If you’ve listened to our show for a while, you may be aware that we’ve interviewed several Ohio authors. Katrina Kittle, Erin Flanagan, Christina Consolino, and Sharon Short (who has also published under the name Jess Montgomery) have all been guests and all are part of a writing group called the Cute City Bitches. 

But there was one writer in that group whom we hadn’t yet interviewed, but now we have. Meredith Doench teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Dayton and is a writer of sapphic thrillers, which is perfect since June is Pride Month. We’re delighted she joined us to talk about her latest book titled Never Say Die, a novel about a detective named Rory Scott who has to contend with her own mother-daughter issues when someone in the community for the second time in six years, kidnaps a young girl and murders a teenager. Meredith talks to us about her love of crime novels and how writing and marketing novels with LGBTQ characters has changed since she began publishing. 

Our book rec segment of the show this week focuses on books with unusual narrators. These are narrators who aren’t human, and they might not even be tangible. We’ve got books narrated by sheep, Death, and dead people, as well as a mechanically-inclined world traveling gorilla, a Mediterranean fig tree, and a centenarian tortoise.

Books Mentioned In This Episode:

1- Never Say Die by Meredith Doench 

2- Crossed by Meredith Doench 

3- This American Woman: A One in a Million Memoir by Zarna Garg 

4- Sister Novelists: The Trailblazing Porter Sisters Who Paved the Way for Austen and the Brontes by Devoney Looser 

5- Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt 

6- Lord of the Flies by William Golding 

7- Heartwood by Amity Gaige 

8- Deer Season by Erin Flanagan 

9- The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau 

10- Predatory Natures by Amy Goldsmith 

11- A Book Recommended by a Fellow Book Lover  Michele Terranova @bookwhisperer22 - I See You've Called in Dead by John Kenney 

12- Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann 

13- The Book Thief by Markus Zusak 

14- The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold 

15- The Murderer's Ape by Jakob Wegelius 

16- The Island of the Missing Trees by Elif Shafak 

17- The Tortoise's Tale by Kendra Coulter 

Media Mentioned:

1- Remarkably Bright Creatures (Netflix, 2026)

2- Lord of the Flies (Netflix, 2026)

3- I Know My Name is Steven (1989)

4- Sheep Detectives (2026)

5- The Book Thief (2013)

6- The Lovely Bones (2009)

If you’re a historical fiction lover, you’ve probably read something by Alyson Richman. She’s the author of 11 novels, including The Missing Pages, which was published last fall. We were delighted that she agreed to come on the show and speak to us about this book, although we did sneak in a question about The Velvet Hours published in 2016, which our book club read many years ago. It is about a real Paris courtesan in the Belle Epoque who in her later years as World War II approaches shares her life story with her granddaughter.

The Missing Pages is a historical fiction novel that is about a man’s love of books, but it is also a ghost tale, a romance, and a story of the Titanic all rolled into one. Richman is known for making the reader feel the sumptuous details of the world she is writing about, and she does it again in this book.

Our book rec segment of the show is all about musicians, but we’re not talking solely about musician memoirs, although we do have one of those. We’ve got a children’s nonfiction book about a Ukrainian pianist who performed for Nazsis, a National Book Award winner, a mystery about a stolen violin, a story about a wedding singer whose own relationship is on the rocks, and a coming of age story set in the 1970s that includes a rock star. 

Books Mentioned in This Episode:

1- The Missing Pages by Alyson Richman 

2- The Velvet Hours by Alyson Richman 

3- The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray 

4- All the Beauty in the World by Patrick Bringley 

5- Buckeye by Patrick Ryan 

6- The Hare with the Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal 

7- Underlake by Erin L. McCoy 

8- The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion by Beth Brower 

9- A Five Star Read from fellow Book Lover Anima D. @autopsyofbooks - And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie 

10- The Encore by Juliet Izon 

11- Songs For Other People's Weddings by David Levithan and Jens Lekman 

12- Alias Anna: A True Story of Outwitting the Nazis by Susan Hood and Greg Dawson 

13- Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau 

14- The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music by David Grohl 

15- The Violin Conspiracy by Brendan Slocumb

We were sad last fall that we weren’t able to record with our favorite bookseller, Sam Miller, manager at the Frankfort Ave location of Carmichael’s Bookstore for our Holiday Book Buying episode. But she is back for summer, telling us all about the new titles that will get you excited to sit back on a hot afternoon, either at the pool or in the air conditioning, and read to your heart’s content. 

