Bookable Space: Recent Episodes
Yvonne Battle-Felton
Hosted by award-winning author and podcaster, Yvonne Battle-Felton, Bookable Space is a podcast where authors read to us, answer three questions about their books, and tell us where to find them. It's a space for writers to reach readers, for readers to find writers, and for everyone in between.
In this engaging episode of Bookable Space, host Yvonne Battle-Felton is joined by Rosie Wilby. Rosie reads to us from The Breakup Monologues: The Unexpected Joy of Heartbreak and talks to us about writing, science of relationships, immersive research, and more.
About the author:
Rosie Wilby is an award-winning comedian, writer and podcaster who has appeared on BBC Radio 4 programmes including Woman's Hour, Saturday Live, Unsafe Space and Four Thought and TV programmes including Good Morning Britain and Sunday Morning Live. Her latest book The Breakup Monologues is based on her acclaimed podcast (a British Podcast Award nominee and recommended by Chortle, The Observer, Psychologies and more) and is published globally by Bloomsbury. You can check it out here:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1472982282/
Rosie also regularly contributes to The Guardian, The Independent, Stylist, Cosmo and Perspective and has hosted programmes for Virgin Radio, BBC and Resonance FM.
Follow her on Twitter / X @rosiewilby or on Instagram / Threads @breakupmonologues
About the book:
In 2011, comedian and podcaster Rosie Wilby was dumped by email... though she did feel a little better about it after correcting her ex's spelling and punctuation. Obsessing about breakups ever since, she embarked on a quest to investigate, understand and conquer the psychology of heartbreak.
Many years later, this book is a love letter to her breakups, a celebration of what they have taught her peppered with anecdotes from illustrious friends and interviews with relationship therapists, scientists and sociologists about separating in the modern age of ghosting, breadcrumbing and conscious uncoupling.
Mixing humour, memoir and science, she attempts to assimilate their advice and ideas in order to not break up with Girlfriend, her partner of nearly three years. Will this self-confessed serial monogamist, and breakup addict, finally settle down?
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In this engaging episode of Bookable Space, host Yvonne Battle-Felton is joined by Inés G. Labarta. Inés reads from The Three Lives of Saint Ciarán and talks to us about writing, reading, life, and more.
The Three Lives of Saint Ciarán
A young girl, un-dead and un-alive, brought to the shores of Iberia and nurtured to become the saviour of Madrid. A crippled boy drowning in the waters of Loughmichnois, called to preserve the secrets of a civilisation. A nun who instigates the bombing of Neo Dublin to reset a futureless people and start afresh.
Times of darkness, worlds seemingly beyond salvation, people who have never known joy. What do they have in common?
Three entirely different versions of Saint Ciarán to restore hope, faith, and brightness for humankind.
Bio:
Inés G. Labarta is a queer and an immigrant writer living in the northwest of England. Her publications include the middle grade trilogy Los Pentasónicos (2008-2010) and the novellas McTavish Manor (Holland House, 2016) and Kabuki (Dairea, 2017). Her new novel, The Three Lives of Saint Ciarán, was shortlisted for the Northern Writers Awards and will be published by Blackwater Press in 2024. Her short fiction has appeared in places like Extra Teeth, Toasted Cheese Literary Journal and Oranges. Her writing has been commissioned by institutions such as the Lancashire City Council and Litro magazine. In 2019 she gained a PhD in Creative Writing from Lancaster University. After working as a lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Wolverhampton and the University of Plymouth she returned to Lancaster University in 2023 to lecture there. In 2023 she was also an Eccles Centre Visiting Fellow which allowed her to travel to the British Library to research for her current novel, a dark queer western set in the Pacific Northwest.
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In this episode of Bookable Space, host Yvonne Battle-Felton is joined by Steve Schlam. Steve reads from The Harvesting of Haystacks Kane and talks to us about writing, dreaming, creativity, taking readers on a journey on the river of words, and more.
About the Author: STEVE SCHLAM was born and brought up in the Borough of Brooklyn in The City That Never Sleeps, and has since lived in cities and towns across the United States and in Mexico. An actor as well as a writer, he has performed on stages in all the places he's called home, and earned a Master's Degree in Creative Writing under the tutelage of Joseph Heller, renowned author of "Catch-22." "The Harvesting of Haystacks Kane" is his first published novel.
About the Book: "THE HARVESTING OF HAYSTACKS KANE is a powerful and poignant work of literary fiction that tells the story of Haystacks Kane, 607-pound professional wrestler and devoted butterfly collector born Herschel Cain in Brooklyn, New York, who has been gravely injured in a match with his archrival and long-time nemesis and is lying in his hospital bed immobilized and unable to speak, attempting to figure out what has happened--both in the immediate sense and over the longer course of his life--and what can be done about it.
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In this episode of Bookable Space, Angie Elita Newell joins host Yvonne Battle-Felton. Angie will be reading from her novel, All I See is Violence.
About the Book:
Following the real-life historical events caused by colonialism, such as the 1876 Battle of Little Bighorn, Indigenous author Angie Newell dives into the chaos that resulted from these events and the fallout modern Indigenous peoples still bear today in her historical fiction novel, All I See is Violence.
About the Author:
Angie Elita Newell belongs to the Liidlii Kue First Nation from the Dehcho. A trained historian, she blends oral stories with academic history and holds university degrees in English literature, creative writing, and First Nations history with an emphasis on colonialism and is the author of the historical fiction, All I See is Violence.
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In this episode of Bookable Space, host Yvonne Battle-Felton is joined by Ishi Robinson. Ishi reads from Sweetness in the Skin. We talk about home, family, and food.
About the Book
Sweetness in the Skin is set in 90s Kingston, Jamaica and tells the story of the irrepressible Pumkin Patterson who is trying and failing to find her place: at home, at school, and in wider society.
When her family implodes, Pumkin chooses to become master of her fate and embarks on an epic journey to find a new home.
But as Pumpkin strives to move further and further away from the city she knows, she discovers that what she is looking for might be closer to home than she’d imagined after all.
About the Author
Ishi Robinson was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica. She has lived in Bern, Toronto, Rome, London and now lives in Berlin with her Czech husband.
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Hosted by Yvonne Battle-Felton, in this episode of Bookable Space we're joined by James Morehead. James reads from The Plague Doctor.
About the writer
James Morehead is Poet Laureate of Dublin, California, author of three collections of poetry, and host of the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast. James' poem "tethered" was transformed into an award-winning animated short and "gallery" was set to music (baritone and piano). His poems have appeared in multiple publications.
About The Plague Doctor
The Plague Doctor is both accessible and layered with meaning, a visual feast where poetry is paired with captivating art and photography to explore the ephemeral nature of existence. “Leafing through this book is akin to walking through an exhibition, through a series of galleries wherein Morehead’s far-reaching imagination is released.“ - The Colorado Review
Artist credits from The Plague Doctor:
- Ink art by Natalia Andrus (aka Eerie Ink)
- Additional art by Mark Kulas
- Cover art by Tony Rubino
- Photography by James Morehead and Natalie Gross
- The Plague Doctor is available online via Amazon and Barnes & Noble, in local booksellers, and (for US customers) signed copies via ViewlessWings.com
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In the final part of this three-part episode, Laine Love reads another chapter from A Bigger Mission. Written in the style of a script, this chapter is about love, acceptance, and belonging.
BIO:
Lainne Love is an Award Winning Spiritual Psychology Coach & Bestselling Author, Leading Edge Healer, Founder + CEO of A Bigger Mission, and Momma.
She’s dedicated to standing for others as they rise up, reclaim their power, and lead by birthing their bigger mission.
Her process is rooted in Universal Law and Metaphysics. Informed by spiritual psychology and neuroscience, and supported with subconscious reprogramming & energetic insights.
BOOK SUMMARY:
A Bigger Mission Book is a collaboration of twelve people sharing real and raw stories of the challenges, struggles, and trauma they experienced that cracked them open to a bigger mission in life that awakened them to the purpose behind the pain and how to overcome, heal and transform their lives and help others do the same.
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In part two of this three-part episode, Lainne Love joins host Yvonne Battle-Felton and reads from another section of A Bigger Mission. Lainne reminds us all that there is only one us.
BIO:
Lainne Love is an Award Winning Spiritual Psychology Coach & Bestselling Author, Leading Edge Healer, Founder + CEO of A Bigger Mission, and Momma.
She’s dedicated to standing for others as they rise up, reclaim their power, and lead by birthing their bigger mission.
Her process is rooted in Universal Law and Metaphysics. Informed by spiritual psychology and neuroscience, and supported with subconscious reprogramming & energetic insights.
BOOK SUMMARY:
A Bigger Mission Book is a collaboration of twelve people sharing real and raw stories of the challenges, struggles, and trauma they experienced that cracked them open to a bigger mission in life that awakened them to the purpose behind the pain and how to overcome, heal and transform their lives and help others do the same.
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In this episode of Bookable Space, we're joined by Lainne Love reading A Bigger Mission. This is the part one of a three-part episode.
BIO:
Lainne Love is an Award Winning Spiritual Psychology Coach & Bestselling Author, Leading Edge Healer, Founder + CEO of A Bigger Mission, and Momma.
She’s dedicated to standing for others as they rise up, reclaim their power, and lead by birthing their bigger mission.
Her process is rooted in Universal Law and Metaphysics. Informed by spiritual psychology and neuroscience, and supported with subconscious reprogramming & energetic insights.
BOOK SUMMARY:
A Bigger Mission Book is a collaboration of twelve people sharing real and raw stories of the challenges, struggles, and trauma they experienced that cracked them open to a bigger mission in life that awakened them to the purpose behind the pain and how to overcome, heal and transform their lives and help others do the same.
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In this episode of Bookable Space, the show where writers read to us, we're joined by Laurie Kaye reading Confessions of a Rock 'n' Roll Name-Dropper: My Life Leading Up to John Lennon's Last Interview.
About a Rock 'n' Roll Name-DropperLaurie Kaye is a writer and producer, and 'Confessions of a Rock ’n’ Roll Name-Dropper: My Life Leading Up to John Lennon’s Last Interview' is her long-awaited memoir. In it, we read about Kaye's rock music-related early life wrapped around that day in December 1980 which Kaye spent with John Lennon and Yoko Ono at the legendary Dakota apartment building on Manhattan's Upper West Side.
On December 8, 1980, while working for RKO Radio, twenty-something rock journalist Laurie Kaye co-conducted an interview with her longtime idol, John Lennon. It was to become Lennon's final interview on what tragically turned out to be his last day on the planet.
BIO
Laurie Kaye began her career in radio at KFRC-AM San Francisco, for years one of the nation’s greatest top 40 stations, where she started as an intern and worked her way up to on-air reporter and anchor. She wrote and coproduced numerous radio rock specials for RKO, including RKO Presents the Beatles (released in 1977, and later expanded and retitled as The Beatles from Liverpool to Legend), and The Top 100 of the 70’s before moving on to write Dick Clark’s weekly radio countdown show and syndicated newspaper column. Kaye then moved on to television and film as a writer, producer, and casting director, where she still works today, handling both creative content and line producing for docuseries pilots.
To buy the book, visit: confessionsofarocknrollnamedropper.com
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In this episode of Bookable Space, Maxine Blake reads Teacher Bloopers and Pouty Mouth Stories and reminds us to show ourselves grace, enjoy what we do, and learn from our mistakes.
About the author:
Maxine Blake is of Jamaican descent and was born and raised in Wolverhampton in the UK. She dedicated 37 years of her life to teaching and held management positions within educational institutions across the country before retiring in 2020. She holds a Master of Education degree.
In her retirement, Maxine remains active both nationally and internationally within education. She also maintains her passion for singing with the Sheffield Community Choir and continues to diligently hone her piano skills.
Maxine has rekindled her love for international travel as a solo female adventurer and has authored several guided journals to assist other women who aspire to embark on similar journeys.
Teacher Bloopers and Potty Mouth Stories serves as the sequel to her previous work, Don't Poo in the Pudding Bowl.
She currently resides in Sheffield with her husband.
About the book:
Brace yourself for a whirlwind tour through the wacky world of education.
Teacher Bloopers and Potty Mouth Stories is the perfect read for anyone who appreciates the humour in life's unexpected moments.
With her trademark wit and candour, Maxine Blake offers a refreshingly honest and amusing take on the rollercoaster ride that is life in the classroom. She has an uncanny ability to turn even the most awkward classroom moments into hilarious anecdotes.
Maxine is no stranger to the unpredictable and often absurd happenings in a place where awkward teenagers are turned into slightly less awkward adults.
In her much-anticipated sequel to the well-received Don’t Poo in the Pudding Bowl, Maxine regales us with a new collection of side-splitting stories.
So, grab a comfy seat, put your feet up, and get ready to be regaled by the hysterical, the outrageous, and the downright preposterous!
Welcome to the wonderfully crazy world of Maxine’s classroom.
To order the book or to reach Maxine visit her website https://maxineblake.com/
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In this episode of Bookable Space, we're joined by author Gloria Galloway. Gloria reads from and talks about her book Amber's Way.
About the book:
Young Adult/Amber's Way is the story of a young girl's struggle with childhood cancer. The narrative is about courage, inner strength, and a fighting spirit. Above all, it is about the powerful bond of love between a mother and daughter.
About the author:
Gloria Galloway has enjoyed storytelling since her dolls were the characters for her stories. She grew up in Sacramento, California, within driving distance of the Sierra Nevada mountains which provided inspiration for Summer’s End. Gloria loves spending time with family and friends, and you can often find her curled up with a book and her rescue cat, Summer, who is a happenstance of sheer serendipity. She is a member of the Authors Guild and the Sacramento chapter of the California Writer’s Club.
A percentage of the proceeds from Amber's Way will be donated to the Children's Neuroblastoma Cancer Foundation, Bloomingdale, Illinois https://www.cncfhope.org/
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In this episode of Bookable Space, Anton Skornyakov reads from The Art of Slicing Work: How to Navigate Unpredictable Projects.
About the Book
Ignoring the problem won’t make it go away.
And yet, that’s exactly what most organizations do when unpredictability arises. Instead of fighting against it, why not work with unpredictability instead?
In The Art of Slicing Work, Anton Skornyakov shows you how to navigate unpredictability and stay focused on delivering results that matter—allowing for steady and controllable progress, creating a sense of shared ownership and responsibility, and maximizing the value of the work produced.
This isn’t another Scrum-based product development book for the tech crowd, nor is it a theoretical leadership framework. It’s a real-world, low-jargon guide filled with stories, explanations, and lessons developed and honed through years of organizational coaching.
With this book, you will gain new insight into how to lead your teams through unpredictable projects, whether in commercial, non-profit, or public sector organizations.
About the author
Anton Skornyakov was born in Moscow, Russia before relocating to Germany at the age of 12. Trained as a mathematician and physicist, Anton earned a degree equivalent to a master's in mathematics from Cambridge, a diploma in physics from Humboldt University Berlin, and an MBA from Collége des Ingènieurs in Paris.
Anton's dedication to organizational collaboration and Agile principles in the public and nonprofit sectors led him to his current role as co-founder and managing director of Agile.Coach. In this capacity, he has coached nearly a hundred organizations and thousands of individuals in the art of slicing work. His upcoming book, The Art of Slicing Work, encapsulates the culmination of numerous stories, lessons, and principles gathered throughout his coaching journey.
The Art of Slicing Work (March 2024) will be available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and wherever books are sold.
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In this episode of Bookable Space, host Yvonne Battle-Felton is joined by Madeline Bocaro. Madeline reads from her book In Your Mind- The Infinite Universe of Yoko Ono.
About the book:
In Your Mind - The Infinite Universe of Yoko Ono
The true story of the woman John Lennon loved. This is the ultimate biography and reference guide to Yoko Ono's life and work. It is the first complete exploration of her avant-garde art, activism, films and music in stunning detail. Includes deep insights about Ono’s life (thirty-three years before meeting Lennon, twelve years with him, and over forty years of creativity since his death). The book addresses the undeserved negativity that Yoko has received as a child of war in Japan, as an Asian woman and as the wife of one of the Beatles. We can all learn from Yoko's positivity and her effective healing methods.
