About the book: Set against the neon backdrop of the San Francisco Bay Area's 90s rave scene, ​Raver Girl ​details Samantha’s double life as she teeters between self-indulgence and sobriety, chaos and calm, all while sneaking under the radar of her entrepreneur father. About the author:  SAMANTHA DURBIN’S writing has appeared in POPSUGAR ,Yahoo Style , Real Simple , PureWow , Zagat , The Bold Italic , and The San Francisco Chronicle , among others. She lives in the Bay Area with her husband, two sons, and her Adidas collection. For more information: www.samantha-durbin.com and www.ravergirlthebook.com --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/steve-richards/support

Speaking of Writers

Samantha Durbin- Raver Girl

Bestselling and award-winning author and investigative reporter Hank Phillippi Ryan returns with a lightning-paced novel of suspense that will keep readers guessing until the last page: HER PERFECT LIFE (A Forge Hardcover, eBook, and Macmillan Audio). Touching on issues of privacy, family secrets, social media, and living life in the public eye— that’s something Ryan, the longtime on-camera investigative reporter for Boston's WHDH-TV, understands more than anyone. And that makes HER PERFECT LIFE Ryan’s most riveting—and personal—book yet. HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN is the on-air investigative reporter for Boston's WHDH-TV. She's won 37 EMMYs and dozens more journalism honors. The nationally bestselling author of 13 thrillers, Ryan's also an award-winner in her second profession—with five Agathas, three Anthonys, two Macavitys, the Daphne, and for THE OTHER WOMAN, the coveted Mary Higgins Clark Award.  Critics call her "a master of suspense" and "a superb and gifted storyteller" and she is the only author to have won the Agatha in four different categories: Best First, Best Novel, Best Short Story and Best Non-Fiction. Ryan’s 2019 release, THE MURDER LIST is a USA Today Bestseller, won the Anthony Award for Best Novel of the Year, and was an Agatha and Mary Higgins Clark Award nominee. Her 2020 release, THE FIRST TO LIE, also a USA Today Bestseller, is nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award and the Anthony Award, and Publishers Weekly called it “Stellar” in a starred review. Ryan is a founder of MWA University and past president of National Sisters in Crime.  Visit Hank online at HankPhillippiRyan.com, on Twitter @HankPRyan, on Instagram @hankpryan and on Facebook at HankPhillippiRyanAuthor. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/steve-richards/support

Hank Phillippi Ryan- Her Perfect Life

Since 1974, George F. Will has been a steadfast voice of wisdom and reason for the American people. One of this country’s leading columnists and the author of fifteen previous books, Will has been called “perhaps the most powerful journalist in America” by the Wall Street Journal. Now, he returns with his ninth and most expansive collection reflecting on American culture and the many attacks on expertise, rationality, and conduct by American institutions, courts, political arenas, and social venues in recent times. In AMERICAN HAPPINESS AND DISCONTENTS: The Unruly Torrent, 2008-2020 (Hachette Books), George F. Will examines a remarkably unsettling thirteen years in our nation’s history, from 2008 to 2020. Leavened by Will’s signature wit, this collection brings clarity to a period of cultural change and unrest. Will addresses every facet of the American experience, from the American Revolutionary War to a scathing assessment of how State of the Union Addresses are delivered in the modern day. Utilizing a number of columns about court cases, primarily from the Supreme Court, Will also illuminates concerns regarding the composition of the federal judiciary. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/steve-richards/support

George F. Will- AMERICAN HAPPINESS AND DISCONTENTS: The Unruly Torrent, 2008-2020

After helping a frightened girl who flagged down their Kenworth in Austin and delivering her to safety, trucker Jojo Boudreaux and co-driver Gator Natoli believe that’s the end of it. Until they find her again in Oklahoma City, and this time she doesn’t want to be saved. They soon find themselves pulled into dangerous territory. Somali Mafia territory. A place where powerful people manipulate a hundred-billion-dollar industry of prostitution, drugs and international sex trafficking. A place where innocence dies at a cost no one should have to pay. It’s not long before Jojo is drawn in deeper, fighting for her own life in this violent world of corruption, abuse, and addiction. Armed with her wits and will, the only way to survive is to trust others, accept help from unexpected places, and never, ever give up hope. About the Author Georgia Author of the Year Linda Sands is the multiple award-winning author of five books in four genres. Always on the hunt for unique characters, fabulous settings and compelling storylines, Linda divides her time between the suburbs of Atlanta, the beaches of The Emerald Coast and a secret place in the Blue Ridge Mountains. In the Cargo Series, Linda introduces tenacious trucker Jojo Boudreaux and a cast of characters whose adventures are directly influenced by the stories of real truckers Linda has interviewed…and possibly pieces of her own life. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/steve-richards/support