Books Mentioned In This Episode:

1- The Last Garden in England by Julia Kelly 

2- The Grand Paloma Resort by Cleyvis Natera 

3- Angel Down by Daniel Kraus 

4- A book that Changed a Life - Sisters of the Yam by bell hooks recommended by Briana Lathon Bluford 

5- Yesteryear by Claro Claire Burke 

6- American Fantasy by Emma Straub 

7- Whistler by Ann Patchett 

8- Puck by Samantha Allen 

9- Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett 

10- Fortune of Sand by Ruta Sepetys 

11- Go Gentle by Maria Semple 

12- Country People by Daniel Mason 

13- These Days by Lucy Caldwell 

14- Devotions by Lucy Caldwell 

15- Opening by Lucy Caldwell 

16- Pirate Queen by Ariel Lawhorn 

17- The Keeper by Tana French (Cal Hooper #3)

18- Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth 

19- Killer Vibes by Jack Friday 

20- Fishbone Cinderella by Elizabeth Lim 

21- Ignore All Previous Instructions by Ada Hoffman 

22- Sublimation by Isabel Kim 

23- Book Witch by Meg Shaffer 

24- We Burn So Bright b y TJ Klune 

25- Moss'd in Space by Rebecca Thorrne

26- American Rambler by Isaac Fitzgerald 

27- Checkmate: Genius, Lies, Ambition, and the Biggest Scandal in Chess by Ben Mezrich 

28- The Housewives Underground: The Untold Story of the Women who Made the JFK Assassination Our Most Enduring Mystery by Kaitlyn Tiffany 

29- The Carpool Detectives by Chuck Hogan 

30- The Family Man: Blood and Betrayal in the House of Murdaugh by James Lasdun 

31- True Biz by Sara Novíc 

32- Mother Tongue by Sara Novíc

33- The Left and the Lucky by Willy Vlautin 

34- London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and Family's Search for Truth by Patrick Radden Keefe 

35- 4 Janes by Marian See 

36- Love and Other Monsters by Emily Franklin 

37- This Is Not About Us by Allegra Goodman 

38- Darkology: Blackface and the American Way of Entertainment by Rhae Lynn Barnes 

39- Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano 

40- The Forest Lover by Susan Vreeland 

 Media Mentioned:

1- White Lotus (2021 - present, HBO Max)

2-2026  Pulitzer Prize Winner for Fiction - https://www.pulitzer.org/news/2026-pulitzer-prize-announcement

This week on the podcast we welcome middle grade and young adult novelist Aaron Starmer whose most recent book, You Are Now Old Enough to Hear This, is a quirky middle grade novel about a Toe Beast and a girl who travels with a pack of dogs and a boy named Roman who learns some family secrets.  That sounds like a lot so we are glad Aaron joins us to explain it all in a much more succinct way than we ever could. And his 2025 YA novel Night Swimming just came out in paperback this week.

And our book recommendation segment of the show is about aliens because what pairs better with a quirky novel than some extraterrestrials? We have Hugo- and Nebula Award-winning titles, a book about alien garbage, a wacky buddy road trip adventure, literary fiction about a girl who doesn’t feel human, and a philosophical first contact story starring the Catholic Church.

 Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- You Are Old Enough To Hear This by Aaron Starmer

2- Night Swimming by Aaron Starmer 

3- The Last Garden in England by Julia Kelly 

4- Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman

5- Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir 

6- The Humans by Matt Haig 

7- The Riverman by Aaron Starmer 

8- The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler 

9- Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues by Jonathan Kennedy

10- The Art of Vanishing by Morgan Pager 

11- A 5 Star Read by Fellow Book Lover Tess @books_andthebeach - Shy Creatures by Clare Chambers 

12- The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet (Wayfarers #1) by Becky Chambers 

13- The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell 

14- Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky 

15- Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino 

16- Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card 

17- The Road to Roswell by Connie Willis 

Media Mentioned in this Episode:

1- Whitehall Book Club - https://www.historicwhitehall.org/whitehall-book-club

2- Resident Alien - (2021-2025, Netflix)

3- Project Hail Mary (2026)

Now you may be familiar with the Folger Shakespeare Library’s editions of Shakespeare’s works. In fact, Carrie is still using some of  hers from high school. But she had no idea this world-famous research library in Washington DC had a book club. As a Shakespeare enthusiast, she was definitely intrigued, and we are so excited that emma poltrack, the Arts Engagement Program Manager for the Folger Shakespeare Library, agreed to join us and tell us all about the book club. 

