We are back with all new episodes, book recommendations, and, most importantly, guests!  To start the new season with a bang, we have author Archer Sullivan whose book The Witch’s Orchard is the first in a new series featuring Private Investigator Annie Gore, who travels to small town North Carolina to solve the mystery of young girls who have disappeared. What makes the cases even more creepy is that an Appalachian apple face doll is left in place of the child. Archer draws on her personal knowledge of place as a 7th-generation Appalachian, although she now resides in Los Angeles, and is always looking for a reason to come home. The novel was a nominee for the 2025 Goodreads Choice Awards in the Best Debut Novel Category. The next Annie Gore installment comes out in August of 2026.

Our book rec section for this episode is a call back to what a lot of people were doing the past two weeks–taking planes, trains, and automobiles to family and friends to celebrate the holidays. We give you two books set on planes, two on trains, and two in automobiles, which you can look into whenever you’ve got travel plans in 2026.

Books Mentioned In This Episode:

1- The Witch's Orchard by Archer Sullivan 

2- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

3- Sous Chef: 24 Hours of Working on the Line by Michael Gibney 

4- Marrying the Ketchups by Jennifer Close 

5- Brimstone Hollow by Archer Sullivan 

6- Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly 

7- The Curse of Chalion by Lois Bujold 

8- The Wizard of Earths by Ursula K. LeGuin

9- Silver Medal Lover by Tanith Lee 

10- The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison 

11- Kill Your Darlings by Peter Swanson

12- The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo 

13- A Five Star Read by Fellow Book Lover - Babel by R.F. Kuang

14- West With The Night by Beryl Markham 

15- Circling the Sun by Paula McClain 

16- Turbulence by David Szalay

17- Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool

18- Border Crossing by Emma Pick 

19- Mrs. Nash's Ashes by Sarah Adler 

20- The Road to Tender Hearts by Annie Hartnett

Media Mentioned:

1- Simon Haisell's Slow Read at Footnote and Tangents Substack - https://footnotesandtangents.substack.com

2- From the Front Porch Podcast - Patreon Conquer a Classic 

3- The Bear on Hulu 

Our first show of Season 14 will begin on January 7, 2026. We’ve been coming up with ideas for book recommendations and will soon be recording with guests. But until then, Amy is going to make merry, and Carrie is going to begrudgingly deal with the holidays. And in this episode, we’re reviewing some of the notable books that we have loved over the last 12 months. Some of these are backlist titles, and some are new releases—we cannot keep up with the publishing industry, nor do we really try. You will also hear from some of our guests from this year who share their favorites of 2025. 

 Books Discussed In This Episode:

Carrie's Favorites of 2025

1- Angel Down by Daniel Kraus

2- On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder 

3- The Millicent Quibb School for Young Ladies of Mad Science by Kate McKinnon

4- The Lost Year by Katherine Marsh 

5- Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home by Nora Krug

Amy's Favorites of 2025

1- Miss Benson's Beetle by Rachel Joyce 

2- You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith

3- Culpability by Bruce Holsinger 

4- The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients' Lives by Theresa Brown, RN 

5- Paris Letters: A Travel Memoir About Art, Writing, and Finding Love in Paris by Janice MacLeod 

Other books mentioned

1- I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

2- The Nature of Pain by Mandi Fugate Sheffel 

3- The Strange Case of Jane O by Karen Thompson Walker 

4- The Devils by Joe Abercrombie 

5- Everything's Fine by Cecilia Rabess 

6- The River is Waiting by Wally Lamb

7- I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai

8- Just One Damned Thing After Another by Jodi Taylor

9- Starling House by Alix E. Harrow 

10- Dead Man Blues by S.D. House 

11- God of the Woods by Liz Moore 

12- The Road to Blair Mountain: Saving a Mine Wars Battlefield from King Coal by Charles B. Keeney

13- Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench and Brendan O' Yea 

14- Carpool Detectives: A True Story  of Four Moms, Two Bodies, and One Mysterious Cold Case by Chuck Hogan 

15- Anima Rising by Christopher Moore 

16- The Undead Fox of Deadwood Forest by Aubrey Hartman

17- The Husbands by Holly Gramazio

18- Grace and Henry's Holiday Movie Marathon by Matthew Norman 

19- Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak

This week our episode features Daniel Kraus, a writer who has published over 20 books, but among moviegoers he may be best known as the co-author with Guillermo del Toro of The Shape of Water. The film of this story won four Oscars in 2018. Daniel’s 2023 novel Whalefall is being turned into a 20th Century Fox motion picture, and I hope that at some point his latest novel, Angel Down, will also be on film. 

