Our website - www.perksofbeingabooklover.com.

You can find Quite Literally Books at https://quiteliterallybooks.com/ or on IG at @quiteliterallybooks.

This week we chat with two long-time friends and book lovers, Lisa Endo Cooper and Bremond Berry MacDougall, who decided to create a small press together to help bring some forgotten books back into print that were written by American women writers. Their company, Quite Literally Books, is modeled after heritage presses in the UK like Persephone Books, Manderley Press, and Slightly Foxed Editions. In addition to bringing back worthy novels, these presses produce books on high quality papers and have beautiful covers.  Lisa and Bremond couldn’t find an equivalent in the US and were determined to bring this type of press across the pond.

For our book recommendation section, we’re highlighting books that feature neurodivergent characters. We have middle grade, a popular murder mystery,  crime fiction, contemporary fiction, historical fiction, and young adult.

Books Mentioned In This Episode:

1- The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson 

2- Sublimation by Isabel J. Kim 

3- Dark Matter by Blake Crouch 

4- Plum Bun by Jese Redmon Fauset 

5- Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman 

6- The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman 

7- Who Would Have Thought It? by María Amparo Ruiz de Burton 

8- Moby Dick by Herman Melville 

9- Bartleby the Scrivener by Herman Melville 

10- Why Read Moby Dick? by Nathaniel Philbrick 

11- In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick 

12- The Pink House by Nelia Gardner White 

13- The Little Dinner by Christina Terhune Herrick 

14- Harlem Rhapsody by Victoria Christopher Murray 

15- The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout 

16- Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout 

17- How to End a Story: Diaries: 1995-1998 by Helen Garner 

18- The Children's Bach by Helen Garner 

19- Middlemarch by George Eliot 

20- Freyja by Margrét Ann Thors

21- Elizabeth & Marilyn by Julie Owen Moylan 

22- A Five Star Read Recommended by Fellow Book Lover - The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton 

23- Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko 

24- The Maid by Nita Prose 

25- Counting by 7s by Holly Goldberg Sloan 

26- June in the Garden by Eleanor Wilde 

27- Rubberneckers by Belinda Bauer 

28- The Impossible Thing by Belinda Bauer 

29- When I Was the Greatest by Jason Reynolds 

Media Mentioned in this Episode:

1- Dolly Parton/ Kim Michele Richardson - https://www.kentucky.com/news/state/kentucky/article317220255.html

2- Dark Matter (Apple +, 2024 - present)

3- What Does Neurodivergence Mean - https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/symptoms/23154-neurodivergent

Our website - www.perksofbeingabooklover.com.

You can find Marian Yee at marianyee.com or on IG at @mariangyee

Remember the 1996 film Jerry Maguire and its famous line, “You had me at hello?” Well, our guest this week, Marian Yee, had me at hello with her novel 4 Janes, which is a genre- and time-bending re-imagining of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. It is a novel that you’ll want to read a second time (or even a third) and discuss with others because there are so many layers. 

And our book rec segment features female authors in translation. August was Women in Translation month and yes we missed it by a few days, but we still have some great suggestions to last you all year long. We’ve got historical fiction set in a brothel in early 20th century Japan, a fantasy filled with Norse mythology, a psychological thriller set in Iceland, a family saga set in early 20th century Mexico filled with magical realism, the story of an old woman and her neighbors living outside Chernobyl, and the plight of young women in a mental asylum in Paris.

