapped in Venezuela, was suspected of drug trafficking in Guyana, hid under a car to evade Guatemalan...
Good Morning, Monster: A Therapist Shares Five Heroic Stories of Emotional Recovery is a look at the therapeutic psychological practice of Catherine Gildiner, a fascinating memoir of how she dealt with five clients, all so severely emotionally damaged that they had to...
Tonya Mitchell joins me today for an interview about what led to her novel, A Feigned Madness. Since reading Jane Eyre in high school, Tonya has been drawn to dark stories, particularly of the Gothic variety. Her influences include Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, and...
One lucky participant will win: A hand-made cozy scarf A signed copy of A DIFFERENT KIND OF FIRE Bookish print swag Click here to enter, or use the widget below. No purchase necessary. The more ways you enter, the more your chances of winning. Good luck and have fun!...
S. M. Goodwin pulled me into Absence of Mercy immediately with her descriptions of Jasper Lightner, a Crimean War hero with post-traumatic stress syndrome and a traumatic brain injury. The second son of a duke, Jasper inherits enough money to become independent of his...
My guest today is Sherri Leimkuhler, author of What's Left Untold, a book I can't say too much about without divulging its premise and causing major spoilers. Sherri has written professionally for more than twenty years but is a Jill of many trades, with experience in...
Chip Jones is a Pulitzer Prize nominated journalist who brings to life an amazing story. A succinct synopsis is drawn straight from the subtitle of his book: The Shocking Story of the First Heart Transplant in the Segregated South. To give readers some background into...
DJ Lee grew up in Seattle hearing the word “wilderness” but not knowing what it meant. Only when she was in her early forties did she learn about her family’s mysterious history with one of the largest and most remote landscapes in the contiguous US, the...
Nowhere Near Goodbye, released August 4, 2020 by Red Adept, is Barbara Conrey’s debut novel. It delves deeply into the age-old challenge women face: career versus family. I read this book because it looks at some of the same choices I, as a physician, had to make....
I'm chatting today with Libby McNamee, an author, speaker, lawyer, and veteran. When a descendant told her of Susanna Bolling's heroism during the Revolutionary War, Libby was captivated. Susanna’s Midnight Ride: The Girl Who Won the Revolutionary War is her first...
Morrigan © Suanne Schafer A whistled song disturbs my sleep. Just outside the churchyard, I lie, warm and drowsy, buried within the earth, roofed by a grove of dark pines whose fallen needles and verdant mosses quilt my bed. Loath to leave a lovely pleasure, I...
For years, Caitlin Bergman has told everyone that her mother is dead—it's a simpler explanation than the truth that, after giving Caitlin up for adoption, the woman dropped out of sight. When Caitlin receives word from a police department in Oregon that her mother has...
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