Linda Sands- Precious Cargo

Jaryk Smith, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, has just entered a new relationship with Lucy Gardener—a southerner, also newly arrived in New York—when he learns his oldest friend, Misha, has died under mysterious circumstances in a rural village in eastern India. Travelling there alone to collect his ashes, Jaryk soon realizes this won’t be as simple a trip as he thought once he learns that Misha had been in the midst of staging a play there, Rabindranath Tagore’s The Post Office. Performed in Paris the night the Germans took the city, and in Bangladesh during the crackdowns of General Tikka Kahn, and in the Warsaw orphanage where Jaryk grew up as an act of resistance against the Nazis, he makes it his mission to see through the production in this Indian village. But as he becomes more involved with the play and community, Jaryk is forced to reckon with the survivor’s guilt he has carried for decades and learn how to accept a happiness with Lucy he is not sure he deserves. JAI CHAKRABARTI’s short fiction has appeared in numerous journals and has been anthologized in The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Best American Short Stories, and awarded a Pushcart Prize. Chakrabarti was an Emerging Writer Fellow with A Public Space and received his MFA from Brooklyn College. He was born in Kolkata, India, and now lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his family. A Play for the End of the World is his first novel. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/steve-richards/support

Jai Chakrabarti- A Play For The End Of the World

Set in 1950s New York in the shadow of the execution of the Rosenbergs, the memoir documents two pivotal years of Straus’s childhood on Long Island, beginning with him being forced by his parents to leave public school and commute four hours a day to a Yeshiva in Queens where the kids studied the Talmud—in the original Aramaic—for half a day five days a week and fought with words, not fists. But it was fists that Straus was used to after years of fighting off bigger kids who harassed his younger, sensitive, bully-magnet brother. And it was fists that he was used to from home. An unflinching look at child abuse and one boy’s ability to rise above it, One-Legged Mongoose reminds us of the bonds between siblings, the power of family secrets, and the way we learn to protect ourselves by protecting each other. Marc Straus is a poet, writer, medical oncologist, and art collector who lives in Chappaqua, NY. He has published four poetry collections including Not God, staged Off Broadway. His poems and stories have appeared in Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, and many other literary journals. Marc and his wife founded Hudson Valley MOCA in Peekskill, NY, and Marc runs the Marc Straus Gallery in New York City. One-Legged Mongoose is his first book of prose. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/steve-richards/support

Marc Straus- One-Legged Mongoose: Secrets, Legacies, and Coming of Age in 1950s New York

In the near future, advances in medicine and quantum computing make human cloning a reality. For the wealthy, cheating death is the ultimate luxury. To anticloning militants, it’s an abomination against nature. For young Constance “Con” D’Arcy, who was gifted her own clone by her late aunt, it’s terrifying. After a routine monthly upload of her consciousness—stored for that inevitable transition—something goes wrong. When Con wakes up in the clinic, it’s eighteen months later. Her recent memories are missing. Her original, she’s told, is dead. If that’s true, what does that make her? The secrets of Con’s disorienting new life are buried deep. So are those of how and why she died. To uncover the truth, Con is retracing the last days she can recall, crossing paths with a detective who’s just as curious. On the run, she needs someone she can trust. Because only one thing has become clear: Con is being marked for murder—all over again. Matthew FitzSimmons is the author of Constance (Thomas and Mercer) and the Wall Street Journal bestselling Gibson Vaughn series, which includes Origami Man, Debris Line, Cold Harbor, Poisonfeather, and The Short Drop. Born in Illinois and raised in London, he now lives in Washington, DC, where he taught English literature and theater at a private high school for more than a decade. You can visit him online at matthewfitzsimmons.com.  --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/steve-richards/support