Both the premise and writing in Angel Down are unique. It is the story of a group of World War I soldiers told to go into No Man’s Land to rescue what they think is a wounded soldier. What they find is an angel. If you enjoy war novels, and even if you don’t, I recommend giving this book a read. 

 Our book rec section of the show features books related to women in politics. If you are interested in politics yet hate the nuttery of American government at the moment, these books can provide a reprieve. We have contemporary fiction, biography, memoir, alternative history, and electoral nonfiction. 

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- Whalefall by Daniel Kraus 

2- Angel Down by Daniel Kraus 

3- The Shape of Water by Guillermo del Toro and Daniel Kraus

4- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

5- The Leaphorn and Chee Series by Tony Hillerman

6- Hearts of the Missing by Carol Potenza

7- The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch by Daniel Kraus 

8- Wolf at the Table by Adam Rapp 

9- From Under the Truck by Josh Brolin

10- Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali 

11- The Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donoghue 

12- A Five Star Read recommended by fellow Book Lover State Katz @all.da.bookish.things - The Witch's Orchard by Archer Sullivan 

13- Cleo McDougal Regrets Nothing by Alison Winn Scotch 

14- Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win by Jo Piazza

15- The Partisan Gap: Why Democratic Women Get Elected But Republican Women Don't by Laurel Elder 

16- Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld 

17- Mrs. Lincoln: A Life by Catherine Clinton 

18- A Different Kind of Power by Jacinda Arden

 Media Mentioned:

1- Frankenstein (2025-Netflix)

2- Dark Winds (2022 - present, Netflix)

3- The Shape of Water (2017)

4- 1917 (2019)

5- Whalefall (Upcoming Fall 2026)

6- Michelle Obama Says US Not Ready for a Female President - https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/michelle-obama-says-us-not-ready-woman-president-rcna244136

This week we catch up with Kristine Eckart, the founder of the online Gilmore Book Club. When we first spoke to her in Season 9, Episode 188 (2023), she talked about creating this book club, which is based on the books read by the characters in the beloved bookish TV show The Gilmore Girls. 

This year the show is celebrating its 25th anniversary since it first aired, and to commemorate this occasion, Kristine has written a book titled Meet Me at Luke’s, which is a compendium of essays about the show and its impact on Kristine and other book lovers. If you have a Gilmore Girl fan in your life, this might be the perfect holiday gift. In this remix episode, you’ll hear an update from Kristine as well as clips from her initial visit on The Perks. 

Books Mentioned in This Episode:

1- Meet Me At Luke's by Kristine Eckart 

2- A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

3- The Vampyre by John Polidori 

4- Strange Practice by Vivian Shaw 

5- Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakeable Core of Calm, Strength, and Happiness by  Rick Hanson 

6- A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway 

7- The Paris Wife by Paula McClain 

8- The President's Wife by Tracey Emerson Wood 

9- The Banned Bookshop of Maggie Banks by Shauna Robinson 

10- A 5 Star Read Recommnended by a Fellow Book Lover Kim Layman @the_read_rat - A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness 

11- The Anna Karenina Fix: Life Lessons from Russian Literature by Viv Groskop

Shows Mentioned:

1- The Gilmore Girls (2000-2007)

2- Gossip Girl (2007-2012)

3- The Office (2005-2013)

4- Anne with an E (2017-2019)

5- White Lotus (MAX, 2021-present)

Link to previous Perks episode: https://www.perksofbeingabooklover.com/episodes/blpks3ktgywx9fx-x9wxe-p3aft-j9j3f-pk2fn-wbdd3-dbsfp-hhfrc-ep6yz-alk6z-hl34a-dhhaz-l9x4z-88zrd-rh699-xd584-r9src-wkdf3-aegrx-hhnhf-zsc5j

Whitehall Historic Home and Gardens -

https://www.historicwhitehall.org/whitehall-book-club

This week we chat with JH Markert who we spoke to pre-Covid in the before times when he was writing historical fiction. Over the last couple of years, he has changed gears and returned to the genre that first made him an avid reader: horror. JH has been cranking out horror novels and finding a great deal of success with them. We catch up with James and discuss his transition to horror and what that has been like after writing five previous historical fiction novels.  His most recent release that came out in September, Spider to the Fly, is dark horror suspense that deals with a serial killer, a true crime influencer, and a family with some bizarre dynamics. 

And for our book rec section, we are talking about notable nonfiction. These are nonfiction books we’ve read in the last year that have made us think differently about a topic or stood out for us in some way (even though these books might not have been published in the last year). We’ll talk about a micro-history, a biography, a true crime, a memoir, a study of morality and politics, and a niche book about cussing. 