BIO:
Author and journalist Madeline Bocaro is a passionate fan from New York, with deep knowledge about rock and roll. Her informative and insightful writing keeps its history and legacy alive. Madeline has written the acclaimed biography In Your Mind – The Infinite Universe of Yoko Ono. She has contributed to many books and documentaries about music.
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In this episode of Bookable Space, host Yvonne Battle-Felton is joined by Tim Stretton. Tim will be reading from Catfish Alley.
From the book:
I once had a girlfriend back in Scotland, Lorna, who was into astrology, karma, healing crystals and all that shite. She always said the universe had a way of knowing when you needed something and providing for you. In my experience, what it generally provides is a kick in the bollocks.
Tommy Chisholm is in trouble.
His dream life in Barcelona is unravelling. He’s broke, his writing career has stalled, and maybe it’s time to pack up and go home.
But then he’s recruited by an organised crime gang to help them rob an art gallery. His financial worries will be over at a stroke, and all he needs to do is seduce someone he’s never met.
Everything is going perfectly. Until he loses his head over the woman he is meant to be exploiting.
About the Auhor:
Tim Stretton has published six novels, and his seventh, Catfish Alley, was published by SpellBound Books in June. He writes fantasy and science fiction as Tim Stretton, and crime as T. M. Stretton.
He has also been published by Macmillan New Writing and Tor. His fantasy novels include the Annals of Mondia trilogy (Dragonchaser, The Dog of the North and The Last Free City) and his most recent series is the steampunk Fractured Empire sequence, Bitter Sky and A Little Poison.
More recently he has been working on crime fiction. In addition to Catfish Alley, he has recently completed two more novels in the ‘Barcelonoir’ crime trilogy, Casanova Street and Diamond Boulevard.
Tim was born and raised on the Isle of Wight, and has lived in West Sussex for most of his adult life. He has a degree in English and American Literature from the University of Kent. He was also a senior editor at the international Vance Integral Edition project. Before concentrating on writing full-time, he was the deputy finance director of a local authority and also worked as a trainer and consultant. His non-fiction has appeared in publications as diverse as the Local Government Chronicle and Introvert, Dear.
He is a member of the Crime Writers' Association, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Association, the Society of Authors and the Alliance of Independent Authors.
You can find him online at timstretton.com and follow him on Twitter (@timstretton) and Instagram (@tim_stretton).
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In this episode of Bookable Space, host novelist Yvonne Battle-Felton is joined by Micki R. Pettit. Micki reads from A Kiss for Maggie Moore and talks about research, writing, and more.
Born in Wyoming and raised in New Mexico, Micki R. Pettit has been a Texan for twenty-six years, living in Houston with her husband and now twenty-one-year-old, A&M sons.
Micki is a former radio personality and voice talent with vocal experience spanning musical theater, opera, big band, rock, and country. She is currently lead female singer with the folk group Bandella and performs with the Bay Area Chorus of Greater Houston. A graduate of the University of New Mexico, she is an experienced copywriter whose personal writing has appeared in various Native American-themed publications. Upon moving to Houston, she was instrumental in the creation and execution of Contact, the Astronaut Spouses Group quarterly newsletter, and served as content coordinator before becoming its editor.
A Kiss for Maggie Moore is Micki R. Pettit’s debut novel. She is currently working on String of Pearls, the story of two women at different stages of entanglement with the same man. One is divorcing him, the other is soon to be his bride.
About the book
Smart-mouthed Maggie Moore is instantly smitten with the laid back, sometimes infuriating Bucky. Too bad he has eyes for her best friend Melinda. Their triangle of friendship and emerging romance is easily eclipsed by the free-spirited adventures of childhood, but when the turmoil of adolescence stirs unresolved feelings, and doing the right thing means betraying her own heart, Maggie must grapple with a moral dilemma that impacts them all.
With a supporting cast of unforgettable characters, and set against the backdrop of rural Wyoming during the cultural upheaval of the 1960s, Micki R. Pettit gracefully weaves an endearing and humorous tale of first experiences that cuts to the heart of sacrificial love.
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In this episode of Bookable Space, host, novelist Yvonne Battle-Felton is joined by Linda Jean Hall. Linda Jean reads to us from Gifting Resilience: A Pandemic Study of my Black Female Resistance and talks about fear, writing, and hope.
Linda Jean Hall is a teaching-researcher specializing in Science and Technology Studies at the University of California Riverside. Hall’s book, Gifting Resilience: A Pandemic Study of my Black Female Resistance is a self-analysis of her journey from Pennsylvania's juvenile justice system to the ivory towers of California's leading educational institutions.
About the book:
How does fear – deep, ongoing, systemic fear – impact on Black lives?
Through reflections on her own life, anthropologist Dr Linda Jean Hall draws on traditions of African storytelling to explore the question of how systemic fear affects the twentieth- and twenty-first-century Afro American experience. By using the framing of pandemic waves – a concept all too familiar in the wake of COVID-19 – Hall employs a personal lens to parse out the implications of different “waves of fear" through impactful stages of her life, allowing readers to examine the shifting relationships that define Blackness and survival.
Gifting resilience: A pandemic study of Black female resistance is ideal reading for students of Black studies, African American studies, and related courses, as well as for students of feminist and womanist studies, gender studies, cultural studies, history, sociology and anthropology. Unflinchingly honest, this book gives a human face to viewpoints and ideas that originate deep within the complex and diverse African Diasporic lived experience.
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In this episode of Bookable Space, host Yvonne Battle-Felton is joined by Annie Dawid. Annie reads from Paradise Undone: A Novel of Jonestown.
About the book
Paradise Undone, A Novel of Jonestown is a part real, part imagined retelling of the tragic events that led to the USA's biggest single loss of civilian life in the twentieth century.
On November 18th 1978, nine hundred and nine people died in the Guyanese jungle. Published on the 45th anniversary, Annie Dawid’s compelling story of Jonestown explores the tragedy through the voices of four protagonists—Marceline Baldwin Jones and three other members of Peoples Temple. Drawing on extensive research and interviews, Annie Dawid blends fact and fiction, using real and composite characters to tell a story about the horrific mass murder/suicide that took place in the Guyanese jungle, all because of one man with a God complex.
In the hostile racial environment of 1950s segregated America, Marceline Baldwin and Jim Jones promise to build a new Eden, based on ideals of fraternity and equality. But every Eden has its serpent.
Having already made headlines as the first white couple in Indiana to adopt a black child, Marceline and Jim adopt five other non-white children and call themselves ‘the rainbow family’. Jones’ following grows: Peoples Temple gives hope to the poor, the miserable, alienated and disenfranchised. It soon outgrows Indiana and is uprooted to the jungle of Guyana. But when things start to fall apart, rampant egotist Jim Jones plans a mass-murder suicide mission. Where he goes, everyone must follow, even to the grave…
About the Author
Annie Dawid has published five books, including fiction, non-fiction, poetry and essays. She teaches at the University of Denver, University College master’s program in creative writing online from her home in very rural Colorado. Her focus on the murder/suicides at Jonestown in 1978, when she was a first-year undergraduate, dates from March 2004. At the University of North Dakota Writers Conference, where she was a Master-Teacher in residence, she met a friend of survivors of Jonestown. Subsequently, she immersed herself in research and changed the subject of her next novel to the Jonestown massacre. Years of study and writing followed before finishing Paradise Undone in time for the 30-year anniversary in 2008. Eventually, she met those survivors, who run the Jonestown Institute Archives, and, with them and many others, hopes to illuminate the lives of the 900+ Peoples Temple members who died in the jungle, human beings not named Jim Jones.
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In this episode of Bookable Space, host Yvonne Battle-Felton is joined by Gary Hermus. Gary reads from and talks about his novel, The Port Edgerton Chronicles.
About the Book:
Leaving your childhood home to build a new life is a rite of passage. But what happens when you have to go back?
Self-reliant artist Penelope “Nellie” Simpson, has made a place for herself in the New Mexico art scene, but when her father becomes ill she is forced to leave the life she’s built and return to her hometown of Port Edgerton, New York.
Penelope finds herself torn between her New Mexico life and the one she has found for herself back home when she falls in love with her high school friend, Peter Vandegelder. Things become further complicated when startling revelations of the town’s history begin unfolding around them. And, as if things weren’t tangled enough, a stranger shows up in town, whose dreams and aspirations may change the very nature of Port Edgerton.
About the Author:
Brooklyn-born author, essayist, actor, performing songwriter, and three-time New Mexico Music Award winner, Gary Paul Hermus has spent a lifetime telling stories. He currently resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he continues to write songs, stories and essays.
To hear Gary reading from the book, visit his website here
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In this special edition of Bookable Space, host Yvonne Battle-Felton is joined by Larry Zuckerman. Larry reads from Lonely Are the Brave.
About the book
Historical novelist Larry Zuckerman talks about Lonely Are the Brave, in which an American war hero returns to his small town in 1919, grieving his late wife, and decides to stay home to raise his infant daughter, only to hear a rumor the child isn’t his.
About the author
Larry Zuckerman, named for a Shakespearean actor, has been blending drama with history since he took up writing at age fifteen. He has written about the potato’s social influence and Belgium during the First World War. Lonely Are the Brave, his debut novel, appeared in April with Cynren Press.
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In this engaging episode, poet W.C. Aldridge joins host Yvonne Battle-Felton. W.C. reads from My Soul's Journey, discusses her poetry journey and offers poets/writers advice on creating a poetry collection.
About the book:
My Soul’s Journey, collected poems, by Chicago poet W.C. Aldridge, was released in 2021 as part of Amador Publisher’s Worldwind Books Poetry Series. Ms. Aldridge was involved in all aspects of the project. Her choices for cover and interior art, and her thoughtful arrangement of the poems into chapters with evocative titles such as “Forgiveness is Not a Byword,” “My Relationship with God,” and “Everything is About Color,” add layers of meaning to her poetic journey. The collection is sprinkled with photographs by Michele Lee, also of Chicago, and includes an image by beloved African American painter Annie Lee, “5th Grade Substitute,” a detail of which graces the cover. My Soul’s Journey came together in 2020-21 in the midst of the Black Lives Matter movement and the worldwide pandemic. The dejected young teacher on the book cover may well represent how we were feeling then, and might still be feeling, but paired with Ms. Aldridge’s poetry, she is a symbol of perseverance and hope fortified by faith—an apt description of the poet herself.
Ms. Aldridge describes her work as cathartic. In free verse and narrative prose poems she allows herself release through celebration of her Christian faith. With her soul lighting the way, she embarks on a journey both unique and universal, reflecting on family, culture, hurt and healing. Her willingness to broach truths more often left unsaid, from deep cultural anguish to ecstatic spiritual grace, establish her as a significant voice in the story of Black life in America. In expressing the ubiquitous bond her soul has on her life experiences, the author revels in a journey that ultimately transcends time, and thus painful history, to arrive at a Now each one of us has the power to imbue with promise.
About the writer:
W. C. Aldridge began her writing career in education. Since branching out within other fields, she has written for magazines, created materials for book publishers, ghostwritten life stories, written a column, and published a poetry book called My Soul’s Journey. My Soul’s Journey received the 2022 Eric Hoffer Finalist Award.
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In this episode, host Yvonne Battle-Felton is joined by Claire Culliford. Claire reads from If You Believe... and talks about writing the collection and hope.
About the book
A collection of short stories about the poignant, possible and positive in our world. If You Believe... invites readers to imagine all that can be through tales depicting the best of humanity and the wonderful powers of the natural world.
About the author
Claire Culliford is an author, screenwriter, poet and lyricist who adores writing about the themes that matter to us all, from love and compassion to the natural world, equality and justice. For over twenty years she has also been a teacher and translator.
Claire is the author of the environmental and social children's book series "The Little Helpers", written to support the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals. It raises awareness among young children of global environmental and social issues and inspires them to come up with creative ways of resolving them. Her latest works, the poetry book "A New World" and the short story collection "If You Believe...", were recently published and aim to provide teenage and adult readers with hope, comfort and belief in all that is possible in our beautiful world.
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In this episode of Bookable Space, host Yvonne Battle-Felton is joined by Walker Zupp. Walker reads to us from Nakadai.
About the book
Twickley, England – when Hiroshi Nakadai is studying for his PhD in Linguistics he comes into contact with a powerful and evil force...
His supervisor, Professor Mutton, has been enslaved by The Great Word: an intergalactic being
hell-bent on conquering the world.
When Nakadai becomes a professor, he decides to take matters into his own hands. Using his phenomenal
intelligence, he decides to fight the Great Word—and confuse the hell out of his PhD student, Nicola, along the way...
About the author
Walker Zupp is a Bermudian poet and writer. He currently resides in Cornwall with a fine artist. His fourth novel, Fibber, will be released on 1st February 2024
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In this episode of Bookable Space, novelist Yvonne Battle-Felton is joined by Jane Austin. Jane reads from Renegade.
About the book:
My second novel, Renegade, is the story of Justin, a 70s urban guerrilla, who late in life is confronted by the consequences of his rebellious youth and grapples with the fallout for his family. When his son is drawn into radical politics in Rojava, Syria, Justin is devasted. It’s a modern tale of political turmoil, loyalty and betrayal and one man’s search for identity.
About the author:
My debut novel, News from Nowhere (2017), was inspired by a collection of family letters from the First World War. Renegade (2022), probes questions of political activism over a sweep of fifty years. It’s a story of human frailty, regret and atonement, fired by my passion for social justice and involvement in my salad days.
For more information about Jane visit her website at https://janeaustinauthor.com/
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In this episode, host Yvonne Battle-Felton is joined by Rebecca Keller. Rebecca reads to us from You Should Have Known.
About the book:
A grieving grandmother turns to murder in YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN (Crooked Lane Books / April 4, 2023 / $29.99) a literary suspense that explores the bonds of family and the grudges we can’t let go.
When retired nurse Frannie Greene moves into a senior living apartment, she finds a compelling friendship with her new neighbor Katherine, only to discover that Katherine is married to the judge who Frannie believes is implicated in the death of her beloved granddaughter.
Observing the medication cart sparks Frannie’s darkest imagination, and her desire for revenge combines with her medical expertise. In one dreadful, impulsive moment, she tampers with the medicine. However, the next day, someone is dead and Frannie realizes the gravity of what she’s done.
The police get involved, and suspicions gather around someone Frannie knows to be innocent. Wracked with remorse, Frannie’s anxiety becomes unbearable. As she works to make it right, Frannie discovers that things are more complicated than they seem.
She’s spent years aching for accountability from people in power. Is she the one who now needs to be held culpable? What really happened that night?
About the Author:
Rebecca Keller is an award-winning writer, an internationally exhibited artist, a college professor, a Fulbright Artist/Scholar, and recipient of grants from National Endowment for the Arts, Illinois Arts Council, and College Art Association.
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In this episode of Bookable Space, host Yvonne Battle-Felton is joined by Steffi Gardener. Steffi reads to us from Charlie to the Rescue.
About the book
Charlie was different. True he was a Black and White Border Collie, as were his brothers and sister. However, there were two marked differences. One ear stood up whereas the other lay flat against his head.
Secondly, he had eyes of different colours. One was blue, the other looked almost like amber. Now what do myths and legends say about people and animals born with eyes of different colours?
Why – that they are able to see earth and heaven at the same time.
Let’s take a look at Charlie’s birth , when he was given two special gifts. One was an amazing ability to smell things. As to the other, wait and see. We’ll also have a glimpse of sone of his exploits.
From a young age it was clear to see that Charlie had no interest whatsoever in herding sheep. He was the despair of his parents both of whom were first class working dogs. Neither could really understand why Charlie was so different, though his mother had an inkling. She felt he was destined for great things – but only time would tell.
About the author
Stefanja, who writes as Steffi Gardner, is a native of Pembrokeshire. She has been involved, both with horses and dogs forwell over 30 years.
To date she has written two non fiction books, plus her first children’s story, Charlie to the Rescue, published last year. His second adventure is due out later this year.