Matthew FitzSimmons- Constance

In THE AMBASSADOR: Joseph P. Kennedy at the Court of St. James's 1938-1940 (St. Martin’s Press) acclaimed biographer Susan Ronald examines a controversial period in the career of America’s legendary political dynasty founder. Meticulously researched Ronald gained access to many newly available sources and reveals the truth about Joseph P. Kennedy's tenure as Ambassador to Great Britain on the eve of World War II. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Born and raised in the United States, Susan Ronald is a British-American biographer and historian of eight books, including Conde Nast, A Dangerous Woman, Hitler’s Art Thief, and Heretic Queen. She lives in rural England with her writer husband. Visit her website: http://susanronald.com --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/steve-richards/support

Susan Ronald - The Ambassador

When Jeff Newcastle meets Dara, a beautiful Belarusian girl, on the first day of poetry class at UCLA, he imagines he’s stumbled onto the perfect college romance. Unfortunately, his fixation on Dara’s beauty prevents him from seeing the truth about her tragic life. Doubting a normal relationship could ever be possible, Dara pulls some mysterious strings to redirect Jeff’s affection toward Carey, a sweet and kindhearted coed in Jeff’s circle of friends. Jeff’s romance with Carey blossoms steadily until he’s awakened by a late-night phone call and summoned by a man’s voice to a large estate in the Hollywood Hills. It is here where Jeff finds that a bruised and bloodied Dara has locked herself in an upstairs bathroom. Jeff does his best to pull Dara immediately out of danger, but he soon realizes it is only the beginning of his problems. Jeff must find a way to save Dara without falling deeper into her chaotic world or sacrificing his budding relationship with Carey. About Tom Flynn: Tom Flynn lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. He spent his early twenties as an aspiring playwright putting up shows on small stages around Los Angeles. The responsibility of adulthood came calling and he spent the next two decades building his career in the tech industry, but he just couldn't shake the writing bug. So here we are today. His influences are Tennessee Williams, Sandra Cisneros, and Haruki Murakami. A Girl Named Dara is his first novel. Sawtelle Gemini, his second novel, is scheduled for publication in Spring 2022. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/steve-richards/support

Tom Flynn- A Girl Named Dara

ABOUT THE BOOK There have been other biographies of Roger Federer, but never one with this kind of access to the man himself, his support team, and the most prominent figures in the game, including such rivals as Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic, and Andy Roddick. In THE MASTER, New York Times correspondent Christopher Clarey sits down with Federer and those closest to him to tell the story of the greatest player in men's tennis. Roger Federer has often made it look astonishingly easy through the decades: carving backhands, gliding to forehands, leaping for overheads and, in his most gravity-defying act, remaining high on a pedestal in a world of sports rightfully flooded with cynicism. But his path from temperamental, bleach-blond teenager with dubious style sense to one of the greatest, most self-possessed and elegant of competitors has been a long-running act of will, not destiny. He not only had a great gift. He had grit. Christopher Clarey, one of the top international sportswriters working today, has covered Federer since the beginning of his professional career. He was in Paris on the Suzanne Lenglen Court for Federer's first Grand Slam match and has interviewed him exclusively more than any other journalist since his rise to prominence. Here, Clarey focuses on the pivotal people, places, and moments in Federer's long and rich career: reporting from South Africa, South America, the Middle East, four Grand Slam tournaments, and Federer's native Switzerland. It has been a journey like no other player's, rife with victories and a few crushing defeats, one that has redefined enduring excellence and made Federer a sentimental favorite worldwide. THE MASTER tells the story of Federer's life and career on both an intimate and grand scale, in a way no one else could possibly do. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Christopher Clarey is the tennis correspondent for the New York Times and has covered international sports for nearly thirty years for the Times and International Herald Tribune, where he was chief sports correspondent and a longtime columnist. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/steve-richards/support