Books Mentioned In This Episode:

 1- Spider to the Fly by J.H. Markert 

2- Molokai by Alan Brennert

3- A White Wind Blew by James Markert

4- Nightmare Man by J.H. Markert 

5- Mr. Lullaby by J. H. Markert

6- Sleep Tight by J.H. Markert 

7- Midnight at the Tuscany Hotel by James Markert 

8- The River is Waiting by Wally Lamb

9- Dietrich Bonhoeffer: In the Midst of Wickedness by Janet and Geoff Benge 

10-The Vanishing Place by Zöe Rankin 

11- Five Star Read by a Fellow Book Lover Jasper Adams-Smith - Be Kind, My Neighbor by Yugo Limbo 

12- For F*ck's Sake: Why Swearing is Shocking, Rude, and Fun by Rebecca Roache 

13- The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America's Enemies by Jason Fagone 

14- The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore by Evan Friss 

15- The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt 

16- Playing to Lose: How a Jehovah's Witness Became a BDSM Model by Ariel Anderssen 

17- The Carpool Detectives: A True Story of Four Moms, Two Bodies, and One Mysterious Cold Case by Chuck Hogan 

18- The Friend by Sigrid Nunez

Media Mentioned: 

1- The Friend (2024)

2- Chief of War (Apple +, 2025)

3- The Outsider (HBO Max 2019)

4- Sinners (2025)

5- Nosferatu (2025)

The American Library Association’s Banned Books Week is October 5-11, so we’re sharing an interview with one of the co-owners of Rediscovered Books in Boise, Idaho, a store that has pioneered a program in their city to push back against book banning in their state. Rebecca Leber-Gottberg talks to us about the history of the bookstore, her role there, and books that folks in Boise have been buying, but she also explains the bookstore’s Read Freely Project, which is their effort to get banned and threatened books dispersed throughout the community. 

And in our book rec section, we’re jumping into spooky season with books related to ghosts, but if you don’t like horror, don’t worry: a lot of these “ghostly” books aren’t horror, and some of them may only seem to be about ghosts. We’ve got a historical fiction about the Sri Lankan civil war, a detective story in which ghosts are witnesses, a nonfiction book about unexplained phenomena which may or may not involve ghosts, a funny novella, a supernatural suspense, and a ghostly gothic novel set in Mexico.

Books Discussed in this Episode:

1- A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

2- The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve House, Four Patients' Lives by Theresa Brown

3- American Sirens: The Incredible Story of the Black Men Who Became America's First Paramedics by Kevin Hazzard

4- The Queen Bees of Tybee County by Kyle Casey Chu

5- The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer 

6- Trans History: A Graphic Novel by Alex L. Combs and Andrew Eakett 

7- Lone Women by Victor LaValle 

8- Wild Tongues Can't be Tamed: 15 Voices from the LatinX Diaspora edited by Saraciea J. Fennell 

9- Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray 

10- Shout by Laurie Halse Anderson

11- House on the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune 

12- On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder 

13- The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf

14- Firekeeper's Daughter by Angleine Boulley 

15- Warrior Girl Unearthed by Angeline Boulley 

16- Sisters in the Wind by Angeline Boulley 

17- The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins 

18- Culpability by Bruce Holsinger 

19- Songs for Other People's Weddings by David Levitan 

20- A Five Star Read Recommended by Claire @bookishly_claire - Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

21- The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka 

22- The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde

23- Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch 

24- Ghost Tamer by Meredith R. Lyons 

25- The Haunting of Alma Fielding: A True Ghost Story by Kate Summerscale 

26- The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas

27- This is Going to Hurt by Adam McKay

Media Mentioned:

1- The Pitt (Max 2025)

2- ER ( 1994- 2009)

3- This is Going to Hurt (2022, Amazon Prime)

4- The Craft Lit Podcast - https://craftlit.com/

Our guest is debut novelist Sam Sussman whose book Boy From the North Country comes out this week. Sam originally wrote a short memoir piece for Harper’s Magazine that referred to the possibility that he might be Bob Dylan’s son but really the essay focused on his relationship with his mom, who had had a love affair with the musician. Eventually, Sam decided to explode the moment, or the series of moments of his life and with his mother, to get a better handle on who he was and how much that was about who his mom was and how she had raised him, not whether his father was Dylan.  The book is receiving high marks in early reviews, and Sam has been making the rounds in newspapers and magazines, including a profile by the New York Times. Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus, The Library Journal, and the American Library Association have all given Boy From the North Country starred reviews. 