Our book rec segment this week are books about…..book clubs! We’ve got two memoirs about book clubs–one made up of professor friends and the other between a mother and son. We’ve got a horror novel with a book club that battles vampires, an intergenerational mystery-solving book club in England, a women’s fiction novel about a book club that asks its members to present the book that matters most, and a writing and reading group for Punjabi women in London that’s breaking boundaries.

Books Mentioned in this Episode

1- The Last Garden in England by Julia Kelly 

2- The Calculating Stars (A Lady Astronaut series) by Mary Robinette Kowal

3- The Martian Conspiracy by Mary Robinette Kowal 

4- Dating Dr. Dil by Nisha Sharma 

5- Tastes like Shakkar by Nisha Sharma 

6- Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin 

7- The Death I Gave Him by Em X. Liu 

8- Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell 

9- Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson 

10- Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton 

11- Fair Rosaline by Natasha Solomons 

12- Well Met by Jen DeLuca 

13- Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett 

14- Booth by Karen Joy Fowler 

15- The Fraud by Zadie Smith 

16- It Goes So Fast by Mary Louise Kelly 

17- The Beheading Game by Rebecca Lehman 

18- The Night We Became Strangers by Lorena Hughes 

19- Shibby Magee by Carrie Kabak 

20- A Five Star Read by Fellow Book Lover Abigail @nobadbooks - Lady Tremaine by Rachel Hochhauser 

21- The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix 

22- The Book That Matters Most by Ann Hood 

23- The Toni Morrison Book Club by Juda Bennett, Winnifred Brown-Glaude, Cassandra Jackson, and Piper Kendrix Williams 

24- The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe 

25- The Busybody Book Club by Freya Sampson 

26- Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows: A Novel by Balli Kaur Jaswal 

Media Mentioned:

1- For All Mankind (Apple +, 2019 - present)

2- But That's Another Story Podcast (featuring Will Schwalbe)

3 - Whitehall House and Gardens Book Club - https://www.historicwhitehall.org/whitehall-book-club

What is a food that, when you smell it or taste it, reminds you of a person or a place? Our guest this week, Daria Lavelle, has written a novel titled Aftertaste that asks what would happen if you could summon ghosts with food.  This isn’t a horror novel, so these ghosts aren’t here to haunt us in the traditional sense.  But the main character, Kostya, is a chef who helps his clients find closure from their loss and grief through food memories. Lavelle’s novel is super unique, and she talks to us about her own Ukrainian-American family’s passion for food, how Covid and Russia’s war on Ukraine heavily affected its writing, and how love becomes the crux of all the book’s momentum.

Our book rec segment of the show features women in STEM doing all kinds of cool sciency, techny, engineery, and mathy things. We’ve got women doing research in the Amazon and under the sea, women physicists, young girls learning botany, Regency period women studying fossils, and female scientists who bring back a woolly mammoth. 

Books Mentioned In This Episode

1- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy 

2- Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller 

3- The Lost Year by Katherine Marsh 

4- The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow 

5- A Wish in the Dark by Christina Soontornvat 

6- Replaceable You: Adventures in Human Anatomy by Mary Roach 

7- A Five Star Read Recommended by Fellow Book Lover Kris N. @theretiredlibrarian - Beth is Dead by Katie Bernet 

8- The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly 

9- The Last Animal by Ramona Ausubel 

10- Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier 

11- The Woman Who Split the Atom: The Life of Lise Meitner by Marissa Moss 

12- State of Wonder by Ann Patchett 

13- Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield 

Media Mentioned --

1- Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight (2024)

2- Bringing Back Wooly Mammoths - https://www.npr.org/2026/03/04/nx-s1-5704318/colossal-woolly-mammoth-dire-wolf

This week, we chat with Chicago resident Betsy Tomszak who by day is a kindergarten teacher who reads lots and lots of picture books. After school hours, though, she is a reader of all kinds of other genres and the host of the podcast Books with Betsy. She was kind enough to invite us to be guests last summer, and we’re finally able to return the favor so she can tell our listeners all about her show. We get the nitty gritty about why she started the podcast and why she wanted to talk to regular readers. 