Listeners can also purchase the books directly from the author at Steffig@gmx.com
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In this episode of Bookable Space, author Yvonne Battle-Felton is joined by Ron Roman. Ron reads to us from Of Ashes and Dust.
About the book:
At the time of the Millennium three people struggle for survival in a small New Hampshire town as the world spins into chaos, not realizing that each harbors secrets that will eventually pit them against one another. The story evolves from the U.S. Government’s earlier two classified secret projects during the Vietnam War (the USAF’s revelation about UFOs and Project Sixty-Seven). Of Ashes and Dust is a no-punches-pulled apocalyptic tale of mesmerizing intrigue and gut-retching survival told as an alternate-history thriller during the Last Days of a global Armageddon culminating in a totally unexpected and explosive ending.
About the author:
Ron Roman ( WWW.WRITERRONROMAN.COM) was an Associate Professor of English, ESL, and Humanities who had taught with the University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC- Asia) since 1996. He has written extensive travel, academic, and political articles for regional and national publications. He studied writing (both fiction and creative) for his third graduate degree (Humanities) from Wesleyan University. Currently, he resides in South Korea, where he writes and has acted in numerous Korean TV dramas and motion pictures, like Operation Chromite, portraying Admiral Forrest Sherman opposite Liam Neeson as General Douglas MacArthur.
Links mentioned in the episode:
www.ronromanwriter.com
histriabooks.com
coupon code:
Christmas25
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In this episode of Bookable Space, host Yvonne Battle-Felton is joined by Ronna Detrick reading from Rewriting Eve: Rescuing Women's Stories from the Bible and Reclaiming Them as Our Own.
About the author:
Ronna Detrick left the church and its dogma nearly twenty years ago but took the stories of women with her. She has combined her love of writing with a diverse and winding career that has included coaching, spiritual direction, professional development training, corporate leadership, and entrepreneurship. She shocked and delighted her audience in a provocative TEDx presentation on an Eve who inspires and empowers women instead of shaming and silencing them. She holds both a Master of Divinity degree and a Certificate in Spiritual Direction from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology and a B.A. in Business and Communications from Whitworth University. After living most of her life in the Pacific Northwest, she is now just minutes from the Atlantic Ocean in Hampstead, NC, where she continues to write, drink strong coffee, have beautiful conversations with her clients, and cannot be dissuaded from the belief that her two daughters are the most amazing humans on the planet. Learn more at ronnadetrick.com.
About the book:
We wouldn't consider letting Isis, Medusa, Pandora, or Persephone slip from our lexicon. To somehow forget the legend of Harriet Tubman, Anne Frank, or Mother Teresa would never cross our minds. And yet when it comes to the stories of Eve and other biblical characters, they are rarely known, barely appreciated, and ostensibly "lost" by most of us not deeply entwined within organized religion. Trapped in patriarchy and theological argument, dismissed as irrelevant, or viewed as unchangeable even as times change, these women's voices, desires, and hearts have too often been silenced through misunderstanding and neglect. As result, we are as well. But when they are reimagined, deconstructed, disentangled from doctrine and dogma, and heard on their own terms, these stories become powerful inspiration and a source of discernment that reconnects us to a feminine lineage and a sovereign sense of self we've never known to call on or trust. In Rewriting Eve: Rescuing Women's Stories from the Bible and Reclaiming Them as our Own, Ronna Detrick invites us into the presence and power of ten sacred women, revealing the endlessly relevant ways in which they speak today and showing how they can heal, embolden, and transform our stories.
For more information about Ronna:
Website: ronnadetrick.com
Instagram: @ronnadetrick
Facebook: @RonnaJDetrick
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ronnadetrick
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Joining host Yvonne Battle-Felton, in this episode of Bookable Space Stephanie Cotsirilos reads from My Xanthi.
About the author:
Tapping prior careers on Broadway and in law, Stephanie Cotsirilos is author of the novella My Xanthi. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, her work has appeared in McSweeney’s, Narrative, Mississippi Review and Beacon Press’ New England essay anthology, Breaking Bread. A Sewanee Writers’ Conference alumna, she was Katahdin Fellow at Storyknife’s inaugural retreat for women writers in Alaska. She holds degrees in comparative literature, music, and law from Brown and Yale. She lives and writes in Portland, Maine.
About the book:
In Stephanie Cotsirilos’ debut literary thriller, a Greek immigrant woman’s wartime secrets teach a criminal defense lawyer about love’s triumph over injustice. My Xanthi celebrates the human spirit amid loss and global displacement.
Book available at the Portland Public Library in Portland, Maine – 1 207 871 1700, www.portlandlibrary.com – and online or in person at PRINT: A Bookstore, also in Portland, Maine and shipping to the U.S. and Canada – 1 207 536 4778, www.printbookstore.com. For information on other international shipping, visit www.stephaniecotsirilos.com.
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In this episode of Bookable Space, host Yvonne Battle-Felton is joined by Debbie Burke. Debbie reads from Deep Fake Double Down and talks to us about writing a series, researching deep fakes and more.
About the Book:
Deep fakes mean deep trouble for investigator Tawny Lindholm and her attorney husband Tillman Rosenbaum. A female corrections officer begs them for help after video goes viral, showing she broke a young Native inmate out of prison. She swears she’s innocent and claims her life is in danger because she witnessed a murder. Then she disappears.
At the same time, Tillman’s troubled teenage son creates a deep fake video of his own kidnapping, but that prank takes an unexpected and frightening turn.
About the author:
Debbie Burke is a suspense novelist, award-winning journalist, and blogger at The Kill Zone website. Her Tawny Lindholm Thrillers with Passion series plunges crime-solver Tawny Lindholm into fast-paced twisty plots with quirky characters and snappy dialogue, set against the rugged scenery of Montana.
Her new release, Deep Fake Double Down, is the eighth book in the series.
Sales link: https://books2read.com/deep-fake-double-down
Website: https://debbieburkewriter.com
Twitter: burke_writer
Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/~/e/B075NNWMNH
Email: debbieburkewriter@gmail.com
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Just in time for lunch, welcome back to Bookable Space! In the first episode of Season 2, we're joined by Naomi Kruger reading from and talking about her book May.
About the author: Naomi Krüger is a prose writer and Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Central Lancashire. Her debut novel, May was published by Seren in 2018 and her short fiction has been shortlisted for the Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize, featured in Wag’s Revue, commended in Aesthetica and commissioned for various anthologies. In 2021 she was awarded an Eccles Centre Fellowship at the British Library to research her second novel. Twitter: @NaomiKruger
About the book:
The door to the past has been locked to May but fragments of memories still remain: a boy running on the green, his fiery hair, a letter without a stamp, a secret she promised not to tell. She can’t piece together the past or even make sense of the present, but she revisits what she knows again and again. The boy, the letter, the secret. She can’t grasp what they mean, but maybe the people she’s loved and lost can uncover the mystery of the red-headed boy and his connection to May.
Like memories, the book moves through the decades, weaving together the lives of May’s family and the woman who cares for her at the nursing home. Their recollections are linked by feelings of doubt, remorse and a sense that they are mourning the paths their lives could have taken. Aftershocks from the past reverberate in the present.
Naomi Kruger’s debut novel is a contemplative tale of what it means to carry the past with you and the power of letting it go.
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Just a quick thank you for listening to Season I and news about Season II.
Thanks for listening and for your support. To read more about what I'm up to, visit my website here or sign up for my newsletter on substack to hear/read about Curdle Creek, my upcoming novel.
I hope you'll join in for Season 2. If you would like to be a guest on the show, get in touch. If you'd like to recommend a writer, please ask them to get in touch. All the best and here's to books and community.
Til October!
In this episode of Bookable Space, host Yvonne Battle-Felton is joined by Tammy Euliano. Tammy reads from Misfire and Fatal Intent.
Please note, Misfire is now available.
About the author:
Tammy Euliano’s writing is inspired by her day job as a physician, researcher and educator at University of Florida. She’s received numerous teaching awards, ~100,000 views of her YouTube teaching videos, and was featured in a calendar of women inventors. In addition to numerous short stories, her first medical thriller, “Fatal Intent,” was published by Oceanview in March, 2021. Kathy Reichs called it, “Medical suspense as sharp as it gets.” The sequel, “Misfire,” comes out January 3, 2023.
About the Misfire:
Dr. Kate Downey fears for her beloved Aunt Irm. The defibrillator implanted to save her life has misfired in other patients with disastrous consequences. Efforts to protect those with the device are thwarted by its inventor, focused on the impending sale of his technology. When Kate’s cardiologist friend disappears and deaths mount, Kate and her colleagues uncover a larger plot of revenge and greed. Seemingly random events come together, the misfires are attacks, and Kate will stop at nothing to protect her aunt and the other patients whose life-saving devices could turn on them at any moment.
Amazon Hardcover: https://www.amazon.com/Misfire-Kate-Downey-Medical-Mystery/dp/1608095223
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Misfire-Kate-Downey-Medical-Mystery-ebook/dp/B09X5ZPQCL
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/misfire-tammy-euliano/1141319819
Nook: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/misfire-tammy-euliano/1141319819?ean=9781608095230
Google Play https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Misfire?id=KLtzEAAAQBAJ&hl=en_US≷=US
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This episode of Bookable Space features Lynn McAllister reading from
About the author: Lynn lives in Twickenham with her family. She has two daughters who are 15 and 17. She has worked in education for some years and was compelled to write about current issues affecting the pre-teens of today, sensing a need to highlight the dangers of living in a technological bubble! Lynn originates from Lancashire and grew up in Lincolnshire, moving to London in the 1990s, migrating from South East London to South West London over the years. Her girls provide the inspiration for the protagonist and heroine in the drama, Pixie Van Dimple!
About the book: Childrens books 9-13 years Introducing twelve-year-old Pixie Van Dimple, the centre of all the drama, the protagonist and heroine! She is a typical girl; goes to school, hangs out with her friends in the park, has sleepovers, loves shopping and is always hungry! She also loves her phone! The linchpin of her world. Everyone has one and they are all connected – all is not well in smart phone world though as there are many dangers… she has been warned… what is the fuss about? Well, she will soon find out and it is truly disturbing
In this episode of Bookable Space we're joined by Robert Rosen reading A Brooklyn Memoir.
About the book:
Robert Rosen, author of the international bestseller Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon, is back with A Brooklyn Memoir, a childhood journey through 1950s and 60s Flatbush, an insular neighborhood where Holocaust survivors lived side-by-side with WWII vets, and the war lingered like a mass hallucination.
About the author:
Robert Rosen is the author of Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon, Beaver Street: A History of Modern Pornography, and A Brooklyn Memoir. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, The Independent, and Uncut. He lives in New York City with his wife, singer-songwriter Mary Lyn Maiscott.
In this episode of Bookable Space we're joined by Laura Stegman reading Summer of L.U.C.K.
About the book
Three struggling kids stumble upon a magical carnival that’s about to change their world.
Eleven-year-old stuttering Darby believes she's supposed to be perfect, just like her mother demands. But summer away at camp promises temporary escape. There, she befriends Justin, who hasn’t uttered a word since his dad died, and Naz, who is trying to learn English. When mysterious calliope music from a nearby warehouse grants the trio power to communicate without words, they sneak inside to find out why. After the abandoned building bursts into a full-sized carnival with magical rides, they're greeted by the ghost of Leroy Usher, Carnival King, who can’t rest until his property brings joy to children once again. He asks for their help convincing his estranged sons and daughter to restore the carnival to its former glory before summer's end. In return, Mr. Usher promises he'll teach Darby, Justin, and Naz how to find their voices. Using an enchanted pocket watch, he sweeps them off on a series of midnight adventures. As the kids learn they're capable of accomplishing more than they ever imagined, they scheme to persuade the Usher siblings to bring the carnival back to life instead of selling the property to developers. With each challenge they face, their confidence in communicating – and in themselves – grows. But when Darby’s bunkmates trick her into taking a starring role in the camp's talent show, her budding confidence falters. If she can't risk being less than perfect by performing in the talent show and speaking up to Mr. Usher's resistant son, she'll put the carnival in danger and sabotage her most important quest: to believe in herself, stutter and a
About the author
Laura Segal Stegman is the author of Summer of L.U.C.K. for middlegrade readers, published by Young Dragons Press. Two sequels, Ready or Not and The Chambered Nautilus, will follow. Her non-fiction credits include collaboration on the travel book Only in New York. Her feature stories have appeared in Los Angeles Times and Westways Magazine.
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This is the second part of a two-part episode featuring Nimbilasha Cushing reading her memoir Come This Way There is an Exit.
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In this episode of Bookable Space, we're joined by Nimbilasha Cushing reading from Come This Way, There is an Exit.
This is part one of a two-part episode.
About the book
The story of growing up in the South as a sharecropper in the 1950's.
A deeply-felt account of the girlhood of an African-American, Nibilasha Cushing, who was born in St.Louis, Missouri in 1948 as the sixth child of what she describes as 'a dirt poor family of share-croppers'. This is her extremely revealing and moving memoir about growing up in Eads, Tennessee. This often moving memoir, which is not without touches of humor, reveals a life in the South in the 1960s which in many ways had not changed greatly for at least two generations.
In this episode of Bookable Space we're joined by C.J. Neill reading The Money Go Round.
About the book:
Max Stephenslife is falling apart. Hes lost his high-powered City Desk journalist job, his wife has left him, and he`s turning into the drunk his father was when he stumbles on a massive fraud during a visit to the Royal Courts of Justice in London. Sensing a scoop that could help him regain professional respect Max digs deeper into the fraud and follows the money trail to offshore tax havens and eventually the French Riviera. But can he put all the evidence together to convict the man responsible without losing his life.
About the author:
Neil Bromage is an award-winning writer and journalist. He has written for The Times, Sunday Times, Telegraph, Daily Mail, and Mail on Sunday as well as Reuters. He taught Creative Writing at Lancaster University and various colleges and has led writing projects for Arts Council England. The Money-Go-Round is his first published novel.
In ths episode of Bookable Space we're joined by Patrick D Hahn reading Obedience Pills: ADHD and the Medicalization of Childhood.
About the book:
Every day across this great land of ours, millions of children are swallowing pills for something called "Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder," or "ADHD." This has long been almost exclusively an American obsession, although the rest of the world is catching up with us.
So what are the harms of this mass drugging of children? What are the benefits? Who benefits? These questions form the basis of this book.
For a time, the mass drugging of children was the subject of spirited controversy, but that controversy for the most part seems to have died down. The goal of this book is to re-ignite the controversy.
About the author:
Patrick D Hahn is a lecturer, researcher, and the author of three books: Madness and Genetic Determinism, Prescription for Sorrow, and Obedience Pills. Dr. Hahn is an Affiliate Professor of Biology at Loyola University Maryland.
In this episode of Bookable Space we're joined by Anara Guard reading Like A Complete Unknown.
About the Book:
In 1969, a girl’s life is not her own. When Katya Warshawsky’s parents demand she drop out of school to join a cleaning crew, she runs away instead. But Chicago’s counterculture isn’t as welcoming as she dreamed, even in an age of peace and love. Starry-eyed and in trouble, she turns to Dr. Robert Lewis for help, then disappears into the streets. The widowed doctor's rash impulse to save her might rejuvenate his melancholy life. While Katya hunts for freedom and Robert searches for her, they each brave the unknown, encountering beauty and chaos in an evocative portrait that speaks to our own complex social times.
About the author:
Anara Guard’s lifelong love of reading has led her to mind a news stand at the age of nine, work as a small town librarian, fact-checked manuscripts, and write book reviews. Her first novel draws upon her memories of Chicago and the music that provided a soundtrack to the late 1960s.
In this episode of Bookable Space Kathie Giorgio reads All Told and Olivia In Five, Seven, Five; Autism in Haiku.
KATHIE GIORGIO is the author of 6 novels, 2 story collections, 3 poetry books, and an essay collection. Her novel, All Told, was released in 1/2022, and a poetry chapbook, Olivia In Five, Seven, Five; Autism In Haiku, will be released in 8/2022. Her stories/poems appeared in hundreds of magazines.