And for our book rec section of the show, we’re thinking about books that center on male relationships.  We realize that our guests and listeners are primarily female, but we thought we would equal the playing field a little by talking about books that deal with father-son relationships, male friendships or brotherly love.  We have a multigenerational story about the men in a Mexican-American family, a group of friends in a small town of the American Midwest, a pair of quirky Irish friends, a memoir about two very different guys at Harvard, two Greek heroes and their deep relationship, and boys from different cultures who develop a bond in unlikely circumstances. 

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- Boy From the North Country by Sam Sussman

2- The Celebrants by Steven Rowley

3- The Guncle by Steven Rowley

4- In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust 

5- Anima Rising by Christopher Moore 

6- The Last Mona Lisa by Jonathan Santlofer 

7- The Lost Van Gogh by Jonathan Santlofer

8-  A Five Star Read Recommended by Fellow Book Lover Megan Burnett - The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish 

9- We Should Not Be Friends: The Story of a Friendship by Will Schwalbe 

10- The Sons of El Rey by Alex Espinoza 

11- Shotgun Lovesongs by Nickolas Bulter 

12- A Forty Year Kiss by Nickolas Butler 

13- The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller 

14- Circe by Madeline Miller 

15- Nowhere Boy by Katherine Marsh 

16- Leonard and Hungry Paul by Ronan Hession

Media Mentioned - 

1- The Silent Type: On Possibly Being Bob Dylan's Son- https://harpers.org/archive/2021/05/the-silent-type-on-possibly-being-bob-dylans-son/

2- School Cell Phone Ban Increases Library Visits - https://www.wave3.com/2025/09/02/school-cell-phone-ban-creates-surge-jcps-library-visits/

3- Reading for Pleasure Declines - https://abcnews.go.com/Health/americans-spend-time-reading-fun-time-screens-study/story?id=124807367

4- The Four Seasons (Netflix 2025)

5- The Four Seasons (1981)

6- How the Passionate Male Friendship Died --https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2025/05/men-friendship-history/682815/

It's officially the start of spooky season around here. Two days after Labor Day is definitely not too early, is it? We are dying for cool weather, fuzzy socks, and Carrie already has the skeletons on her front porch.

For our guest this week, Lindy Ryan, it's spooky season all year round. She grew up on a diet of Goosebumps books and never got over her love of the dark and twisty. Now she writes her own horror stories and her BLESS YOUR HEART series will give you some thrills and chills with the Evans women. Four generations of them--great-grandmother Ducey all the way down to angsty teen Luna run a funeral home in their small Texas town. And they also have a little side project: protecting the town from the undead. Both BLESS YOUR HEART and ANOTHER FINE MESS, the second novel in the series, follow the Evans women who, with snark and heart, protect those they love from the proverbial "bloodbath."

And for our book recommendation section of the show, we’re thinking about carnivals, fairs, and festivals. Kentucky recently held its state fair, and with that in mind, we think you should make yourself a corndog or deep fry a Twinkie and get ready to add some books to your TBR lists. We’ve got a graphic novel for kids, a thriller from the 1940s, a mystery, historical fiction, a National Book Award finalist, and a memoir.

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- Bless Your Heart by Lindy Ryan 

2- Another Fine Mess by Lindy Ryan

3- The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

4- Howl edited by Lindy Ryan 

5- The Darkest Night edited by Lindy Ryan 

6- But Not Too Bold by Hache Pueyo

7- Play Nice by Rachel Harrison 

8- Black Sheep by Rachel Harrison

9- Cackle by Rachel Harrison 

10- Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky 

11- Travels with Charley: In Search of America by John Steinbeck 

12- A 5 Star Read Recommended by Fellow Book Lover @arizonabookstagrammer - Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz

13- All's Faire in Middle School by Victoria Jamieson 

14- Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

15- Lewis Sinclair and the Gentleman Cowboys by DMS Fick 

16- The Book of Speculation by Erika Swyler 

17- Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham 

18- The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts by Tessa Fontaine

Media Mentioned:

1- The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920, Youtube)

2- Nosferatu (1922, Youtube)

3- Metropolis (1927, Youtube)

4- Nosferatu (2024)

5- The Thursday Murder Club (2025, Netflix)

6- Santa Clarita Diet (2017-2019, Netflix)

7- Chernobyl (2019, Max)

8- Nightmare Alley (2021)

9- Shelby County KY Library books taken - 

https://www.wlky.com/article/unreturned-library-book-dispute-shelby-county-reformation-church/65875001

10- Travels with Charley Fact Checking - 

https://www.steinbecknow.com/2020/08/01/travels-with-charley-painting-snapshot/

Our guest this week, novelist Sarah Landenwich has turned her own experience as a talented pianist who lost her passion into a compelling, many-layered book about music, competition, history, and legacy. THE FIRE CONCERTO is about a woman named Clara who left a career as a classical pianist following a devastating fire that left her hands painfully scarred. She also left behind a tortured relationship with her former piano teacher. But when that instructor dies and leaves Clara a 19th century metronome, it sends her down a path of mystery about who the metronome belonged to and how that connects to Clara.

