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Bill welcomes scholar and translator Peter Booth to the show. Peter is a Hafiz scholar and translator, co-author of Dante I Hafiz, and member of the DC area Iranian Culture Association. He studied Sanskrit and sacred Indian texts at Georgetown University in his teens, received a B.A. in English Literature from Bard College, and attended Harvard Graduate School in Persian Language and Literature, studying with Annemarie Schimmel and Wheeler Thackston. He then studied Persian Literature at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, on a scholarship from the Shah of Iran. For 32 years he was a resident in Avatar Meher Baba’s home, Meherabad, in rural India, where he helped build water and electrical systems, roads, and other infrastructure, and through extensive afforestation and applied environmental technology, increased the area's average annual rainfall from 9 to over 20 inches. He also contributed translations to the just relased The Illuminated Hafiz: Love Poems for the Journey to Light. Don't miss it!

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Bill welcomes Anthony Award-winning author Matt Coyle to the show. Matt is the author of the best-selling Rick Cahill crime novels. He knew he wanted to be a crime writer when he was fourteen and his father gave him The Simple Art of Murder by Raymond Chandler. His foray into crime fiction was delayed for thirty years as he spent time managing a restaurant, selling golf clubs for various golf companies, and in national sales for a sports licensing company. Writing at night for over a decade, his debut novel, Yesterday’s Echo, was finally published in 2013. The wait was almost worth it as it won the Anthony Award for Best First Novel, the San Diego Book Award for Best Mystery, and the Ben Franklin Award for Best New Voice in Fiction. He has gone on to publish five other novels in the series, including his most recent, Lost Tomorrows, which comes out December 3rd. Don't miss it!

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Bill welcomes suspense author Michael Niemann to the show. Michael  has long been interested in the sites where ordinary people’s lives and global processes intersect. He’s shared umqombothi with shack dwellers outside Cape Town, interviewed Morgan Tsvangirai, former Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, when he was still a trade union leader, and seen Eduardo Mondlane’s dorm room at Northwestern University, faithfully recreated at the Museum of the Revolution in Maputo.He has published four thrillers featuring UN investigator Valentin Vermeulen: Legitimate Business, Illicit Trade, llegal Holdings, and, most recently, No Right Way. Illegal Holdings won the 2019 Silver Falchion Award for Best Thriller at Killer Nashville. His short stories have appeared in Vengeance, the 2012 Mystery Writers of America anthology edited by Lee Child, and Mysterical-E. On the non-fiction side, he is the author of A Spatial Approach to Regionalism in the Global Economy.

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Bill welcomes adventurer and memoirist Chris Fagan to the show. Chris is a wife, mother and business owner who, along with her husband Marty, was a part of the first American married couple to ski without guide, resupply, or other assistance to the South Pole, becoming Guinness World Record holders in the process. She has summited Denali, in Alaska; run 100-mile trail races through the mountains; canoed the hippo-laden Zambezi River, in Zimbabwe; sailed and paddled through the Inside Passage; and biked through remote Tanzania. She is also the author of the memoir The Expedition: Two Parents Risk Life and Family in an Extraordinary Quest to the South Pole. Don't miss it!

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Bill welcomes debut novelist Susan Welch to the show. Susan's first book, A Thread So Fine, won the prestigious 2019 Nancy Pearl Book Award for Fiction at the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference. An adopted child, her novel grew out of a desire to understand the life of her birth and adoptive mothers' lives in the optimistic but still socially-restrictive post WW II Midwest. Don't miss it!

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Bill welcomes bestselling suspense writer Hank Phillippi Ryan to the show. Hank is the on-air investigative reporter for Boston’s WHDH-TV. She's won 36 EMMYs, 14 Edward R. Murrow awards and dozens of other honors for her groundbreaking journalism. A nationally bestselling author of 11 mystery novels, Hank has also won multiple prestigious awards for her crime fiction: five Agathas, three Anthonys, the Daphne, two Macavitys, and the coveted Mary Higgins Clark Award. National reviews have called Hank a "master at crafting suspenseful mysteries" and "a superb and gifted storyteller." Her novels have been named Best Thrillers of the Year by Library Journal, New York Post, BOOK BUB, PopSugar, Real Simple Magazine and others. Her newest book is the acclaimed standalone psychological thriller THE MURDER LIST, which CNN named an Ultimate Beach Read and the Library Journal rave starred review calls it "a riveting must read!" Don't miss it.

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Bill welcomes journalist and debut crime novelist Holly Watt to the show. Holly started her career at the Sunday Times, before moving to the Daily Telegraph. During six years at the Telegraph, she was the Whitehall Editor and jointly ran the investigations team. She then moved to work on the Guardian's investigations team. Holly has been nominated for a wide range of journalism prizes, winning awards for her work on stories including MPs’ Expenses at the Telegraph and the Panama Papers at the Guardian. She has reported from a wide range of countries, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Libya, Jordan and Lebanon. As well as flying around the world on everything from Lynx helicopters to Air Force One, Holly also worked as an undercover journalist. In 2008, she was the Laurence Stern Fellow, spending several months working at the Washington Post. She is also the author of the widely-praised debut crime novel, To the Lions. Don't miss it!

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Bill welcomes novelist Frank Heller to the show. Frank Heller has published biographical and exhibition catalogs on American and European artists, some of which are housed in the Smithsonian Institution Libraries in Washington, DC. He was a hospital corpsman in the US Navy during the early years of the Vietnam War. To write THE SECRET EMPRESS, he drew on his thirty years of experience working in and traveling to China in the import business. Don't miss it!

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Bill welcomes bestselling novelist Talia Carner back to the show. Talia Carner's first novel, PUPPET CHILD, was listed in “The Top 10 Favorite First Novels 2002” and launched a nationwide legislation–The Protective Parent Reform Act–which became the platform for two State Senatorial candidates. CHINA DOLL made Amazon’s bestsellers list and served as the platform for Ms. Carner’s presentation at the U.N. in 2007 about infanticide in China—the first ever in U.N. history. Her novel, JERUSALEM MAIDEN won the Forward National Literature Award in the Historical Fiction category. HOTEL MOSCOW, won USA Book News award in the Multicultural category. Her latest novel, THE THIRD DAUGHTER, is a daring exposé of sex trafficking.Over 70 of Carner’s award-winning short stories, articles, and personal essays have appeared in anthologies, literary magazines, and leading websites. She's a board member of HBI, a research center for Jewish women’s life and culture at Brandeis University. She is also an honorary board member of several anti-domestic violence and child abuse intervention organizations and sits on committees of organizations that work toward Israeli causes. Her addictions include chocolate, ballet, hats—and social justice. Don't miss it!

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Bill welcomes novelist Howard Michael Gould to the show. Howard spent five years working on Madison Avenue, winning three Clios and numerous other awards. In television, he was executive producer and head writer of CYBILL when it won the Golden Globe for Best Comedy Series, and held the same positions on INSTANT MOM and THE JEFF FOXWORTHY SHOW. He wrote and directed the feature film THE SIX WIVES OF HENRY LEFAY, starring Tim Allen and Jenna Elfman. He is the author of two novels, LAST LOOKS and BELOW THE LINE, both featuring tortured, eco-maniacal private eye Charlie Waldo. The film version of LAST LOOKS, starring Charlie Hunnam and Mel Gibson and directed by Tim Kirkby, is currently in post-production. Don't miss it!