About the books:
AUTHOR KATHIE GIORGIO discusses the variety and diversity of a writer's work, and disses the idea of "branding", as she reads from and talks about her latest novel, All Told,and her latest poetry collection, Olivia In Five, Seven, Five; Autism in Haiku.Giorgio is also known for her short stories and essays
In this episode of Bookable Space host Yvonne Battle-Felton is joined by Katya Cengel. Katya reads From Cheronobyl with Love: reporting from the ruins of the Soviet Union.
About the book:
In 1986 an explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic helped trigger the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Three and a half decades later, in 2022, the plant’s capture by Russian forces reminded Ukraine – and the world – that, for Russia, it isn’t over.
In between an American reporter and a Ukrainian photographer fell in love. At Chernobyl. Site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster.
As their relationship developed, Ukraine collapsed, bringing it to the brink of political disintegration and civil war. Ultimately, this fall of idealism in the East underscores Cengel’s own loss of innocence. From Chernobyl with Love is an equal parts heartbreaking and humorous true coming of age story of a girl and a country made all the more poignant because of current events.
About the author:
Katya Cengel has written for New York Times Magazine and the Wall Street Journal among others. She received an Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY) for her memoir “From Chernobyl with Love” and has been awarded grants from the International Reporting Project, International Women’s Media Foundation and International Center for Journalists.
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In this episode of Bookable Space host Yvonne Battle-Felton is joined by Ross Dreiblatt. Ross will be reading from I Am Not Brad Pitt and Other Stories.
About the author: Ross Dreiblatt is an author who was born and grew up in New York. His father was a truck driver, and his mom was a retail manager. He attended Hofstra University and moved to Los Angeles where he attended Cal State Northridge. While in Los Angeles, he studied under John Rechy’s master writing workshop at UCLA.
He has worked in the corporate offices of major retailers in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City, and Florida toiling on spreadsheets by day, and the imaginary lives of celebrity monsters by night.
He loves to travel and will get on a plane going anywhere, as long as it eventually lands safely. Despite the dour photo he is kind of a happy guy.
He currently resides in South Florida.
About the book: I AM NOT BRAD PITT is the first of three riotously absurd tales in Ross Dreiblatt’s debut short-story collection sending up America’s sometimes-fatal celebrity obsessions.
“I Am Not Brad Pitt” opens in a prison cell in which Mr. Pitt’s clone-like doppelganger, Tobey Crawford, remorsefully recounts the sequence of unlikely events that resulted in his wrongful conviction for murder.
The second story, “Please Allow Me To Introduce Myself,” considers the possibility that Keith Richards (along with, for good measure, Dolly Parton) is, indeed, a vampire. Nobel-Prize laureate Bob Dylan, the story’s vampire-killer, is equipped with more than just a harmonica and tambourine.
The final work in the collection, “Keeping Compliant With The Kardashians,” examines whether Kardashian family members are, in fact, aliens from another galaxy and what precisely is their interest on Earth.
Each of the stories are told with engaging humor, and each pokes fun more at American culture than they do, generally, of the celebrities themselves.
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in this episode of Bookable Space host Yvonne Battle-Felton is joined by Poria Y. Clare. Portia reads from Best Friends Forever: A Puppy’s Tale.
About the book:
Best Friends Forever: A Puppy’s Tale is a tender, heart-warming story about love, loss, and everlasting friendship. It is a wonderful resource of care for parents and teachers that will help them guide children through the real-life experience of owning, loving, and losing a beloved family pet, and finding the courage to share that love again.
About the author:
Portia Yvette Clare has been privileged to serve in developing the minds and character of children for over thirty years. A graduate of Duke University and Regent University, she maintains her love of learning and earnestly desires to empower the children who have been entrusted to her care. Simply put, Portia teaches because she values children. Her love of children and family compel her to write stories that will help them to recognize their importance, appreciate their value, and navigate through difficult life experiences. Creative writing has always brought her joy and writing children’s books has been her passion since childhood.
To order books visit https://www.portiayclare.com/
Portia is the only child of the late Randolph George Clare, Jr. and Jane Easterling Clare. She was born in Bennettsville, South Carolina, and raised in Nassau, Bahamas. Her family relocated to Bennettsville, South Carolina in 2015, where she and her mother currently reside.
For more information about her books, school visits, presentations, and activities, please visit Portia’s website at portiayclare.com.
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In this episode of Bookable Space host Yvonne Battle-Felton is joined by Michael Favala Goldman. Michael reads from The Trouble with Happiness
About the book:
“This quiet and devastating collection of vignettes from Ditlevsen . . . [reveals] all the simmering, explosive tensions found in marriage, family, and parenthood . . . The stories are simple; the characters ordinary and immensely human. Their motivations are mysterious and subtle, and Ditlevsen is acutely sensitive to the way normal life can wear at their hearts . . . Alongside this discomfort, though, is the opportunity for deep transformation. Already renowned for her memoirs, Ditlevsen is now poised to win acclaim as a master of short fiction.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review Jan 2022
Bios
Tove Ditlevsen (1917-1976) was one of Denmark’s most popular 20th century writers of poetry and prose. She used her poor upbringing, her fragile psyche, and her long-standing problems with relationships and narcotics as sources of inspiration. Ditlevsen wrote over 30 books, including her acclaimed memoirs, The Copenhagen Trilogy.
Danish translator Michael Favala Goldman (b. 1966) is also a poet, educator and jazz clarinetist. Dependency by Tove Ditlevsen is among his seventeen translated books, while his 2021 poetry collection Small Sovereign won first place in the Los Angeles Book Festival. He lives in Massachusetts. www.michaelfavalagoldman.com
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In this episode of Bookable Space we're joined by Chris Dickon reading Dutch Children of African American Liberators.
About the book:
In the Netherlands, a small group of biracial citizens has entered its eighth decade of lives that have been often puzzling and difficult, but which offer a unique insight into the history of race relations in America. Though their African American fathers had brought liberation from Nazi tyranny at the end of World War II, they were in a segregated American military derived from a racially divided American society. Decades later, some of their children could finally know of a father's identity and the life he had led after the war. Just one would be able to find an embrace in his arms, and just one would arrive at her father's American grave after 73 years. But they could now understand their own Dutch lives in the context of their fathers' lives in America.
About the author:
Chris Dickon is a former, Emmy and multi-award winning public radio and television producer who brings the qualities of broadcast storytelling to books that tell little known but important stories of American history. His most recent work has focused on the human elements of war, developed new information in their subject matters, and played a role in an expanded discovery and memorial of American war dead buried around the world. many of them previously unknown since 1804. Dutch Children of African American Liberators, with co-author Mieke Kirkels in the Netherlands, tells the story of the European children of African American soldiers of World War II and has been honored as Best Multi-cultural Nonfiction of 2021 by the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society. He lives in Portsmouth, Virginia.
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In this episode of Bookable Space, host Yvonne Battle-Felton is joined by Deidre Fagan. Deirdre will be reading
About the author:
Deirdre Fagan is a widow, wife, mother of two, and the award-winning author of the memoir Find a Place for Me (forthcoming, 2022), a collection of short stories, The Grief Eater (2020), and a poetry chapbook, Have Love (2019). She is an associate professor and coordinator of creative writing at Ferris State University. Meet her at deirdrefagan.com
About the book:
A memoir about Fagan’s philosopher husband Bob’s terminal ALS, and how they joined hands, raised glasses, and playfully taught each other with compassion and dark humor how to simultaneously let go, and fiercely hold on, in the brief ten months Bob had left.
2022 Living Now Awards bronze medal in the aging/death and dying category
In this episode of Bookable Space, host Yvonne Battle-Felton is joined by Annie Kirby reading The Hollow Sea.
Author Bio
Annie Kirby lives on the south coast of England where she works as a university researcher. Her short stories have been published in anthologies and broadcast on national radio. Annie is a winner of the Asham Award for short fiction and a graduate of Penguin’s WriteNow programme.
The Hollow Sea
When Scottie realises that she may never become a mother, she makes the heart-breaking decision to flee to the remote North Atlantic archipelago of St Hia.
Lashed by storms and far from the mainland, the islands are dangerous. Many have been lost to the ferocious tides known as the Hollow Sea - and local folklore warns that St Hia was once the home of a witch. Her name was Thordis, and when she was unable to provide her husband with a child, she was driven to a terrible act...
The islanders warn newcomers against examining the past, but Scottie can't look away from the mystery of what happened to Thordis.
Could it be that St Hia's troubled history holds the key to Scottie's future?
The Hollow Sea explores themes of involuntary childlessness, motherhood, grief and recovery and reconnection with nature.
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Joining host Yvonne Battle-Felton, this episode of Bookable Space features Anne Goodwin reading Matilda Windsor is Coming Home.
About the book:
In the dying days of the old asylums, three paths intersect. Henry was only a boy when he waved goodbye to his glamorous grown-up sister; approaching sixty, his life is still on hold as he awaits her return. As a high-society hostess renowned for her recitals, Matty’s burden weighs heavily upon her, but she bears it with fortitude and grace. Janice, a young social worker, wants to set the world to rights, but she needs to tackle challenges closer to home. A brother and sister separated by decades of deceit. Will truth prevail over bigotry, or will the buried secret keep family apart?
Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction.
Anne writes about the darkness that haunts her and is wary of artificial light. She makes stuff up to tell the truth about adversity, creating characters to care about and stories to make you think. She explores identity, mental health and social justice with compassion, humour and hope.
An award-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel,Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.
Anne has recently branched out into self-publishing with her first novella, Stolen Summers, the prequel to Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home. The sequel, Lyrics for the Loved Ones, will be published in May, 2023.
Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.
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Joining host Yvonne Battle-Felton, this episode of Bookable Space features Jerome Gold reading from Paranoia & Heartbreak: Fifteen Years in a Juvenile Facility.
About the book
Adapted from the publisher’s description: For fifteen years, Jerome Gold worked as a rehabilitation counselor in a prison for juveniles in Washington State. Throughout his time there, he kept a journal of his experiences with youths who had been incarcerated for murder, kidnap, assault, sex offenses, auto theft, and selling drugs. What started as a journal became one man’s nuanced perspective on a unique group of young people. Writing from experience and with unflinching compassion, Gold brings the reader to begin to understand these kids, and through them, in some slanted way, our whole society. Paranoia & Heartbreak was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and was a finalist for The Montaigne Medal.
About the author
Jerome Gold holds a Ph.D. in anthropology. He did fieldwork in Montana and American Samoa. He did not pursue a career in academia, but instead worked as a rehabilitation counselor in a prison for children. He has published seventeen books, both fiction and nonfiction.
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Joining host Yvonne Battle-Felton, this episode of Bookable Space features Sandra Coffey reading Breaking into the Media: The Journalist's Guide to Publicity.
About the book
A journalist's inside look on what it takes to get publicity.
About the author:
Sandra Coffey is a former senior journalist and editor who now works as a PR Manager covering Ireland and the UK. She has gained coverage for clients in publications such as Harper's Bazaar, Good Housekeeping, Independent, Evening Standard, Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail. Sandra also helps beginner PR professionals start out in their careers and provides a lot of advice and tips from her 10+ years as a journalist. Sandra's book titled "Breaking Into The Media - A Journalist's Guide To Publicity" was shortlisted for A Wishing Shelf Book Award. These awards are judged by readers. Sandra tweets at @SandraCoffey
Joining host Yvonne Battle-Felton, this episode of Bookable Space features Bobbie Jean Huff reading The Ones We Keep.
About the book
What would you do if you discovered that one of your children had drowned—but now which one? Would you try to discover which child you had lost? Or would you make a different choice? The Ones We Keep follows the splintered lives of four family members in the years following an unspeakable tragedy, and the choices they make to find their wasy back to each other.
Bio - Bobbie Jean Huff
Canadian-American Bobbie Jean Huff has published short stories, poems, and essays. Her debut novel, The Ones We Keep, took three years to write, and was a finalist (as The Children's Corner) in the 2019 Dzanc Prize for Fiction She moved down from Ottawa six years ago, and lives in Pennington, New Jersey.
Steven Mayfield joins host Yvonne Battle-Felton in this episode of Bookable Space. Steven will be reading from Delphic Oracle, U.S.A.
About the book
It is 1925 when a love affair between enchantress Maggie Westinghouse and con man July Pennybaker upends the small town of Miagrammesto Station, tumbles it about, and sets it back down as Delphic Oracle, Nebraska. Will their love fulfill its destiny? The narrator of this wry, entertaining novel, Father Peter Goodfellow, weaves back and forth in time to answer that question. Along the way, he introduces the Goodfellows, the Penrods, and the Thorntons—families whose members include a perpetual runaway, a man with religion but no faith, a man with faith but no religion, a boy known as Samson the Methodist, a know-it-all librarian who seems to actually know everything, a quartet of confused midsummer lovers, and a skeleton unearthed in a vacant lot. Funny, poignant, and occasionally tragic, their histories are part of how a place at the confluence of the Platte, Loup, and Missouri River Valleys became home to the long-lost Oracle of Delphi.
Author the author:
Steven Mayfield was the 2021 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Silver Medalist for his novel, Treasure of the Blue Whale. A former neonatologist, he lives and writes in Oregon and can order beer or wine in four languages. His wife can say, “Pay no attention to this man,” in five.
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Susan Cole joins host Yvonne Battle-Felton in this episode of Bookable Space. Susan will be reading from Holding Fast: A Memoir of Sailing, Love, and Loss.
About the book
HOLDING FAST is Susan Cole’s story of leaving everything behind to follow her husband's lifelong dream of sailing away. Susan’s journey took her from the glitzy world of Madison Avenue advertising to riding out Hurricane Mitch, the largest hurricane on record at the time, on a sailboat in Guatemala. She hadn’t wanted to go in the first place, but ended up on a life-changing odyssey.
“Riveting true story about the author’s life on a sailboat with her young family. Sensitive, brave, inspiring, funny, and beautifully written.”
About the author
Susan Cole has lived on or around sailboats for over thirty years. Between sails, she earned a B.A. at Barnard College, an M.A. at Columbia University, and ran a market research firm in New York. Holding Fast is her first book. She currently lives in New Orleans.
Love being read to? In this episode of Bookable Space, host Yvonne Battle-Felton is joined by Arnie Bernstein reading from Bath Massacre: America's First School Bombing and two other pieces.
Arnie Bernstein bio: Arnie Bernstein delves into the forgotten corners of history through narrative nonfiction. His explorations of American Nazis, Swastika Nation: Fritz Kuhn and the Rise and Fall of the German-American Bund, has earned world-wide acclaim, including The NY Times, Publishers Weekly, and media in Poland, Germany, England, Israel, and more. Arnie is a member of PEN, The Authors Guild, International Federation of Journalists, and Society of Midland Authors. He is a competitive runner, can recite all dialog from The Godfather by heart, and is a lifelong fan of the Chicago White Sox, which means he doesn’t have to read the Book of Job.
Bath Massacre: America’s First School Bombing is the horrifying true story of the deadliest school killing in American history. On May 18, 1927, in the small town of Bath, Michigan, the local school blew up, killing 38 children and four adults. The madman behind this crime burned down his home, killed his wife, and blew himself up in front of the devastated school grounds. Bath Massacre resonates powerfully for modern readers and reminds us that domestic terrorism and mass murder are sadly not just a product of our times.
To purchase signed books or for more information: https://www.arniebernstein.com
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Love being read to? Hosted by writer, Yvonne Battle-Felton, inthis episode of Bookable Space we're joined by Laura Pashby reading from Little Stories of Your Life.
About the book:
It’s easy to feel that our own lives are not enough, but real lives are not defined by bright, exciting events: we don’t need a grand narrative arc. It’s the stretches of time in between that matter, the tiny moments and the daily choices that make us who we are. Little Stories of Your Life shows you how to use words and photographs to capture precious little moments and how to share these in order to connect with others.
Each chapter explores the different ways you can tell your own stories, considers why you might choose to tell them and helps you to create a patchwork of tiny tales about your life, however small they might be. Throughout the book, Laura shares her own personal stories and research that shows you how to tune out of the bigger picture and focus on the everyday. There are exercises to gently guide you through how to journal and harness your inner creativity, as well as tips on improving your photography, photo challenges and writing prompts to get you started.