In our book recommendation segment of the show, we complete that old chestnut of a back to school assignment: the "What Did You Do This Summer?" essay. But we do it in the form of books. Carrie gives us some German authors she read while preparing for her family trip to Germany in June. And Amy highlights some books based on her Amsterdam and Wisconsin vacation spots, while also recommending a book by an author she saw at the Columbus Book Festival.

Books Mentioned in this Episode

1- A Home for Friendless Women by Kelly E. Hill 

2- The Fire Concerto by Sarah Landenwich 

3- Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi 

4- Possession by AS Byatt 

5- Plainsong (trilogy) by Kent Haruf

6- Old Souls at Night by Kent Haruf

7- The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich

8- How to Be Well: Navigating Our Self Care Epidemic One Dubious Cure at a Time by Amy LaRocca 

9- Say Everything by Ione Skye 

10- The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

11- A Five Star Read recommended by fellow Book Lover Cathleen @wovenfromwords - Harlem Rhapsody by Victoria Christopher Murray 

12- Sleepless by Romy Hausmann

13- What Happens in Amsterdam by Rachel Lynn Solomon 

14- The Murder Farm by Andrea Maria Schenkel 

15- A Death in Door County (Monster Hunter series) by Annelise Ryan 

16- Death in the Dark Woods (Monster Hunter series) by Annelise Ryan

17- Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home by Nora Krug

18- The River is Waiting by Wally Lamb 

Media Mentioned:

1- Speed Museum Glass Art exhibit - https://www.speedmuseum.org/the-adele-and-leonard-leight-glass-art-award-victoria-ahmadizadeh-melendez/

2- Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004)

3- The Naked Gun (2025)

We have had great luck finding excellent books from small independent publishers, and so we periodically invite one on the show to tell us a little about how they operate. Our guest this week is Keisha Mennefee, a literary strategist who has worked with high profile Black artists like Jada Pinkett Smith and Kennedy Ryan.  She recently started her own publishing house called Honey Blossom Press. The mission of this press is to amplify underrepresented voices and powerful narratives that might otherwise go unheard. Some of their new titles include When Forty Blooms by Jacinta Howard and The Divorcetante by Mia Hentzelman. 

 And since it is August, and we’re in the dog days of summer, our book rec section is focused on dogs. Amy especially loves a book where a dog features as a significant character who not only has personality but moves the plot along and helps create the theme. We’ve got some children’s lit, teen lit, Japanese narrative, literary fiction, memoir, and apocalyptic fiction. 

Books Mentioned In This Episode:

1- Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

2- Mrs. Lincoln: A Life by Catherine Clinton 

3- The Survivors by Jane Harper 

4- Leave Only Footprints: My Acadia-to-Zion Journey Through Every National Park by Conor Knighton

5- Track of the Cat (Anna Pigeon series #1) by Nevada Barr

6- When Forty Blooms by Jacinta Howard 

7- This Side of Beautiful by Tiye 

8- The Divorcetante by Mia Hentzelman

9- Walk Through Fire: A Memoir of Love, Loss and Triumph by Sheila Johnson

10- The House on the Strand by Daphne duMaurier 

11- Alive and Beating by Rebecca Wolf 

12- The Firekeeper's Daughter by Angline Boulley 

13- Warrior Girl Unearthed by Angeline Boulley 

14-  A Five Star Read Recommended by Fellow Book Lover Katelyn @bookclubwithkatelyn - Sisters in the Wind by Angeline Boulley 

15- Gather by Kenneth Cadow 

16- Heroic Measures by Jill Ciment 

17- The Body in Question by Jill Ciment 

18- Because of Winn Dixie by Kate diCamillo

19- Speckled Beauty: A Dog and His People by Rick Bragg

20- The Boy and The Dog by Seishu Hase

21- A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World. by C.A. Fletcher

22- Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion

23- Go, Dog, Go by P.D. Eastman

24- Martha Speaks series by Susan Meddaugh

Media Mentioned

1- Cat Video Fest - https://www.catvideofest.com

2- The Survivors (Netflix, 2025)

3- Untamed (Netflix, 2025)

4- Because of Winn Dixie (Disney, 2005)

5- 5 Flights Up (2014)

6- Martha Speaks (Prime Video, 2008)