Books Mentioned in This Episode:

1- 4 Janes: A Novel by Marian Yee 

2- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë 

3- The Lioness of Boston by Emily Franklin 

4- Love and Other Monsters by Emily Franklin 

5- Thirteen Perfect Fugitives: The True Story of the Mob, Murder, and the World's Largest Art Heist by Geoffrey Kelly 

6- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez 

7- The Whisper Man by Alex North 

8- War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy 

9- War and Peace: The Graphic Novel by Leo Tolstoy, Alexandr Poltorak, and Dmitry Chukhrai

10- The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley 

11- Say Hello to My Little Friend by Jennie Capo Crucet 

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

13- Snap by Susin Nielsen

14- 5 Star Read by Fellow Book Lover Brenna Julian - Echo by Pam Muñoz Ryan 

15- The Murmur of Bees by Sofía Segovia, translated from Spanish by Simon Bruni

16- The Mad Women's Ball by Victoria Mad, translated from French by Frank Wynne 

17- Baba Dunja's Last Love by Alina Bronsky, translated from German by Tim Mohr 

18- A Woman of Pleasure by Kiyoko Murata, translated from Japanese by Juliet Winters Carpenter 

19- The Night Guest by Hilda Knutsdottir, translated from Icelandic by Mary Robinette Kowal 

20- Odin's Child by Siri Pettersen, translated from Norwegian by Siân Mackie and Paul Russell

Media Mentioned:

1- The Last Seen Podcast - https://www.wbur.org/podcasts/lastseen/last-seen-season-one

2- One Hundred Years of Solitude (Netflix, 2024 - present)

3- The Whisper Man (Netflix, 2026)

4- The Mad Women's Ball (Amazon Prime, 2021)

Our website - www.perksofbeingabooklover.com.

For more information about Ohio Celebrates Toni Morrison, visit their website www.OhioCelebratesToniMorrison.org or on Insta at @ohiocelebratesmorrison.

This week we have created a motley episode of different segments all about or set in OH in some way.  Think of it as the Frankenstein’s monster episode. First we will be chatting with Britt Lovett, who is the Project Manager for the Ohio Celebrates Toni Morrison Project.  This year-long celebration running from February 2026-February 2027 focuses on the life, literature, and legacy of Toni Morrison, a native of Ohio and the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

While Amy has gone to Ohio this year to visit Hocking Hills and the Columbus Book Festival, Carrie has driven to Ohio three times because her youngest son had surgery in June at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. Because this year feels like it has been “All Ohio, all the time,” we’re giving you recommendations for books set in the Buckeye State.

Books Mentioned in This Episode:

1- Assassination Nation by Sarah Vowell 

2- The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison 

3- Sula by Toni Morrison 

4- Beloved by Toni Morrison 

5- Paradise by Toni Morrison 

6- I'll Watch Your Baby by Nina Viel 

7- Clutch by Emily Nemens 

8- Murder Your Darlings by Jenna Blum 

9- Penelope's Bones: A New History of Homer's World Through the Women Written Out of It by Emily Houser 

10- The Night Hunter by Natalie Moss 

11- Guess Again by Charlie Donlea 

12- A Harlem Wedding by Tiffany L. Warren 

13- A Hunger to Kill by Kim Mager with Liza Pulitzer 

14- Love is a Contact Sport by Frederick Smith 

15- The French Winemaker's Daughter by Loretta Ellsworth 

16- The Jilted Countess by Loretta Ellsworth 

17-We Were Promised: How an Appalachian Grandmother Fought a Corporate Giant by Julia Flint 

18- Mosquitoland by David Arnold 

19- The Ghosts of Eden Park: The Bootleg King, The Woman Who Pursued Him, and the Murder that Shocked Jazz-Age America by Karen Abbott 

20- Buckeye by Patrick Ryan 

21- The Fertile Earth and the Ordered Cosmos by M. Elizabeth Weiser 

22- Kent State by Deborah Wiles 

23- To Slip the Bonds of Earth by Amanda Flower 

24- The Wright Sister by Richard Maurer 

25- Harvey Pekar's Cleveland by Harvey Pekar 

Media Mentioned:

1- Death by Lightening (Netflix, 2026)

2- Ohio Celebrates Toni Morrison - https://ohiocelebratestonimorrison.org

Our website - www.perksofbeingabooklover.com.

You can find Dorothy Roberts at www.dorothyeroberts.com/ or you can find her on IG at @dorothyeroberts .