Laura Pashby is a writer and photographer from the Cotswolds. Her first book, a creativity guide called Little Stories of Your Life: Find your voice, share your world and tell your story, is published by Quadrille. She loves walking in the woods, particularly on a foggy morning.
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Love being read to? Joining host Yvonne Battle-Felton, this episode of Bookable Space features AA Abbott reading Lies at Her Door.
About the book:
She forgot about her childhood friend… until his body is found under her garden. Can she prove she didn’t commit the decades-old murder?
Lucy Freeman struggles to find satisfaction in life. Trapped in the shadow of her rock star brother, the thirty-two-year-old craves more than her days at home caring for her terminally ill mother. But her routine takes a turn for the horrifying when a giant sinkhole collapses the earth outside their house and reveals a skeleton.
Shocked to discover the bones belong to a former member of her sibling’s band, Lucy’s worst nightmare comes alive when police suspect her of the killing. And as she turns to her dying parent’s diaries in a desperate search for vindication, she’s entangled in a dark and complicated truth.
Will unearthing long-buried wrongs prove lethal?
Lies at Her Door is a heavy-hitting psychological thriller novel. If you like strong character growth, overcoming dysfunctional relationships, and revealing unexpected secrets, then you’ll love AA Abbott’s chilling whodunnit.
Buy Lies at Her Door to excavate the facts from the rubble today!
About the author:
British crime thriller writer A.A. Abbott (also known as Helen Blenkinsop) enjoys escaping with an exciting and emotional read, and that’s what she aims to write, too. Based in Bristol, her latest psychological thriller is set in the city’s swanky Clifton district. Here, gracious Georgian houses overlook the dramatic Avon Gorge. While it’s a place of beauty, nothing is ever as perfect as it seems.
‘Lies at Her Door’ is Helen’s ninth book. She’s had help from beta readers on subjects as varied as police procedure, philosophy and Parkinson’s disease. They’ve made huge improvements to the story, as has Helen’s editor, Katharine D’Souza.
Like 10% of us, many of Helen’s family are dyslexic. While she is not, she wants her books to be enjoyed by readers with dyslexia and visual impairment too. She publishes her thrillers in a large print dyslexia-friendly edition as well as standard paperback and ebook versions. (You can also adjust the font on your electronic device to suit your needs.)
Helen likes speaking to book groups, business networks and social circles. She also has fun reading thrillers and short stories at live fiction events and on Zoom. If you're a book blogger, litfest organiser, reviewer or simply adore books, she’d love to hear from you.
Helen is a member of the Alliance of Independent Authors, Bristol Fiction Writers' Group, and Birmingham's New Street Authors.
Find out more, check out notes for book clubs and get a free e-book of short stories at https://aaabbott.co.uk
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Love being read to? In this episode of Bookable Space, host Yvonne Battle-Felton is joined by Debbie Burke reading Until Proven Guilty.
About the book: A guilty rapist freed on a technicality. A father wrongfully convicted of molesting his daughter. An unknown son from the past with a dark secret. Investigator Tawny Lindholm and attorney Tillman Rosenbaum struggle to resolve three baffling cases where DNA doesn’t lead to the truth. Instead, it lays bare lies, deception, and betrayal, threatening Tawny and Tillman’s new marriage and endangering their family.
About the author: Debbie Burke is a suspense novelist, award-winning journalist, and blogger at The Kill Zone website. Her Tawny Lindholm Thrillers with Passion series plunges crime-solver Tawny Lindholm into fast-paced twisty plots with quirky characters and snappy dialogue, set against the rugged scenery of Montana.
Website: https://debbieburkewriter.com
Twitter: burke_writer
Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/~/e/B075NNWMNH
Email: debbieburkewriter@gmail.com
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Love being read to? Joining host Yvonne Battle-Felton, this episode of Bookable Space features Trudy Krisher reading from On the March: A Novel of the Women's March on Washington.
About the author:
Trudy Krisher an award-winning author of a number of historical novels with social justice themes (SPITE FENCES, KINSHIP, UNCOMMON FAITH, FALLOUT). She has a reputation as a trailblazer in writing and speaking out about sensitive issues surrounding self-identity, race, and gender through her fictional works. You can read more about her at her website: www.trudykrisher.com. ON THE MARCH is available as ebook, paperback, and hardcover from both Amazon and Ingram.
About the book:
The lives of three strangers collide when they travel together to the national Women’s March on Washington in January 2017.Henrietta Oldham is an elderly woman who runs a failing antique store; Birdie Jackson is a shy African-American teenager who is marching at the insistence of her feminist aunt; Emily Messer is a recent college graduate who needs more in her life than her job as a barista.
Although Henrietta, Birdie, and Emily appear to have little in common as they begin their ride from Kansas to Washington, D.C., they find common bonds in shared experiences of sexual harassment, pay inequity, self-sabotage, and even bra-stuffing. As the women begin to know and trust each other, they each start to discover their voice and cultivate the courage to share their secrets. Inspiring and appealing to women of all ages, On the March is a warm, and often funny, novel of the zeitgeist and the renewed feminist spirit of our times. It would make a terrific read for book clubs
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Love being read to? In this episode of Bookable Space we're joined by Emily Johnson reading Pushing Through the Cracks.
Pushing Through The Cracks
Four years ago, Emily, a divorced mother of two, was living her best life with a new partner and a blended family of six. But then addiction and mental illness entered her home uninvited, threatening to tear the whole family apart.
With an alcoholic husband and two teenage sons – one a depressed gambler and the other with chronic obsessive-compulsive disorder – Emily is left to cope alone. And when the Covid pandemic hits, Emily, a serial people-pleaser, enabler, and born rescuer, almost breaks too.
This true story delves into the darkest sides of mental illness and addiction with raw, often harrowing honesty. It shines a light on taboo subjects, including self-harm, suicidal feelings, gambling, alcoholism, depression, severe OCD, and eating disorders, all exacerbated by an unprecedented global pandemic and dwindling support services.
This is a story of remarkable strength, self-realisation and reclamation of a lost identity. This is a story of finding hope, pushing through the cracks in the darkness.
Emily J. Johnson - Author
Emily is a mother, author, and advocate for raising awareness of mental illness. Having spent 15 years living in Australia, Emily returned to the UK in 2010 and lives on the south coast of England. Emily continues living and working around her family's ongoing mental illness recovery, splitting her time between part-time work, caring, and writing.
This episode includes a trigger warning.
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Love being read to? In this episode of Bookable Space, joined by host Yvonne Battle-Felton, Carolyn Korsmeyer reads Charlotte's Story.
About the author: A longtime admiration for Jane Austen led Carolyn Korsmeyer to write Charlotte’s Story. Her second novel, Little Follies, will be published in January, 2023. She is also the author of numerous philosophical works, including Things: In Touch with the Past, Savoring Disgust: The Foul and the Fair in Aesthetics, and Making Sense of Taste: Food and Philosophy.
About the book: Charlotte Lucas, a character first appearing in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, has made an unfortunate marriage to the loquacious William Collins, reckoning that his tedious conversation is a small price to pay for the prosperous home and family she desires. However, trouble brews within the first months of marriage, for they are not nearly as good a match as she had hoped.
To ease the strain of their relationship, Charlotte leaves her husband to visit the fashionable city of Bath with several women companions. The weeks there prove to be a time for self-discovery and freedom, and the marital frost begins to thaw. However, events in Bath result in an unfortunate, even calamitous, consequence.
Charlotte devises an audacious solution that combines bold connivance and compassionate duplicity, pursuing her hope of happiness with the wit and courage to seek it.
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Love being read to? In this episode of Bookable Space, Kate Frost reads An Italian Dream.
About the author: Kate Frost is the author of several bestselling romantic escape novels including The Greek Heart and The Amsterdam Affair. In 2021, she signed a six book deal with Boldwood. Two books have been published so far, An Italian Dream and Amazon UK Kindle top 50 bestseller One Greek Summer
About the book:
Follow your heart and then your dreams…
Best friends since childhood, Fern Chambers and Stella Shaw have been through everything together and are at a crossroads in their lives. Carefree Stella has a monumental secret and put upon Fern’s happy life is not all it seems.
With their 40th birthdays approaching, a luxury holiday to the island of Capri is a chance for them to reconnect, let their hair down and celebrate in style.
But untold truths and frustration bubble beneath the surface, turning what should be a holiday of a lifetime into an opportunity to make life-changing decisions.
Far from home, where anything feels possible, secrets are revealed, heartache is shared, love discovered and new friendships forged.
Will their Italian dream turn into a nightmare or lead to newfound happiness?
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Love being read to? In this episode of Bookable Space, Sorayya Khan reads We Take Our Cities with Us.
About the book: Even when we leave them, our cities never leave us. After her Dutch mother’s
death, Sorayya Khan confronts her grief by revisiting their relationship, her parents’ lives, and
her own Pakistani-Dutch heritage in a multicultural memoir that unfolds over seven cities and
three continents. We Take Our Cities with Us takes us from a childhood independence forged in
her grandparents’ home in Lahore; to her adolescence in Pakistan’s new capital, Islamabad; to
Syracuse and Ithaca, New York, where Khan finds her footing as the mother of young, brown
sons in post-9/11 America; to her birthplace, Vienna, where her parents die; and finally to
Amsterdam and Maastricht, the cities of her mother’s conflicted youth. In Khan’s gripping
telling of her immigrant experience, she shows us what it is to raise children and lose parents in
worlds other than your own. Drawing on family history, geopolitics, and art in this stunning
story of loss, identity, and rediscovery, Khan beautifully illuminates the complexities of our
evolving global world and its most important constant: love.
About the writer: Sorayya Khan is the author of novels, NOOR, FIVE QUEEN’S
ROAD, and CITY OF SPIES which received the Best International Fiction
Book Award, Sharjah International Book Fair, 2015. She is the daughter
of a Pakistani father and a Dutch mother, was born in Europe, grew up
in Pakistan, and now lives in New York with her family.
Discout code:
CITIES will get people 30% off the book and free shipping in the U.S.
KHAN will get people 40% off the hardcover (no free shipping), or 20% off the pdf.
For both codes, the purchaser needs to use them in the shopping cart—so go to the webpage for the book, add the code (must be in all caps) and hit “apply code.”
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Joined by host Yvonne Battle-Felton, this episode of Bookable Space features Lorraine Wilson with The Way the Light Bends.
Lorraine is a conservation scientist who now lives by the sea in Scotland writing speculative fiction influenced by folklore and the wilderness. She runs a mentorship programme for marginalised writers and The Way The Light Bends is her second novel, with a third coming out later this year.
About the book:
The Way The Light Bends is a story about who we become, and what we will believe in, when we lose the person who anchors us. It follows two estranged sisters who have lost their brother. When his twin goes missing a year after his death, their elder sister ventures down shadowy paths searching for someone she loves deeply, but barely knows. It is full of Scottish folklore, the lure of deep water and the way that family can both hurt and heal us.
Sometimes hope is the most dangerous thing of all.
When their brother dies, two sisters lose the one thing that connected them. Then on the anniversary of her twin’s death, Tamsin goes missing.
Despite police indifference and her husband’s doubts, Freya is determined tobring her sister home. But a trail of diary entries reveals a woman she barely knew, and a danger she can scarcely fathom, full of deep waters and shadowy myths, where the grief that drove Tamsin to the edge of a cliff also led her into the arms of a mysterious stranger...
A man who promised hope but demanded sacrifice...
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Love being read to as much as I do? In this episode of Bookable Space we're joined by Roslyn Reid reading The Spiricom.
Bio:
Amazon best-selling and international award-winning author Roslyn Reid lives with her Great Pyrenees and husband in Downeast Maine, where she gardens, lifts weights, and hikes. A former model, she contributed to Llewellyn's annual almanacs for several decades and has written for a few of the local newspapers. She is a member of the Author's Guild and you can follow her on LinkedIn, Instagram (@realroslynreid), BookBub and Twitter.
Book blurb for The Spiricom:
She was killed on their wedding day…but he couldn’t let her go.
Tall, handsome Dr. Spencer Py was a well-respected environmental scientist…until a limo crash killed his new bride Melanie and left him in a wheelchair. He is racked with despair over his failure to save her until the fateful night he discovers plans on the internet for the Spiricom, Thomas Edison’s electronic device for communicating with the departed. Determined to be united with his beloved Melanie, he builds the device—never imagining his unexpected results would draw an unsuspecting James Early into the scariest case of the Black Maine detective’s life.
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Love being read to? Hosted by Yvonne Battle-Felton, this episode of Bookable Space features Joseph Hutchinson reading Under Sleep's New Moon.
About the book: Poet Joseph Hutchison on rescuing unfinished poems from the faraway land called youth.
About the poet:Joseph Hutchison, Colorado Poet Laureate (2014-2019), has published 20 poetry collections, including Under Sleep’s New Moon; The World As Is: New & Selected Poems, 1972-2015;and Marked Men.Born and raised in Denver, Colorado, he directs the Professional Creative Writing online program at the University of Denver’s University College.
Love being read to? Hosted by Yvonne Battle-Felton, this episode features Peter Marlton reading from Eternal Graffiti.
About the author: Peter Marlton is the pseudonym for Pete MacDonald, who has discovered that writing fiction under another name can be psychologically and artistically liberating—it somehow skirts, without wholly avoiding, the imposter syndrome. Stories and essays published as Pete MacDonald have appeared in The New York Times, The Battered Suitcase (a novella), Inkwell Journal, Barrellhouse Magazine, and others. His original screenplay was a finalist in the Austin Screenwriting Competition.
About the book: “I don’t know if this is a confession or a purge, a scream or a lullaby,” begins twenty-seven-year-old Owen Kilroy’s journal, in which he writes about the remarkable women—friends and lovers—who’ve come and gone and who have shaped his life, as well as the many varieties of heartbreak he’s experienced.
Owen revisits himself as a seventeen-year-old guitar player, songwriter, and drug dealer in a small, fictional California desert town. He relives being arrested, violently, by half the town’s police force and sent to juvenile prison. He faces the pain of being disowned by his mother and having his father disappear. And he re-experiences inadvertently killing his girlfriend by providing her with drugs.
After escaping from juvenile prison, ending up broke, desperate, and homeless in Venice Beach, he eventually meets Kiera, a nineteen-year-old Irish student at UCLA. She is the great love of his life, a love that he knows would cripple him if he were to lose her. Now, ten years later, Owen discovers that writing about her and all that came before isn’t enough. If he is to move on, he realizes he must go back to California and face his ghosts directly.
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Like being read to? Hosted by Yvonne Battle-Felton, this episode of Bookable Space features Marisa Noelle reading from The Unraveling of Luna Forester.
BIO:
Marisa Noelle is the writer of middle grade & young adult novels in the genres of science-fiction, fantasy, horror & mental health including The Shadow Keepers, The Unadjusteds Trilogy (The Unadjusteds, The Rise of the Altereds, & The Reckoning), The Mermaid Chronicles – Secrets of the Deep & Quest for Atlantis, & The Unravelling of Luna Forester. She is a mentor for the Write Mentor program that helps aspiring MG & YA authors.
About the book:
MATTHEW HAS ALWAYS PROTECTED LUNA’S SECRET.
NOW HE MUST PROTECT HER LIFE.
When his best friend Luna is found catatonic after a devastating house fire, Matthew begins to fall apart.
“Take care of them, Matthew.”
“Always.”
“Protect my secret.”
“Of course.”
That’s the promise he made to her only three nights ago. A solemn vow to protect their large found family of humans and supernatural creatures alike.
Fated to love her for the rest of his life, and unwilling to break his solemn vow, Matthew knows the only person who can help Luna is her grandmother. Through the woods they must go, just like a fairytale. But the forest is filled with deadly peril: poisonous black moss, chimeras, and worst of all, members of their family who don't want them to continue.
As they are picked off one by one, Matthew races to get Luna to safety, all the time doubting everything he thought was true.
Can Matthew untangle the twisted threads of Luna’s secret before he himself unravels?