Our book recommendation segment of the show this week is about characters in disguise. Sometimes a disguise is just to mask one’s appearance, but in other situations it is not only a physical disguise but an assumption of an entirely different personality and back story. We offer you historical fiction novels set in Napoleonic France and Nazi Germany, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, a novel based on a medieval legend, a National Book Award winner, and a memoir.

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

2- My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for his Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq by Ariel Sabar 

3- Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

4- Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb

5- Say Hello to My Little Friend by Jennine Capo Crucet 

6- So You Wanna Be On Top? by Sarah Hartshorne 

7- Tender is the Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica 

8- I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Hartman 

9- Rules of Civility by Amor Towles 

10- A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles 

11- Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver 

12- Summerdale by David Jay Collins 

13- The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai 

14- The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy 

15- The Authenticity Project by Clare Pooley 

16- Sundial by Catriona Ward 

17- A Five Start Read recommended by Fellow Book Lover Jeanine Neale @jeans_stacked_shelf - Nobody Knows You are Here by Bryn Greenwood 

18- The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas 

19- Master Slave, Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom by Ilyoon Woo 

20- Journey to Munich by Jacqueline Winspear 

21- Pope Joan: A Novel by Donna Woolfolk Cross 

22- Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise by Ruth Reichl 

23- The Good Lord Bird by James McBride 

Media mentioned:

1- Wuthering Heights (2026)

2- Shrinking (Apple +, 2023 - present)

3- The Good Lord Bird (2020)

4- Jateska Cultural Center - https://jasteka.org

5- Artwork by Vian Sora - -https://jasteka.org/abcs-events

6- Run and Read Chicago - https://www.readandrunchicago.com

This week we talk to Rachel Ray, CEO of the International Book Project, a nonprofit organization in Lexington, KY that helps make book lovers out of people all over the world. She talks to us about the logistics of shipping books and how close relationships with the Peace Corps and other nonprofits help get English-language books into people’s hands. 

And for our book recommendation section of the show, we are focusing on spies, but these definitely aren’t of the James Bond variety. We offer up 6 book suggestions that stretch our understanding of an espionage story.  We are light on books set during the Cold War or World War II but instead focus on outside-the-box spy characters.    

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- A Dark Room in Glitter Ball City by David Dominé

2- The White Heart of the Mojave: An Adventure with the Outdoors of the Desert by Edna Brush Perkins 

3- Ghost Town Living: Mining for Purpose and Chasing Dreams on the Edge of Death Valley by Brent Underwood 

4- Guards, Guards! (Discworld series) by Terry Pratchett 

5- The Storyteller of Casablanca by Fiona Valley 

6- Poets Square: A Memoir in Thirty Cats by Courtney Gustafson 

7- A Five Star Read by Fellow Book Lover Jenni Scott @storytimereviews - Theo of Golden by Allen Levi 

8- Oxford Soju Club by Jinwoo Park 

9- Who is Vera Kelly? by Rosalie Knecht 

10- An Extraordinary Union by Alyssa Cole 

11- Liar and Spy by Rebecca Stead 

12- Mr. Nice Spy by Tiana Smith 

13- The Faithful Spy: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler by John Hendrix 

Media Mentioned:

1- Murder in Glitterball City (HBO Max 2026)

2- John Hendrix's link to The Faithful Spy research - https://goose-hawk-c589.squarespace.com/bonhoeffer-research

3- Terry Pratchett Puzzle - https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-world-of-terry-pratchett-1000-piece-puzzle-a-discworld-jigsaw-by-paul-kidby-terry-pratchett/29dbddde082184ce?ean=9781399620697&next=t&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=%7Bcampaignname%7D&utm_content=6443417794&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=16235479093&gbraid=0AAAAACfld41whhyxRMyYH28KslljMJPpx&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIieS7rND8kgMVYCBECB3sphbOEAQYByABEgIRtvD_BwE

We chat this week with Eiren Caffall, a Chicago writer whose memoir, The Mourner’s Bestiary, sat on Carrie's shelf staring at her for a year until she finally made time to read it but she is so glad I did. In this creative nonfiction work, Eiren talks about her family’s long history with a chronic illness (specifically, polycystic kidney disease (PKD)) and connects that to the health of the waterways and living creatures in Maine. It is a master work that merges scientific writing with poetic language. We also talk about her novel, All the Water in the World, which came out less than six months after The Mourner’s Bestiary. It is also about water, but in a fictional dystopian setting where New York City has flooded due to the melting of the ice caps. If you enjoyed Station Eleven, you must give this novel a try.