Christopher Clarey- The Master: The Long Run and Beautiful Game of Roger Federer

Sharon Tate, Andrew Borden, Charlie Lindbergh, Black Dahlia—if you immediately recognize these murder victims, then you’re a Murderino just like Megan Collins. Her third thriller, The Family Plot (Atria), hailed “the quintessential summer thriller for true crime enthusiasts” by Apartment Therapy, follows an unconventional family obsessed with true crime—until they’re at the center of one. The Lighthouse siblings were raised in a secluded Rhode Island mansion by true crime-obsessed parents, who named them after murder victims—Dahlia, Charlie, Tate, and Andy—and encouraged murder reenactments. At 26, Dahlia remains haunted by her upbringing and hasn’t been able to move beyond the disappearance of her twin brother Andy, who vanished a decade ago. Now that her father has passed away, Dahlia returns to the house she’s avoided for years, along with Charlie and Tate. But the family makes a gruesome discovery: buried in their father’s plot is another body—Andy’s, his skull split open with an ax, just like his namesake. As Dahlia grapples with her own grief and horror, she realizes that her eccentric family, and the mansion itself, may hold the answers to what happened to her twin. Megan Collins is the author of The Family Plot, Behind the Red Door, and The Winter Sister. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University. She has taught creative writing at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts and Central Connecticut State University, and she is the managing editor of 3Elements Review. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, her work has appeared in many print and online journals, including Off the Coast, Spillway, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and Rattle. She lives in Connecticut. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/steve-richards/support

Megan Collins - The Family Plot

There are two New Orleans: the glamorous party city that tourists see and the day-to-day reality of the heavily segregated Black neighborhoods outside the French Quarter. That more real New Orleans is defined by economic inequality, street violence, drugs, and institutional racism. For the young people born and raised there, it is the land of no opportunity—indeed, many struggle just to survive to adulthood. One of the few paths to success for teenage boys is football, which offers a way out with the promise of college scholarships and the possibility of a lucrative pro career. But it is too easy for even the most talented high school players to get off track when faced with the fraught daily reality of life. It takes a special person to guide these young men away from preordained failure and toward success—and even to keep them alive. In Algiers, on the West Bank of the Mississippi River, that person is Edna Karr High School coach Brice Brown. Award-winning sportswriter Kent Babb first told the inspiring story of Brice Brown in the Washington Post. Now, in ACROSS THE RIVER: Life, Death, and Football in an American City (HarperOne), Babb goes deeper, widening the narrative with intimate portraits of Brown’s players, staff, and surroundings in an ever-tested community. Blending aspects of such disparate classics as Friday Night Lights, The Yellow House, and Ghettoside, Babb’s accomplished multi-character narrative illuminates many lives and captures the pulse of New Orleans in all its turbulence, complexity, and defiance. About the Author Kent Babb covers sports for the Washington Post and is the author of Not a Game: The Incredible Rise and Unthinkable Fall of Allen Iverson, which in 2016 was shortlisted for the PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing. Babb’s journalism has received national praise; he has won more than a dozen awards from the Associated Press Sports Editors, and his work has been featured three times in the Best American Sportswriting series. He lives outside Washington, D.C., with his wife and daughter. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/steve-richards/support

Kent Babb- Across The River: Life, Death, and Football in an American City

In North by Shakespeare, Michael Blanding presents the twinning narratives of rogue scholar Dennis McCarthy, called “the Steve Jobs of the Shakespeare community,” and Sir Thomas North, an Elizabethan courtier whom McCarthy believes to be the previously undiscovered source for Shakespeare’s plays. For the last fifteen years, Dennis McCarthy has obsessively pursued the true source of Shakespeare’s works—with fascinating results. Using plagiarism software, he has found direct links between Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, and other plays and Thomas North’s published and unpublished writings—as well as Shakespearean plotlines seemingly lifted straight from North’s colorful life. McCarthy’s wholly original conclusion is this: Shakespeare wrote the plays, but he adapted them from source plays written by North decades before—many of them penned on behalf of North’s patron, Robert Dudley, a longtime suitor to Queen Elizabeth. That bold theory answers many lingering questions about the Bard with compelling new evidence, including a newly unearthed journal of North’s travels through France and Italy, filled with locations and details appearing in Shakespeare’s plays. North by Shakespearealternates between the dramatic life of Thomas North, the intrigues of the Tudor court, the rivalries of English Renaissance theatre, and McCarthy’s attempts to air his provocative ideas in the clubby world of Shakespearean scholarship. Through it all, Blanding employs his keen journalistic eye to craft a highly readable drama, upending our understanding of the beloved playwright and his “singular genius.” Michael Blandingis a Boston-based investigative journalist, whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Wired, Slate, the Boston Globe Magazine, Bostonmagazine, and other publications. He is the author of The Map Thief: The Gripping Story of an Esteemed Rare-Map Dealer Who Made Millions Stealing Priceless Maps (2014), which was a New York Times bestseller and an NPR Book of the Year, and The Coke Machine: The Dirty Truth Behind the World’s Favorite Soft Drink (2010). A former journalism fellow at Brandeis University and Harvard Law School, he has taught feature writing at Tufts University, Emerson College, and GrubStreet Writers. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/steve-richards/support