This week, we chat with Dorothy Roberts, the author of the book The Mixed Marriage Project: A Memoir of Love, Race, and Family.  As an esteemed professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania and a social justice advocate, Dorothy Roberts has written many scholarly books and academic papers about reproductive justice, child welfare, and bioethics, but her most recent book is a much more personal one.  She is the child of a white father who was an anthropologist and a black Jamaican mother, both now deceased. When Dorothy’s sister gave her boxes of her father’s files, she began to read transcripts of research he had done on interracial marriage over a 60-year period. She had no idea how these files would affect her memories of her childhood, her parent’s marriage, and her own racial identity.  This book is a fascinating look at racial history in Chicago as well as a very touching memoir about a father/daughter bond.  

And for our book recommendation segment of the show, we turn to one of the most iconic parts of an American summer. August is here, which means people are having their last hurrahs at amusement parks. With this in mind, we decided we would feature books about these places where people go to be entertained, eat overpriced food, and argue with their relatives. The books we’ve chosen are set in various amusement park venues, such as a western theme park in Arizona, an arcade park where reality disintegrates, a place called Dreamworld where everyone is happy, a real-life New Jersey amusement park that was certainly ride at your own risk, a North Carolina park that was the site of a murder mystery, and an amusement park set in the mind.  

Books Mentioned In This Episode:

1- The Mixed Marriage Project: A Memoir of Love, Race, and Family by Dorothy E. Roberts 

2- The Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson 

3- Martin Marten by Brian Doyle 

4- The Keeper of Lost Children by Sadeqa Johnson 

5- Jane Kenyon: The Making of a Poet by Dana Greene 

6- The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and Obsession by Michael Finkel 

7- The Stranger in the Woods by Michael Finkel 

8- The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt 

9- A Five Star Read by Fellow Book Lover Elizabeth S. @fireplacebookworm - Beartown by Frederik Backman

10- The Free Lunch by Spider Robinson 

11- Krazyland by Mar Romance-Moore 

12- The Insignificant Events in the Lives of a Cactus by Dusti Bowling 

13- Joyland by Stephen King 

14- Action Park: Fast Times, Wild Rides, and the Untold Story of America's Most Dangerous Amusement Park by Andy Mulvihill with Jake Rosen 

15- Anxietyland by Gemma Correll 

Media Mentioned: 

1- The Odyssey (2026)

2- Emily Wilson review of the Odyssey - https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n14/emily-wilson/an-uncomplicated-man

3- Class Action Park (2020, HBO Max)

Our website - www.perksofbeingabooklover.com.

You can find Emily Franklin at www.emilyfranklin.com or on IG at emilyfranklinauthor

At the end of May, we attended a Carmichael’s book event featuring author Emily Franklin, who has written numerous books. Her latest titled Love & Other Monsters is about a time in history that most English majors look on with awe and wonder. Her novel is about the summer of 1816 when Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron and John Polidori traveled to Switzerland and, as the legend goes, told scary stories to each other, which ended up leading to the first vampire story and the book we now know as Frankenstein. But Franklin’s novel focuses on a member of the party who doesn’t get any acknowledgement—Mary’s step-sister Claire Clairemont. Emily did a great job making the Carmichael’s audience want to learn more about Claire’s story, so we invited her on to share it with our listeners.  

And for our book recommendation segment of the show, we are talking Shakespeare, the Bard, the Swan of Avon, Willy Shakes.  Shakespeare is such a touchstone in literature in ways that we don’t regularly think about like classic phrases and tropes.  But you don’t have to be (or not to be) a Shakespeare scholar to enjoy the books we talk about this week.  We have a historical mystery, witty nonfiction, historical fiction, a memoir, a middle grade novel, and a novel in verse.  All are influenced in some way by Shakespeare’s plays or the man himself.  