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Hosted by Yvonne Battle-Felton, this episode of Bookable Space features Michele Sheldon with The Macaw of Doom.
Michele is the author of the Missing Fur series, children’s books themed around endangered species and conservation. The second in the series The Macaw of Doom was published in May. Michele worked as a journalist for many years and also writes short stories, plays and short comedy films including The Beast of Romney Marsh and Skulduggery.
About the book: The Macaw of Doom
Bernard's long-lost cousin Ytsan arrives out of the blue with a beautiful macaw called Duke and a very smart African Grey parrot named Jesse. However, is the cousin all he seems? Ytsan begins to turn Bernard against his best friend Larold and she embarks on a race against time to uncover the truth with the help of monkeys Emile, Zola and Titus, giant anteater Armando and his super-furred cat companion Loki. But is it too late? Will the Wildlife Hero of the Year be stripped of his title forever?
The book follows The Mystery of the Missing Fur where Bernard rescues three rare Amazonian monkeys from a short-sighted trophy hunter, battles against a vain shampoo model/celebrity who tries to steal the monkeys for his own gain and finally solves what happened to his parents, both conservationists.
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Love being read to? Hosted by novelist Yvonne Battle-Felton, this episode of Bookable Space features Paul Waters reading Blackwatertown.
About the book:
When maverick police sergeant Jolly Macken is banished to a sleepy 1950s Irish border village, he vows to find the killer of his brother – even if the murderer is in the police. But a lot can happen in a week. Over seven days Macken falls in love, uncovers dark family secrets, accidentally starts a war, is hailed a hero and branded a traitor. When Blackwatertown explodes into violence, who can he trust? And is betrayal the only way to survive?
About the author:
Paul Waters is an award-winning BBC producer and co-host of We’d Like A Word, runner-up 2020 Books Podcast of the Year. Paul grew up in Belfast during ‘the Troubles’ and was a BBC TV/radio reporter and producer. Paul once made Pelé his dinner, created a G8 Summit in a South African township, went undercover in Zimbabwe, conducted football crowds, reported from Swiss drug shooting-up rooms, smuggled a satellite dish into Cuba and produced the BBC’s live coverage of the 9/11 attacks on America.
He also taught in Poland, drove a cab in England, busked in Wales, was a night club cook in New York, designed computer systems in Dublin, presented podcasts for Germans and organises music festivals.
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Love being read to? Hosted by novelist Yvonne Battle-Felton, this episode of Bookable Space features Fred Misurella reading Arrangement in Black and White.
About the book: An interracial marriage in the 1970s: She's white, he's black; but their problems are more than racial.
Love being read to? Hosted by novelist Yvonne Battle-Felton, this episode of Bookable Space features Mark Stay reading The Ghost of Ivy Barn - The Witches of Woodville III.
THE GHOST OF IVY BARN - THE WITCHES OF WOODVILLE III
As the Battle of Britain rages overhead, a warlock leader from the Council of High Witches comes to Woodville with a ritual to repel the imminent Nazi invasion. The only catch is it involves full-frontal nudity on the White Cliffs of Dover. The Witches of Woodville are having none of it, but when more witches arrive they realise they might have a spy in their midst, and it’s up to Faye Bright to uncover the traitor. But she’s got enough on her plate already with the ghost of a Polish Hurricane pilot who may hold the key to the truth.
MARK STAY BIO
Mark Stay got a part-time Christmas job at Waterstone’s in the nineties (back when it still had an apostrophe) and, despite being working class and quite lippy, somehow ended up working in publishing for over 25 years. He would write in his spare time and sometimes those writings would get turned into books and films, including the Witches of Woodville series from Simon & Schuster, and the forthcoming Warner Bros. horror movie Unwelcome.
Mark is also co-presenter of the Bestseller Experiment podcast, which has inspired writers all over the world to finish and publish their books. Born in London, he lives in Kent with Youtube gardener and writer Claire Burgess and a declining assortment of retired chickens.
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Love being read to? Hosted by novelist Yvonne Battle-Felton, this episode of Bookable Space features Sandra Cavallo Miller reading Out of Patients.
Summary:
After practicing medicine for over thirty years, Norah Waters MD is weighing her options, and early retirement looks better and better. At age fifty-eight, who needs midnight calls, cranky patients, and business headaches? Fighting burnout and workplace melodrama, Norah gives herself one last year to find her way back to enjoying her once-cherished career.
Norah also tries to aid her elderly mom, a feisty and irreverent eighty-six-year-old living in Sun City who once rejoiced at Woodstock and recently partied at Burning Man. Never exactly the perfect parent, Norah’s mom keeps her staid neighbors stirred up and has her eye on her mailman, a mere youngster at seventy-five. At utterly different points in their lives, troubled by a shadow in their past, both women find themselves on a quest for worth in their shifting worlds.
Supported by her steadfast dog, a misfit veterinarian, and a thoughtful radiologist, Norah wrestles her way through a surprising assortment of obstacles, sometimes amusing and sometimes dreadful, to make a final decision about her future.
Bio:
A retired academic family physician, Sandra Cavallo Miller has helped launch hundreds of residents and medical students into their careers. Little fiction has been written about realistic women doctors or family medicine, and she is on a mission to change that. She enjoys creating mixed-genre novels filled with accurate medical science, a little adventure, and playful romance.
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Love being read to? Hosted by novelist Yvonne Battle-Felton, this episode of Bookable Space features Ann Buscho reading The Parent's Guide to Birdnesting: a Child-Centered Solution to Co-Parenting During Separation and Divorce?
About the book:
Take coparenting to the next level and provide a stable environment for your children as you and your spouse begin tackling your separation or divorce.
For parents who are separating and want to put their children first, birdnesting could be the interim custody solution you’ve been looking for. Instead of the children splitting their time being shuttled between mom and dad’s separate homes, birdnesting allows the children to stay in the “nest” and instead, requires mom and dad to swap, allowing each parent to stay elsewhere when not with the children.
Initially popularized by celebrities, this method of coparenting is now becoming more mainstream as a way to help ease children into a new family dynamic. Birdnesting takes work and commitment but with Dr. Ann Gold Buscho’s guidance, you’ll learn everything you need to know about this revolutionary method. In The Parent’s Guide to Birdnesting, you will discover the pros and cons, the financial and interpersonal considerations, and if it’s the right decision for you and your family
About the Author
Ann Gold Buscho, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in family issues and issues related to divorce, parenting, parenting planning, and coparenting counseling. She has professional and personal experience in nesting, coparenting, stepparenting, and single-parenting issues. She has presented widely at state and national conferences for attorneys, mental health professionals, and financial professionals on collaborative divorce, forgiveness practices, nesting during divorce, and consensual dispute resolution
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Love being read to? Hosted by novelist Yvonne Battle-Felton, this episode of Bookable Space features Janet Dean Knight reading The Peacemaker.
As the war to end all wars is about to be followed by another, a young woman finds her life taking the same tragic course as her mother's. One night in the summer of 1938 Violet Lowther’s mother Peggy is dying, her father Ellis is drunk in the pub, and Violet’s life is being ruined behind a dance hall in Barnsfield by a young miner who doesn’t look like Clark Gable after all. By September, the British Prime Minister is flying to Munich to try to make peace with Hitler, and in the same week, Violet travels to the remote moorland of Thorndale to visit relatives, escaping her own war with her father. But when Violet learns the truth about Ellis’ love for Peggy, will she finally be able to make her peace with him? The Peacemaker is a story of buried family secrets and the search for understanding from one generation to the next, and between men and women. Set at a pivotal moment in history it exposes how, in hiding our darkest experiences, the same human tragedies occur over and over again.
Author Bio
Janet Dean Knight earned her MA in Creative Writing in 2015. Her debut novel The Peacemaker, longlisted in the 2017 Mslexia Novel Competition, explores the parallel lives of a mother and daughter during the First and Second World Wars. Janet has had poems shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and commended in the Stanza Poetry Competition. Janet co-runs the Awakening the Writer Within Retreats in France and the UK. She lives in York, UK.
Online: Facebook, Author Website, Twitter
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Love being read to? Hosted by Yvonne Battle-Felton, in this episode of Bookable Space, we're joined by Nita Sweeney reading Depression Hates a Moving Target: How Running with My Dog Brought Me Back from the Brink and Make Every Move a Meditation: Mindful Movement for Mental Health, Well-Being, and Insight
About the book: #1 Best Seller in Running & Jogging, Exercise & Fitness, Depression, and Bipolar Disorder An unforgettable story of tenacity, running therapy, beating depression, and the companionship of a dog. The Dog Writers Association of America awarded Nita Sweeney a Maxwell Medallion for excellence in writing about the Human/Animal Bond for her memoir. Running is my therapy. Before she discovered running therapy, Nita Sweeney was 49 years-old, chronically depressed, occasionally manic, and unable to jog for more than 60 seconds at a time. Using running, Nita discovered an inner strength she didn’t know she possessed, and with the help of her canine companion, she found herself on the way to completing her first marathon. In her memoir, Sweeney shares how she overcame emotional and physical challenges to finish the race and come back from the brink. It's the best therapy for depression. Anyone who has struggled with depression knows the ways the mind can defeat you. However, it is possible to transform yourself with the power of running. You may learn that you can endure more than you think, and that there’s no other depression therapy quite like pavement beneath your feet. Depression Hates a Moving Target is a witty and poignant story of rediscovery.
About the author: Nita Sweeney is the award-winning wellness author of Depression Hates a Moving Target, You Should Be Writing, and Make Every Move a Meditation. UltraMarathoner. Meditator. Mindfulness coach. Writing practice zealot. Mental health advocate. Dog mom. Retired attorney. Retired publisher of Write Now Columbus.
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Love being read to? Hosted by novelist Yvonne Battle-Felton, this episode of Bookable Space features Liz Alternman reading from The Perfect Neighborhood.
About the book: When actress and model Allison Langley leaves her former rockstar husband, Christopher, in the middle of the night, it’s all her Oak Hill neighbors can talk about. The gossip comes to an abrupt halt when five-year-old Billy Barnes goes missing on his walk home from kindergarten.
Billy’s mother, Rachel, blames herself for being at work and letting her only child walk alone. Cassidy, Billy’s teenage babysitter, was also late to arrive on the afternoon he disappeared and blames herself for his disappearance.
As the clock ticks down, police are unable to find any trace of Billy, forcing Rachel to ponder the enemies she’s made in their well-off suburb. Could it be one of her neighbors who stole her son? Would they abduct Billy to hurt her? How easy would it be to take a child while the parents or nannies are distracted?
When another child goes missing, the town is put under a microscope as the police try to get to the bottom of the disappearances. Will they be able to find the two children, or will it be too late? What secrets lie at the heart of this tragedy, and how far will one go to keep those dangerous secrets buried?
Bio: Liz Alterman is the author of the domestic suspense novel, The Perfect Neighborhood, the young adult thriller, He’ll Be Waiting, and the memoir Sad Sacked. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, McSweeney’s, and other outlets. She lives in New Jersey.
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In this episode of Bookablel Space, host Yvonne Battle-Felton is joined by Maximilian Hawker reading from
About the Author
Maximilian Hawker is a children's social worker who lives in Croydon, South London, with his wife and two daughters. He is author of the novels Breaking the Foals and Rory Hobble and the Voyage to Haligogen (both published by Unbound). Since childhood, he has suffered with severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and does media advocacy on behalf of the charity OCD Action as and when he can.
About the Book
When mysterious lights appear in the night sky and his mother is abducted, RORY HOBBLE is thrown into an adventure of galactic proportions. With his firecracker social worker driving him on, he must outwit a secret human civilisation living on a Martian moon, survive the threat of otherworldly creatures and learn to speak to alien whales.
But if Rory is to ever see his mother again, he will have to summon all his courage to overcome the terrifying intrusive thoughts that set him apart as different from other children. In a universe of monsters, sometimes the scariest are those that we carry in our own head…
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Hosted by Yvonne Battle-Felton, this episode of Bookable Space features Betty Bolte with Becoming Lady Washington.
Betty Bolté is an award-winning author and editor of fiction and nonfiction books. She earned a Master’s Degree in English in 2008, emphasizing the study of literature. She’s authored 25+ books, most recently Becoming Lady Washington and Notes of Love and War. She lives in Alabama with her husband.
About Becoming Lady Washington
Martha “Patsy” Custis manages an immense eighteenth-century plantation in the Virginia colony. But as a young widow she must balance her business with caring for her two young children. Her experience and education have sustained her thus far but as her life veers in an unexpected direction, she realizes she has much more to learn. When Colonel George Washington takes an interest in her, she’s convinced he’ll be a loving husband and father for her children.
But when trouble in the form of British oppression, taxes, and royal arrogance leads to revolt and revolution, George must choose between duty to country and Martha. Compelled to take matters into her own hands, Martha must decide whether to remain where she belongs or go with her husband… no matter what the dangerous future may hold.
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Hosted by Yvonne Battle-Felton, in this episode, author Lenore Hart reads from Waterwoman.
About the book: Tiny, remote Revels Island lies just off the coast of the Eastern Shore, a remote peninsula of fishing villages that knows nothing of the partying, gin-soaked Roaring Twenties gripping the rest of the country. The Revels family work Atlantic and Chesapeake Bay for their living, and tragedy is always only one bad storm away. But, as 19-year-old Annie Revels says, “In order to live on the Shore, you need to understand that good weather always follows bad.”
Her father is a waterman, a calling she envies, though one that in 1920 no female may follow. Then he dies suddenly, and Annie must take his place aboard their boat to support her mother and younger sister. She struggles to master nets, oyster tongs, and crab traps, shunned by the other watermen. A hard, lonely life. Until one day she meets Nathan and begins to question everything she once believed about duty, loyalty, and family.
Hosted by Yvonne Battle-Felton, this episode of Bookable Space features James W. White reading from Carp Cafe.
About the book: Master story-teller James W. White is back with a guaranteed good time story set in the surf-side town of Carpinteria, California in the aftermath of the horrific Thomas wildfire. Everyone's got a bit of PTSD, what with the burning mountains and rising sea levels squeezing the town from all directions. Enter Shelly Friedman, a single, 45-year old personnel counselor with a drinking problem, blowing into town for a day trip in her classic sixty-four-and-a-half Mustang. She uncovers the hidden past of a slickster named Tom, a guy she has just screened for a job back in LA. Another guy named Tom, a bartender, sparks a passing fancy. They gin up a commemorative cocktail to honor the fire-fighters who saved the town.
But the man of the hour is surfer Dave, an aging beach bum who comes to Shelly's rescue when she runs over the town's favorite yellow lab. Dave's in Carpinteria because he's hiding out from Hell's Angels. His girlfriend just dumped him, leaving a note in his post office box, and ran off with a gang of unsavory characters.
About the author: Jim is a California-based writer of historical, literary and science fiction. He earned an MA in U.S. History. His professional career has included military service, teaching, research librarian and technical writing. Jim is currently serving as President of his town's literary non-profit organization, Benicia Literary Arts. Jim's stories have appeared in Datura Literary Journal, The Wapshott Press, and Remington Review. His fourth novella, Carp Café launched in January 2022 through Adelaide Books.
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Hosted by Yvonne Battle-Felton, this episode of Bookable Space features Stephen Cox with Our Child of the Stars.
About the author:In 2012 I stopped wanting to be a writer and actually did it. I spent nearly all my childhood in Bristol, and I’m now an adoptive Londoner. I have a partner and two adult children. I’m a professional communicator, a science PhD dropout, a recovering poet, and a Quaker.
About the book:
Our Child of The StarsIn the year of Woodstock and the moon landings, a childless couple Gene and Molly adopt an orphaned child from the stars, and call him Cory. How can they keep him safe unless they keep him a secret?
Our Child of Two Worlds The whole world knows Cory exists. There are malign forces in space, and the world needs his people to come to save it. But what if they take Cory home and break Gene and Molly's hearts?
Hosted by Yvonne Battle-Felton, this episode of Bookable Space features Erika Bornman with Mission of Malice.