And for our book recommendation section of the show, we are focusing on Old Dudes!!  Carrie has a soft spot in her heart for curmudgeonly and/ or cuddly elderly men, so we are giving you six ideas of books that feature crotchety (or not) male senior citizens.  We have a memoir, a children’s book series, a book translated from Swedish, novels featuring LGBTQ protagonists, and literary fiction.

Books Discussed in this Episode:

1- The Mourner's Bestiary by Eiren Caffal 

2- All the Water in the World by Eiren Caffal 

3- Howards End by E.M. Forster 

4- Stolen by Ann-Helén Laestadius 

5- Ignition by MR O'Connor 

6- Hotshot: A Life on Fire by River Selby 

7- The Indifferent Stars Above: The Harrowing Story of a Donner Party Bride by Daniel James Brown 

8- The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder by David Grann 

9- The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones 

10- Queen Bee by Cierra Geraghty 

11- The List of Suspicious Things by Jennie Godfrey

12- A Five Star Read Recommended by a Fellow Book Lover - In a Lonely Place by Dorothy Hughes 

13- The Very Long Very Strange Life of Isaac Dahl by Bart Yates 

14- The Last Days of Ptolemy Gray by Walter Mosley 

15- The Happiest Man on Earth by Eddie Jaku 

16- The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson 

17- The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle by Matt Cain 

18- Mr. Putter and Tabby series by Cynthia Rylant 

19- A Dark Room in Glitter Ball City: Murder, Secrets, and Scandal in Old Louisville by David Dominé

Media Mentioned:

1- 'Murder in Glitter Ball City' - https://www.wdrb.com/news/murder-in-glitter-ball-city-hbo-documentary-explores-2010-old-louisville-murder/article_1b4cc513-c22b-4543-b609-5b6267e1dce2.html

2- Our Episode with David Dominé - https://ThePerksofBeingaBookLover.podbean.com/e/season-5-episode-108-sex-drugs-and-true-crime-vibes-with-guest-david-domine-10-13-21/

3- True Detective Night Country (HBO Max, 2024)

In this week’s episode, our focus is on houses that are so important to a story that they essentially become a character. When we started thinking about this idea, we realized that Chicago writer Christina Henry would be a perfect guest because her last two novels are focused on houses. Her most recent is titled The Place Where They Buried Your Heart and is about a neighborhood house that lures people in, causing heartache for neighbors as well as a sense of family among a handful of them. Prior to this novel, Christina wrote The House That Horror Built. We talk to Christina about the importance of houses in her stories and how a house can straddle setting and character. 

In our book rec section, we continue the house idea with a range of titles in which houses are critically important—-we’ve got a memoir, a National Book Award winner, children’s fantasy, classic literature, and propulsive literary fiction.

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- The Place Where They Buried Your Heart by Christina Henry

2- The House That Horror Built by Christina Henry 

3- Howards End by E.M. Forster 

3- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy

3- Viewfinder: A Memoir of Seeing and Being Seen by Jon M. Chu 

4- Double Indemnity by James Cain 

5- From the Moment They Met It Was Murder: Double Indemnity and the Rise of Film Noir by Alain Silver and James Ursini 

6- Out by Natsuo Kirino 

7- Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata 

8- Earthlings by Sayaka Murata 

9- The Mantis by Kotaro Osaka 

10- Three Assasins by Kotaro Osaka 

11- Bullet Train by Kotaro Osaka 

12- The Night Guest by Hildur Knútsdóttir

13- Night Shift by Alex Finlay

14- A Five Star Read by Fellow Book Lover Kris Wyatt @froggyreadteach - The Labors of Hercules Beal by Gary D. Schmidt 

15- Cabin: Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman by Patrick Hutchison 

16- House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III

17- The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom 

18- Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones 

19- The House with the Clock in it's Walls by John Bellairs 

20- Behind the Waterline by Kionna Walker LeMalle 

21- The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

22- Rebecca by Daphne duMaurier 

Media Mentioned:

1- If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (2025)

2- Platonic (Apple +, 2023 - present)

3- Train Dreams (2025)

4- The Studio (Apple +, 2025)

5- Howards End (1992)

6- Howl's Moving Castle (2004)

7- The House with the Clock in it's Walls (2018)

8- House of Sand and Fog (2003)

9- LibroVox app for free audiobooks of books in the public domain

10- Whitehall House and Gardens Book Club - https://www.historicwhitehall.org/whitehall-book-club