Books Mentioned In This Episode:

1- Love and Other Monsters by Emily Franklin 

2- Grandma Joy & Me: A Journey of Healing , One National Park at a Time by Brad Ryan 

3- The Humming Room by Ellen Potter 

4- The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett 

5- Summer of 1816: A World Without Summer by Nicholas Day 

6- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley 

7- The Vampyre by John Polidori 

8- Fearless, Sleepless, Deathless: What Mushrooms Taught Me About Nourishment, Poison, Ecology, Hidden Histories, Zombies, and Black Survival by Maria Pinto

9- Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman

10- Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbly Weiden 

11- Wisdom Corner by David Heska Wanbly Weiden 

12- A Five Star Read of Fellow Book Lover Joshua  - Devotions by Mary Oliver 

13- Daughter of Fair Verona by Christina Dodd 

14- Much Ado About Mistletoe by Christina Dodd 

15- Shakespeare: The World as a Stage by Bill Bryson 

16- By Any Other Name by Jodi Picoult 

17- Enter the Body by Joy McCullough 

18- Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench 

19- The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt 

Media Mentioned 

1- The Bride (2026)

2- Guillermo de Toro article about Frankenstein: "Why Vampires Never Die" - https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/opinion/31deltoro.html

Our website - www.perksofbeingabooklover.com.

You can find Alix E. Harrow at www.alixeharrow.wixsite.com or on IG at @alix.e.harrow

Carrie and I are still reading and resting on our summer hiatus but we are continuing our summer replay series of award winners!

This week we are going way back in the archives to the fall of 2019, the first season of our podcast.  We took a roadtrip from Louisville to Berea, KY to meet up with Alix E. Harrow, a Hugo and British Fantasy award winner and a finalist for the Nebula, Locus, and Goodreads Choice Awards.  And she is a New York Times best-selling author.  At the time of our interview, her debut novel The Ten Thousand Doors of January had been released and one of her short stories had just won the Hugo.  Currently her most recent novel The Everlasting is a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Novel. The Hugo is science fiction and fantasy’s most prestigious annual award.

Because this interview was recorded in a library with tall ceilings, not in a studio, and because we were definitely newbies at podcasting with a different format, this episode will sound a lot different than those today. But we hope you’ll enjoy hearing Alix talk about her influences and her view of sci-fi fantasy early on in her writing career.

We will be back July 22 with an all new episode.  Happy Reading!

Carrie and I are on summer hiatus but we are leaning into award winners!  We have been lucky enough to interview many acclaimed authors who have won awards in their genres.  So we are replaying some of these past episodes.  First up is Erin Flanagan who was on the show in 2022.  Her debut novel Deer Season won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel.  The Mystery Writers of America gives the Edgar Award to recognize the best in fiction, non-fiction, and television writing.  Erin has gone on to write 2 more thrillers.  Blackout had just been published when we spoke to her.  

You can follow Erin Flanagan on Instagram @erinlflanagan or at her website; www.erinflanagan.net

For shownotes for any episode at our website www.perksofbeingabooklover.com.

Follow us on Instagram @perksofbeingabookloverpod and on FB Perks of Being a BookLover

In this week’s episode, we chat with Erin Flanagan, an author whose debut novel Deer Season won a 2022 Edgar Award for Best First Novel; her most recent book that published this past summer is a thriller called Blackout. Blackout revolves around a sociology professor named Maris who begins having blackouts despite the fact that she gave up drinking seven months before and then discovers other women in her community are experiencing the same thing. It’s a bit of a #metoo novel with some speculative science and some vodka thrown in. In addition to being an award-winning writer, Erin is also a creative writing professor at Wright State University in Ohio.

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

Movie Mentioned

TV series mentioned:

Our website - www.perksofbeingabooklover.com.

You can find Meredith Doench at www.meredithdoench.com or on IG at @meredithdoench

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)

Our website - www.perksofbeingabooklover.com.

You can find Alyson Richman at www.alysonrichman.com or on IG @alysonrichman.

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

This week you get a bonus episode because we are revisiting the conversation we had back last November with Daniel Kraus, the author of Angel Down.  This novel just won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.  So enjoy and we will be back with an all new episode next week.

Our website - www.perksofbeingabooklover.com.

You can find Daniel Kraus at his website danielkraus.com or on IG at @kraus_author.

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