About the book:
When Erika Bornman was nine years old, her family joined, and ultimately moved to, KwaSizabantu, a Christian mission in South Africa – a place touted as a nirvana, founded on egalitarian values. But something sinister lurks below the veneer of piousness here.
Life at KwaSizabantu is hard. Christianity is used to justify harsh punishments and congregants are forced to repent for their sins. Threats of physical violence ensure adherence to stringent rules. Parents are pitted against children. Friendships are discouraged. Isolated and alone, Erika lives in constant fear of eternal damnation.
At 17, her grooming at the hands of a senior mission counsellor begins. For the next five years, KwaSizabantu wages emotional, psychological and sexual warfare on her, until, finally, she manages to break free and walk away at the age of 21.
Escaping a restrictive religious community is difficult, but rehabilitation into ‘normal’ life after a decade of ritual humiliation, brainwashing and abuse is much more painful, as Erika soon discovers. She cannot ignore her knowledge of the grievous human-rights abuses being committed at KwaSizabantu, and so she embarks on a quest to expose the atrocities. With her help, News24 launches a seven-month investigation, culminating in a podcast that will go on to win the internationally renowned One World Media Award for Radio and Podcast in 2021.
In Mission of Malice: My Exodus from KwaSizabantu, Erika chronicles her journey from a fearful young girl to a fierce activist determined to do whatever it takes to save future generations and find personal redemption and self-acceptance.
About the author:
Erika Bornmanhas carved a career for herself in magazine publishing as a writer and editor, despite her lack of formal training. Her memoir is her first book and an important element in her quest to make the world a safer place for children. She lives in Cape Town, South Africa, with her two cats.
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Hosted by Yvonne Battle-Felton, this episode of Bookable Space features guest Paul Tudor Owen reading from The Weighing of the Heart.
About the author: Paul Tudor Owen was born in Manchester in 1978, and was educated at the University of Sheffield, the University of Pittsburgh, and the London School of Economics.
He began his career as a local newspaper reporter in north-west London, and currently works at the Guardian, where he spent three years as deputy head of US news at the paper's New York office.
His debut novel, The Weighing of the Heart, won the People’s Book Prize 2020 and was longlisted for the Not the Booker Prize 2019.
About the book: Winner of the People's Book Prize 2020 Following a sudden break-up, Englishman in New York Nick Braeburn takes a room with the elderly Peacock sisters in their lavish Upper East Side apartment, and finds himself increasingly drawn to the priceless piece of Egyptian art on their study wall - and to Lydia, the beautiful Portuguese artist who lives across the roof garden. But as Nick draws Lydia into a crime he hopes will bring them together, they both begin to unravel, and each find that the other is not quite who they seem. Paul Tudor Owen's intriguing debut novel brilliantly evokes the New York of Paul Auster and Joseph O'Neill.
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Hosted by Yvonne Battle-Felton, this episode features Antoinette Tyrrell reading from and talking to us about her book, The Secrets Left Behind.
About the book: : What pain must a woman suffer to rob her of the ability to love her own child? It is the harrowing question Alice Millington faces following the tragic death of her own mother, Kate.
The Secrets Left Behind, is a multi-layered tale of the savage severing of maternal ties, a crumbling marriage built on conjecture, and the devastating impact on the next generation of women. It is set against the backdrop of the patriarchal regime imposed by the Catholic Church in Ireland and spans the period from 1952 to 1981. Over the course of a harsh Irish winter, the women battle misogyny and secrecy in a bid to uncover the truth about Kate’s life. But will they ever make peace with what they are about to learn?
About the author: Antoinette studied English Literature and Modern History at NUI Maynooth, followed by a career in PR. Her debut novel, Home to Cavendish, was published in 2019.
She quit the 9 to 5 grid in 2019 and established a business and ghost-writing consultancy. She recently accelerated her part in The Great Resignation by relocating to the Costa Blanca.
The Secrets Left Behind, was published by Spellbound Books in March 2022.
She is working on her third novel, set in an affluent Dublin suburb as the booming Celtic Tiger economy crashes down around the residents shaking the foundations of their relationships and their very existence.
Join Antoinette on her Facebook Group, An Irish Writer in Spain, to find out more or follow her on Twitter @AntoinetteTyrr
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In this episode of Bookable Space, host Yvonne Battle-Felton is joined by Joie Davidow with her book, The Unofficial Marriage.
About the book: Set against the backdrop of the tumultuous events of 19th century Europe, An Unofficial Marriage dramatizes the equally tumultuous real-life love affair of two great artists—the famous Russian author, Ivan Turgenev, and the celebrated French opera singer, Pauline Viardot. From the moment he encounters her on the St. Petersburg stage, Ivan falls completely for Pauline. Though Pauline returns his feelings, she is bound by her singular passion for her art and her devotion to her gentle, older husband, Louis. Nevertheless, Ivan pursues Pauline across countries and continents—from Russia to France to Germany to Prussia—and in the decades that follow their fateful meeting, the lives of Pauline, Ivan, and Louis remain permanently intertwined as the lovers face jealousy, separation, the French Revolution of 1848, the cholera epidemic of 1849, the Franco-Prussian War, Turgenev’s arrest in Russia, Louis’s heartbreak and resignation, and the highs and lows of their artistic careers. “You know those unofficial marriages,” Turgenev would write almost thirty years after meeting Pauline, “They sometimes turn out more poisonous than the accepted form.”
About the author: Joie Davidow grew up in the small town of Millville, New Jersey. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a major in music, then earned a Master of Music degree from the New England Conservatory. Her teachers have included Eurfemia Giannini Gregory, Gladys Miller, Ellen Repp and, Luigi Ricci, then in his 90s, who had been a coach at the Opera di Roma when Puccini premiered his operas there.
In Los Angeles, she co-founded the alternative weekly newspaper, L.A. Weekly, with Jay Levin, a former investigative reporter for the New York Post. On the heels of the success of the L.A. Weekly, she founded a spin-off magazine, L.A. Style, chronicling the aesthetic of Los Angeles.
Since 2005, she has been living in Italy, where she teaches creative writing and works as a freelance book editor and writing coach.
Her books include
Marked for Life, Harmony 2003, ISBN 978-1-4000-4741-3
Las Mamis, Knopf 2000, ISBN 978-0-375-40879-3
Infusions of Healing, Fireside 1999, ISBN 978-0-684-85416-8
Las Christmas, Knopf 1998, ISBN 978-0-375-40151-0
An Unofficial Marriage, Arcade 2021, ISBN 978-1950691784
Her newest book, Anything but Yes, a historical novel set in 18th century Rome, will be released by Arcade in 2023.
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In this episode host Yvonne Battle-Felton is joined by Dr. William H. Reid who will be reading from and talking about his book, A Dark Night in Aurora: Inside James Holmes and the Colorado Mass Shootings.
About the book: James Holmes killed or wounded seventy people in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. Only one man was allowed to record extensive interviews with the shooter in addition to unfettered access to prosecution, defense and law enforcement investigations. This is what he found.
On July 20, 2012 in Aurora, Colorado, a man in dark body armor and a gas mask entered a midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises with a tactical shotgun, a high-capacity assault rifle, and a sidearm. He threw a canister of tear gas into the crowd and began firing. Soon twelve people were dead and fifty-eight wounded, young children and pregnant women among them. A few minutes later, officers called to the scene found the man calmly getting into his car behind the theater. He was arrested without resistance.
In the court case that followed, only Dr. William H. Reid, a distinguished forensic psychiatrist retained by the presiding judge, would be allowed to video his nine interviews with the defendant. Reid would also read Holmes’s notebook, investigate his phone calls and text messages, interview his family and acquaintances, speak to his victims, talk with prosecution and defense experts and review over 75,000 pages of interviews, photos and other evidence in an effort first to arrive at the opinions he expressed during a week on the witness stand at Holmes’s trial, and later to write this book.
Those findings, including Reid’s twenty-three hours of unredacted interview transcripts and additional research, bring the reader inside the mind of a mass murderer. The result is chilling, gripping study of abnormal psychology and how a lovely boy named Jimmy became a killer.
About the Author
William Reid, MD, MPH, is among the most experienced forensic mental health professionals in North America. A professor at three Texas medical schools, he has received both the Manfred Guttmacher Award for forensic writing and the Seymour Pollack Award for Distinguished Contribution to Education in Forensic Psychiatry, and is a past president of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law. Dr. Reid has written, co-authored, or edited 16 professional volumes and over 200 professional articles and book chapters, many on antisocial behavior, terrorism and forensic practice. Dr. Reid was one of two psychiatric experts retained by the presiding judge in People of the State of Colorado v. James Holmes, and the only psychiatrist allowed to record interviews with Holmes and access the unredacted videos and transcripts for this book. He currently resides in Horseshoe Bay, Texas.
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Hosted by Yvonne Battle-Felton, this episode features Angela Page with There's a Dead Girl in My Yard.
About the book:
The life of a struggling actress is turned upside down when she witnesses the burial of an urn in her yard. She gets entangled with the “dead girl,” a Latina health guru, whose criminal antics, range from Miami to New York to L.A.
About Angela:
Angela Page is a writer, producer and author. Her films are featured on the Shorts TV channel, FunnyorDie and Indiepix Unlimited. She is the author of "Matched in Heaven," the novella and dating guide, "Suddenly Single Sylvia" and newly released , "There's a Dead Girl in My Yard." She will direct her play, "Legal Gringa," which is selected for the Tampa "Voices of Women" festival in July.
Hosted by Yvonne Battle-Felton, in this episode of Bookable Space we're joined by Katie Munnik reading from The Aerialists.
About the author: Katie Munnik is a Canadian writer living in Cardiff, UK.
In 2017, she won the Borough Press Open Submission, and her debut novel The Heart Beats in Secret was a USA Today Bestseller.
Her second novel The Aerialists was published in April 2022 by HarperCollins.
About the book: She fell from the sky and captured the heart of a city.
The Aerialists is a rich historical novel inspired by the life of Louisa Maud Evans, a fourteen-year old hot air balloonist who died tragically during the Great Exhibition in Cardiff, 1896.
Paris, 1891 Laura is living on the streets, far from the American Prairies where she was born. When rescued by the entrancing aerialists, Ena and Auguste Gaudron, she soon finds herself ensconced in the family hot air balloon business, and offered the chance to learn how to fly.
Cardiff, 1896 The Gaudrons accept an invitation to be part of the Cardiff Fine Art, Industrial and Maritime Exhibition, presenting a daring show of balloon ascents and parachute descents.
Then late one night, a young girl, Grace, knocks on the Gaudrons’ door. She is desperate to fly, whatever the cost. As Grace’s dreams begin to take wing, can Laura be the one to keep her grounded? Or will both girls risk it all for one dazzling moment of flight?
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Hosted by Yvonne Battle-Felton, in this episode we're joined by Louise Morrish reading from Operation Moonlight.
About the book: 1944: newly recruited SOE agent Elisabeth Shepherd is faced with an impossible mission; to parachute behind enemy lines into Nazi-occupied France to monitor the new long-range missiles the Germans are working on.
Her only advice? Trust absolutely no one. With danger lurking at every turn, one wrong move for Elisabeth could spell instant death.
In the present, Betty is about to celebrate her 100th birthday. With her carer Tali at her side, she receives an invite from the Century Society to reminisce on the past.
Remembering a life shrouded in secrecy and danger, Betty remains tight-lipped. But when Tali finds a box filled with maps, letters and a gun hidden in Betty's cellar, it becomes clear that Betty's secrets are about to be uncovered . .
BIO:
Louise Morrish is a librarian and trail runner, whose debut novel won the 2019 Penguin Random House First Novel Competition. She finds inspiration for her stories in the real-life adventures of women in the past, whom history has forgotten. She lives in Hampshire with her family.
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Hosted by Yvonne Battle-Felton, this episode of Bookable Space features Karla Huebner reading from In Search of the Magic Theater.
Karla Huebner’s short fiction has appeared in many literary and genre magazines. Having worked in theater and performed in early music ensembles and gamelans, she is also an art historian whose prizewinning book on the Czech surrealist Toyen was published by University of Pittsburgh Press in 2020. Her novel In Search of the Magic Theater is just out from Regal House.
About the book: Why, the rather staid young cellist Sarah wonders, should her aunt rent their spare room to the perhaps unstable Kari Zilke? Like the nephew in Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf, Sarah finds herself taking an unexpected interest in the lodger, but she is unable to stop at providing a mere introduction to Kari’s narrative of mid-life crisis and self-discovery, and develops her own more troubled tale of personal angst and growth, entwined with the account Kari herself purportedly left behind. Generational tensions, artistic collaborations, and even a romance steeped in Greek myth follow as Kari and Sarah pursue their very different creative paths in theater and music. And while Kari seems to blossom post-divorce, Sarah must grapple with the question of what the role of mothers, fathers, aunts, mentors, and male collaborators should be in her life as a young musician.
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Hosted by Yvonne Battle-Felton, this episode of Bookable Space features Sharon Skinner reading from Lostuns Found.
About the book: The smoke-covered, steam-powered city of Landings is a rough place where orphans and lost children known as streeters struggle to survive by banding together, forming rival crews. But when their fellow streeters begin to disappear, Gage and Wynd must put aside their long-standing rivalry and work together to rescue their mates from a crew of ruthless, kidnapping smugglers. But can a pact made under pressure be trusted?
Written with a wink and a nod to JM Barrie and Charles Dickens, Lostuns Found is a story of losing and finding family and what it really means to belong.
About the author: Sharon Skinner is an author, book coach and freelance editor. She serves as Regional Advisor for Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, Arizona, and co-hosts the Coaching KidLit podcast with Christy Yaros. A proud veteran, Sharon was among the first women crewmembers assigned aboard a US Navy ship.
In this episode, Heleen Kist joins host Yvonne Battle-Felton to read from and answer questions about her book, What I Hid From You.
About the book:
Radha thought she was her own worst enemy … until the real one came after her
Traumatised by the death of a patient, and crippled with anxiety, Glaswegian dentist Radha Bakshi succumbs to an addiction to Valium she can't acknowledge, even to herself. In truth, she relies on the pills to juggle being the consummate professional, perfect daughter, devoted wife and a not-too-embarrassing mother to her teenage son. When increased scrutiny of her work forces her to find a new source of supply, she stumbles into the clutches of blackmailing drug dealers. A mistake that could cost her everything.
BIO:
Heleen Kist is a Dutch, formerly globetrotting career woman who fell in love with a Scotsman and his country, and now writes about its (sometimes scary) people from her garden office in Glasgow. Her previous two novels, “In Servitude” and “Stay Mad, Sweetheart” have been finalists in multiple awards.
In this episode of Bookable Space, Valerie Nieman joins us to read from and talk to us about her book, To The Bones.
In conversation with Yvonne Battle-Felton, author of Remembered.
Bio: Valerie Nieman has toured extensively for her five novels (the latest being In the Lonely Backwater) and three collections of poetry. To the Bones, her genre-bending novel about the coal industry and its effects on Appalachia, was a finalist for the Manly Wade Wellman Award. She has published short fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from The Georgia Review to Poetry to New Writing Scotland and has had her work selected for numerous anthologies: most recently, You Are the River, Eyes Glowing at the Edge of the Woods, and Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology. She appears regularly in juried reading series, and teaches at John C. Campbell Folk School and other venues. She has held state and NEA creative writing fellowships. A graduate of West Virginia University and Queens University of Charlotte and a former journalist, she is professor emeritus of creative writing at NC A&T State University.
Synopsis: Darrick MacBrehon wakes in a pit of bones. Bloodied and disoriented, the man who staggers into Redbird, WV, draws the sympathy and help of Lourana Taylor, who’s been following any lead to find her missing daughter—even the wild tales of this zombie-like figure struggling with new and deadly powers. Along with a disgraced deputy and a journalist investigating a ruined river, Darrick and Lourana fight the multigenerational conspiracy that’s bled the land and people of Redbird, confronting the Kavanaugh coal barons who legend says can “strip a man to the bones.”
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Hosted by award-winning writer Yvonne Battle-Felton, this episode features Grant Carrington reading from Down in the Barraque.