Michael Blanding- North by Shakespeare

When 29-year-old Sunday Brennan wakes up in a Los Angeles hospital, bruised and battered after a drunk driving accident she caused, she swallows her pride and goes home to her family in New York. But it’s not easy. She deserted them all—and her high school sweetheart—five years before with little explanation, and they’ve got questions. Sunday is determined to rebuild her life back on the east coast, even if it does mean tiptoeing around resentful brothers and an ex-fiancé. The longer she stays, however, the more she realizes they need her just as much as she needs them. When a dangerous man from her past brings her family’s pub business to the brink of financial ruin, the only way to protect them is to upend all of their secrets—secrets that have damaged the family for generations and will threaten everything they know about their lives. In the aftermath, the Brennan family is forced to confront painful mistakes—and ultimately find a way forward, together. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born in the Bronx and raised in Manhattan, Tracey Lange comes from a large Irish family with a few secrets of its own. She headed west and graduated from the University of New Mexico before owning and operating a behavioral healthcare company with her husband for fifteen years. While writing her debut novel, We Are the Brennans, she completed the Stanford University online novel writing program. Tracey currently lives in Bend, Oregon, with her husband, two sons and their German Shepherd. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/steve-richards/support

Tracey Lange- We Are The Brennans

Ben Coes is a NYT bestselling author of political thriller and espionage novels who draws upon his early career at the White House, and his Godfather’s experience as a Navy Seal, to write realistic books with plots that could be ripped from tomorrow’s headlines.   In Coe’s latest book, THE ISLAND (St. Martin’s Press), America faces the worst terrorist attack since 9/11 as Iran puts a plan in motion to exact revenge for years of sanctions.  Another of Iran’s goals is to neutralize the CIA’s most successful agent, Dewey Andreas. The first pre-emptive attack against Dewey Andreas fails, but it worries the head of the CIA enough that he orders Dewey to go off the grid somewhere far away.  An order Dewey refuses.  But as intelligence analysts work as fast as they can to unravel the chatter on terrorist networks, Iran launches a bold strike. When the President arrives in New York to address the U.N., embedded terrorist assets blow up the bridges and tunnels that connect Manhattan to the mainland.  Taking control of the island with its hidden forces, they race to the U.N. in search of Dellenbaugh and to launch an even deadlier attack that will wreak unimaginable destruction on the country itself. Coes paints a picture of a country shocked by an attack and unable to respond, with the only hope living with CIA agent Dewey Andreas who sneaks onto the island of Manhattan to fight seemingly impossible odds. About the Author: BEN COES is the New York Times bestselling author of international espionage thrillers, including Trap the Devil, Eye for an Eye, Independence Day, and First Strike. Before writing his first novel, Power Down, he worked at the White House under two presidents and was a Fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. He lives with his wife and four children in Wellesley, Massachusetts. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/steve-richards/support

Ben Coes- The Island

Welcome to Speaking of Writers. Veteran broadcaster Steve Richards interviews local, regional and best selling authors. You can hear Speaking of Writers every Sunday morning at 6am on these Townsquare Media radio stations in Albany NY. 107.7 WGNA-FM, Q105.7 ( WQBK-FM) ALT 103.5 ( WQSH-FM) and 103.9 The Breeze ( WPBZ-FM), Hot 99.1 (WQBK-HD2), and 104.5 The Team (WTMM-FM). For more info email steve @ sval622@sbcglobal.net Cover art photo provided by Janko Ferlič on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/@thepootphotographer Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/steve-richards/support

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Speaking of Writers

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