About the Book: : A starship is being built in orbit and a unique piece of equipment is stolen and falls into the hands of Kip and his friends.
Blood brothers and bandmates, Kip Marten, Flyte Error, and Red Green spend their nights playing clubs in the barrique for 'quests and topsiders alike, and their days sleep it off. That is, until a chance discovery in a reclamation bin upends their lives and puts them--and the entire barrique--in danger.
About the author: Grant Carrington has had about 40 stories published in sf, literary, and men’s magazines. His sf novel Time’s Fool was published by Doubleday in 1981 and reprinted by Brief Candle Press in 2015, which also published the novel Down in the Barraque in 2016 and the collection Annapolis to Andromeda, which includes the 1976 Nebula novelette finalist, which was originally published in Amazing, in 2015. He attended the 1968 and 1969 Clarion Workshops and the 1971 Tulane Workshop and was associate editor at Amazing/Fantastic from 1971 to 1974.
His degrees are in math (NYU, Univ. of Fla.) and he has worked as a computer programmer at Goddard Space Flight Center and the Savannah River Ecology Lab, among others.
He has worked with the Champlain Shakespeare Festival and American Light Opera Company among many other theatre groups, as actor and lighting tech, and had 5 plays given full productions in Baltimore.
Currently retired, he performs as a singer-songwriter in the Northeast. His CDs, Songs Without Wisdom and Ancient Laughter, are available at CDBaby.com.
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In this episode, I'm joined by Gabrielle Robinson reading to us from and talking about her book, Berlin Diaries. My Quest to Understand my Grandfather's Nazi Past.
The episode goes over the usual 30 minutes and I forgot to say her name when introducing the episode.
About the author: I was born in Berlin in 1942. In 1945 my mother and I fled after bombs had destroyed our apartment. Yet as I grew up there was silence about the recent past. When I studied drama, earning a PhD from the University of London, I did not think about this either until I discovered the war diaries. I have published 8 books and 40 some articles
About the book: After her mother's death Robinson found her grandfather's war time diaries--only to discover that her beloved Api had been a Nazi. Her memoir combines an account of Berlin in 1945 with reflections on German guilt and all political responsibility.
In this episode we talk with Diane Dreher who will be reading from her book The Tao of Inner Peace.
About the book: Diane Dreher’s book The Tao of Inner Peace draws upon the ancient wisdom of the Tao Te Ching to help us meet today’s challenges. Inspired by nature’s enduring principles, the Tao expands our awareness, showing us how to balance the energies within and around us to create greater peace for ourselves and our world.
Bio: Diane Dreher, Ph.D., is a bestselling author, researcher, and positive psychology coach. Her books, The Tao of Inner Peace, The Tao of Personal Leadership, The Tao of Womanhood, Inner Gardening, and Your Personal Renaissance, have been translated into ten languages. Her research on positive psychology and hope has been published in academic books and journals, and her work has been featured in media outlets including USA Today, Entrepreneur, Redbook, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Science of Mind, radio and TV talk shows, and websites on leadership and personal growth.
About the host: Yvonne Battle-Felton, author of Remembered, is an author, academic, host, creative producer, and presenter. Yvonne also writes short stories, personal essays, a writing column in Mslexia, and screenplays and hosts storytelling and literature events.
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About the author: Linda C. Wisniewski is a former librarian and journalist. Her work has been published widely in literary magazines and anthologies, and on her blog, www.lindawis.com. She is the author of a memoir, Off Kilter: A Woman’s Journey to Peace with Scoliosis, Her Mother and Her Polish Heritage. Linda lives with her husband in Bucks County, PA.
WHERE THE STORK FLIES BY LINDA C WISNIEWSKI
Kat is at loose ends after her husband ditched her and their daughter followed suit. When a lost time traveler appears in her Pennsylvania kitchen, she grasps at the chance to give her life meaning by helping the woman find her way home. But a mysterious stranger insists they are together for a purpose. Slipping through a portal to an 1825 Polish village, Kat meets her own ancestors and discovers how her own mistakes derailed her life. Can she bring her new understanding of forgiveness and unconditional love back to the present and heal her family before it’s too late?
About the host: Yvonne Battle-Felton, author of Remembered, is an author, academic, host, creative producer, and presenter. Yvonne also writes short stories, personal essays, a writing column in Mslexia, and screenplays and hosts storytelling and literature events.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Hosted by Yvonne Battle-Felton, in this episode of Bookable Space we're joined by Eve Karlin reading from Track 61.
About the Author: Eve Karlin is the author of City of Liars and Thieves. Eve lives in East Hampton, New York with her husband and triplets and is a bookseller at BookHampton, where she runs the book club and the local author program. She is a recipient of the 2021 James Patterson Holiday Bookseller bonus awarded by the American Booksellers Association. Her upcoming historical novel Track 61, a World War II spy thriller, will be published in June 2022.
About the book: Midnight, June 13, 1942: Peter Burger stands on a foggy beach, ears primed as a submarine hull scrapes the sandy sea bottom. He has endured seventeen months in a Gestapo prison and seventeen days on a Nazi U-boat only to have landed on American shores with six boxes of explosives and no escape.
After slipping into New York City, Peter finds himself at a massive military parade where he meets Grete Baum, a German-Jewish refugee grappling with loneliness and loss. Grete is drawn to Peter’s brooding vulnerability and the pair instantly bond. But as Grete uncovers the truth about Peter and his secret mission ten stories below Grand Central Terminal, she finds herself tackling moral decisions with life-threatening consequences.
Do national borders determine good and evil? Who is a hero, and who is a traitor?
Inspired by the Nazi saboteurs who landed in Amagansett, Long Island in the summer of 1942, Track 61 is a World War II spy thriller that seeks justice for those caught on the wrong side of history.
About the host: Yvonne Battle-Felton, author of Remembered, is an author, academic, host, creative producer, and presenter. Yvonne also writes short stories, personal essays, a writing column in Mslexia, and screenplays and hosts storytelling and literature events.
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Hosted by author Yvonne Battle-Felton, in this episode of Bookable Space we're joined by Sara Hosey reading from Imagining Elsewhere.
About the book: It’s 1988, and former bully Astrid is forced to move from Queens to the small town of Elsewhere. Although the town is totally weird, Astrid sees the move as a way to reinvent herself. That is, until Candi—the teenage tyrant with supernatural powers who rules Elsewhere—decides she wants Astrid to be her new bestie.
Having to choose between the perks and safety of being the Queen B’s best friend and the desire to be a better person could literally cost Astrid her life. As Astrid and her new friends begin to dig into the dark history of Elsewhere and the source of Candi’s powers, they form a dangerous plan to resist Candi’s compulsion and to escape Elsewhere, or else be doomed to live under Candi’s rule forever.
Genre: YA Paranormal
Bio: Sara Hosey is the author of two young adult novels, Iphigenia Murphy, called "one of 2020's best" and Imagining Elsewhere, which Kirkus describes as an "interesting take on power, bullying, and fear," as well as a novella, Great Expectations. She is a community college professor, a parent, and a tree enthusiast.
About the host: Yvonne Battle-Felton, author of Remembered, is an author, academic, host, creative producer, and presenter. Yvonne also writes short stories, personal essays, a writing column in Mslexia, and screenplays and hosts storytelling and literature events.
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In this episode of Bookable Space, we're joined by Amy L. Bernstein reading from The Potrero Complex.
About the Autho: Amy L. Bernstein writes for the page, the stage, and forms in between. Her novels include The Potrero Complex, The Nighthawkers, and Dreams of Song Times. She is an award-winning journalist, playwright, and certified nonfiction book coach. Her literary preoccupations include putting ordinary people in difficult situations to see how they wriggle out.
About the book: A missing teenaged girl. A troubled town. And a journalist haunted by personal loss who uncovers the shocking secret about the girl’s disappearance—all while battling an authoritarian government using fear to control a populace recovering from a deadly pandemic. A mystery-thriller for our time
About the host: Yvonne Battle-Felton, author of Remembered, is an author, academic, host, creative producer, and presenter. Yvonne also writes short stories, personal essays, a writing column in Mslexia, and screenplays and hosts storytelling and literature events.
In this episode of Bookable Space we're joined by Lulah Ellender reading from Grounding: Finding home in a garden
Blurb
Lulah Ellender's garden in Sussex is an unruly but beloved place. It is also not permanently her own. When just a few weeks after losing her mother, Lulah is told that she and her family might have to leave the rented house that they have made their home, her immediate response is to freeze, to neglect the plants she has spent years cultivating. But before long she finds herself back in the garden, tidying, planning, and planting - putting down roots even though she may not be there to see the shoots emerge.
Drawing on her intimate knowledge of this small plot of land in Sussex, as well as her visits to the celebrated gardens close by - Charleston and Sissinghurst, among others - Lulah explores the broader relationship between gardener and garden. From artistic figures such as Vita Sackville-West, Virginia Woolf and Frida Kahlo to the long-gone inhabitants of a ruined village nearby, Lulah considers the ways in which tending the soil, growing plants, and tuning into the unceasing rhythms of nature can help us live with uncertainty and bring a sense of coming home, of feeling grounded, and ultimately of finding one's time-bound place here on Earth.
Bio
Lulah Ellender is a writer and book coach from East Sussex. Her second book,a memoir called Grounding: Finding home in a garden, is published by Granta. When she's not writing she's gardening.
About the host: Yvonne Battle-Felton, author of Remembered, is an author, academic, host, creative producer, and presenter. Yvonne also writes short stories, personal essays, a writing column in Mslexia, and screenplays and hosts storytelling and literature events.
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In this episode of Bookable Space, Fil Reid reads from
Bio:
I live on a canal boat in the south of England with my husband, and our rescue dog and cat. I have Asperger's Syndrome and King Arthur and horses are my obsessions. In 2021 I won the Dragonblade WriteStuff competition which brought me a traditional three book deal.
BLURB from Amazon
The present day – 24-year-old librarian Gwen goes to scatter her father’s ashes on Glastonbury Tor and is kidnapped back in time to become King Arthur’s Dark Age queen – Guinevere.
Welcome to book 1 in the exciting new series Guinevere from Dragonblade Publishing author Fil Reid!
Gwen, a twenty-four-year-old librarian, lives with her boyfriend, Nathan, in a small house, with all the accoutrements of modern living any girl could ask for. When her father dies, and with her ne’er-do-well twin brother on the other side of the world, it’s left to Gwen to fulfill her father’s wishes and scatter his ashes on the top of Glastonbury Tor in Somerset, England. Stepping into the ruined church tower, a gold ring catches her eye – a ring embossed with a dragon emblem. When Gwen picks it up, she’s snatched into the dangerous world of the Dark Ages, where she discovers she’s expected to fulfill a prophecy, by marrying Prince Arthur and helping him become the king of legend.
Will she stay with Arthur?
Arthur, Prince of Dumnonia, and son of the ailing King Uthyr Pendragon, has ruled the hilltop fortress of Din Cadan for his father since he was a boy of sixteen. But he has an older brother who looks set to inherit both the kingdom and the High Kingship. Tall, handsome, ruthless, he’s less than convinced that any prophecy can decide his future, and he doesn’t think he needs a wife. But news comes that his father is at last dying in far-off Viroconium. Taking Gwen with him, further and further from the Tor where she had hoped to return to her own world, he sets off to outwit his brother.
Will he grow to love Gwen?
Guinevere is a six book series
Guinevere: The Dragon Ring (came out on Jan 11th 2022)
Guinevere: The Bear's Heart (came out on March 17th 2022)
Guinevere: The Sword, May 31st 2022
Guinevere: Warrior Queen (TBA)
Guinevere: The Quest for Excalibur (TBA)
Guinevere: The Road to Avalon (TBA)
About the host: Yvonne Battle-Felton, author of Remembered, is an author, academic, host, creative producer, and presenter. Yvonne also writes short stories, personal essays, a writing column in Mslexia, and screenplays and hosts storytelling and literature events.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this episode, we're joined by Hillary S. Webb reading from The Friendliest Place in the Universe: Love, Laughter, and Stand-Up Comedy in Berlin.
About the author: Hillary S. Webb, PhD, is a cultural anthropologist and mixed-media storyteller. A professor at Goddard College in the United States, she is the author of The Friendliest Place in the Universe, Yanantin and Masintin in the Andean World, Traveling Between the Worlds, and Exploring Shamanism.
About the book: Dismayed by the divisiveness of the Trump/Brexit era, anthropologist Hillary S. Webb began to fear that the better angels of our nature had deserted us entirely—if they had ever existed at all. In the fall of 2017, Webb traveled to Berlin, Germany, where she found renewed hope at Cosmic Comedy—an international stand-up venue described as “The Friendliest Comedy Club in Europe.”
There, she watched as demographically diverse comedians and audience members were transformed from strangers into allies through laughter. Convinced that Cosmic Comedy offered a model of togetherness that could help heal the divisions between us, Webb returned to Berlin with the intent of uncovering the club’s recipe for communitas or "collective joy." The result is a humorous and hopeful examination of the nature of human togetherness.
About the host: Yvonne Battle-Felton, author of Remembered, is an author, academic, host, creative producer, and presenter. Yvonne also writes short stories, personal essays, a writing column in Mslexia, and screenplays and hosts storytelling and literature events.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
In this engaging episode, Tim Wendel reads to us from and talks about Escape from Castro's Cuba.
About the author: Tim Wendel is the award-winning author of 15 books, including 'Summer of '68' and 'Cancer Crossings.' A writer in residence at Johns Hopkins University, his stories and columns have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, National Geographic, Psychology Today, and Esquire. Visit his website -- www.timwendel.com.
About the book: In this visionary sequel to Castro’s Curveball, the former Washington Senators Minor League catcher has returned to Havana with a small role in a movie being filmed on location. Billy Bryan soon realizes that this place and his past remain as star-crossed as when he played winter ball in the Cuban capital decades before.
Against his better judgment, Billy becomes entangled in a scheme to spirit a top baseball prospect off the island. This pits him against his old friend Fidel Castro. Despite being in his final days, the dictator remains a dangerous adversary, as does the Cuban sports machine and the Mexican crime syndicates that now direct baseball talent toward the U.S. Major Leagues.
In Escape from Castro’s Cuba, Billy must once again navigate the crosscurrents of the so-called City of Columns: a place where the sunsets from the Hotel Nacional along the Malecón breakwater are as beautiful as ever, but where the alleyways in Old Havana still fan out, crooked and broken, like an old catcher’s fingers.
About the host: Yvonne Battle-Felton, author of Remembered, is an author, academic, host, creative producer, and presenter. Yvonne also writes short stories, personal essays, a writing column in Mslexia, and screenplays and hosts storytelling and literature events.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This episode features the legendary Courttia Newland reading from and talking about A River Called Time.
About the Author: Courttia Newland is the author of eight books including his much-lauded debut, The Scholar. His most recent novel, A River Called Time, was longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize. He coedited The Penguin Book of New Black Writing in Britain, and his short stories have featured in various anthologies and been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. As a screenwriter, he has written episodes of Steve McQueen's 2020 BBC series Small Axe.
About the Book: : A monumental speculative fiction story of love, loyalty, politics and conscience set in parallel Londons The Ark was built to save the lives of the many, but rapidly became a refuge for the elite, the entrance closed without warning. Years later, Markriss Denny is one of the select few granted entry. He carries with him a closely guarded secret: the ability of his spirit to leave his body and transcend the known world. But once in, he learns of another who carries the same power, and their existence could spell catastrophe for humanity. Denny is forced into a desperate race to understand his abilities, and in doing so uncovers the truth about the Ark, himself and the people he thought he once knew.
author photo by Sharmila Chauhan
About the host: Yvonne Battle-Felton, author of Remembered, is an author, academic, host, creative producer, and presenter. Yvonne also writes short stories, personal essays, a writing column in Mslexia, and screenplays and hosts storytelling and literature events.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Welcome to Bookable Space, an audio literary salon celebrating books published anytime in the 2000s. It's a podcast where authors read to us, discuss their books, and more.
Starting Tuesday, September 13, new episodes are released on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
I'll be your host, Yvonne Battle-Felton. I hope you'll join me.