TerryShepherd.com

@terryshepherd.com

5223 Followers 10336 Following

Purveyor of Adventure. Thriller guy. Award winning narrator. Author podcast host. Let’s talk!

Nathan Jorgenson's "Otto’s Portal" begins with a metaphysical: if the soul leaves the body at death, what keeps it attached while we are alive? The premise alone has the pleasing audacity of a midnight radio talk-show, but Nathan’s route into it is more intimate than sensational. The story moves from postwar London to Lyndon Johnson’s ranch to a Catholic church in northern Minnesota, blending science, faith, history, myth, and death itself into a narrative that blurs the lines between fact and conjecture.
Tracey S. Phillips calls herself a “serial artist.” That might suggest both restless creativity and a minor criminal tendency. She began playing the piano at three, under the direction of a grandmother who, Tracey suspects, may simply have wanted her out of the house. The strategy failed in one sense. Tracey never stopped making noise. She became a pianist, a teacher, a gardener, and an illustrator. She also became, under the name Carissa Knight, a writer of romantic thrillers involving international intrigue, luxury yachts, Russian fugitives, anti-piracy weapons, and people whose emotional lives are almost as dangerous as their enemies.
John’s thrillers follow Gus Wheeler, an F.B.I. agent whose investigative gift is rooted not merely in observation but in tempo. Gus recognizes patterns the way a jazz musician hears a progression developing beneath a melody. For Gus, what conventional thinking might classify as a limitation becomes an unconventional form of intelligence. He does not solve crimes by proceeding neatly from letter A to B. He improvises. In John’s latest novel, Before the Devil Knows, that improvisational mind confronts an especially rigid system of belief. The story begins with the discovery of a missing teenager’s disfigured remains in an unmarked grave. A heavy lead cross has been placed across the body’s chest. When a second grave is found, Gus and his partner are drawn toward a secretive church whose members adhere with disturbing literalness to the Old Testament.
I’m Terry Shepherd. The Atlantic recently reported that adults who read for pleasure on any given day have dropped from 28% to %16 percent. That’s why how you present your brand is crucial to your success as a writer. And that’s exactly what I’ll be talking about on July 18 at the Northeast Florida Sisters in Crime Double Vision writing workshop. Check their website auto learn how to build a fascinating and fun author brand with me. And keep writing. We need good storytellers now more than ever.
If you read the recent article in The Atlantic about the sharp decline in reader interest in books since 2003, you may share my trepidation for the future of The Writer’s Craft. Rose Horowitch writes that the Library of Alexandria did not need a single great fire to become a tragedy. It may have died more quietly than legend allows. Scroll by scroll. Shelf by shelf. Copy by copy. The papyrus aged. The insects came. The scribes stopped reproducing the texts. The will to preserve knowledge faded, and what should have been carried forward was left to disappear. That is the warning for us now.
That sensibility runs through False Flag, Steven’ L. Conley's new espionage novel, a fictionalized account inspired by the hunt for a Chinese mole inside the FBI. The book occupies that uneasy borderland between thriller and confession. It has the machinery readers expect from excellent spy fiction, dead drops, surveillance, compromised agents, headquarters intrigue, but its engine is less gadgetry than institutional memory. Steven is not merely imagining the bureaucracy of secrecy. He lived inside it.
In Margaret Mizushima’s Timber Creek K-9 Mysteries, the mountains listen. Snow presses against the Colorado high country with the hush of an accomplice. Canyons conceal more than weather. And a dog’s lifted muzzle may be the first sign that civilization’s careful arrangements have begun to fail.
What are the two biggest mistakes authors make when promoting their books? What is the one thing you must perfect and memorize to make a powerful first impression? Join me on July 18 to find out.
Dara Levan's new novel, Shaken to the Core, carries that instinct into fiction with unusual tenderness. Its heroine, Joy, is a Miami family photographer in her late thirties, married to Andre. He is a man from a large family and, at least at first, a man with a louder claim on the shape of their life. They have agreed not to have children. Then Joy’s mother dies suddenly, and the life that once seemed sufficient no longer does. The camera, once her refuge, begins to feel like a partition. She has spent years looking at families from behind the lens. Grief forces her to ask whether observing love is the same as living fully inside it.
Steven Rubin’s The Unraveling of Michael Galler begins not with a monster in the room but with an absence. Michael is eight years old when his mother dies of cancer. From that point forward the world becomes a place where invisible things gather strength in silence. Childhood, Steven tells me, is not merely a landscape of baseball gloves, schoolbooks, and family dinners. It is a laboratory in which grief becomes theory. And theory becomes fate.
John Winn Miller lived several literary lives before arriving at Miriam in the Shadows, and one suspects that each of them left fingerprints on the page. He has been an investigative reporter, a foreign correspondent, an editor, a publisher, a filmmaker, and a screenwriter. These are not merely résumé items. They are disciplines of attention. Journalism taught him to notice weather, smell, clothing, fear, and the small physical truths that make a scene breathe. Screenwriting taught him restraint, that old cinematic law that emotion must be seen or heard before it can be believed. Historical fiction, in his hands, becomes the place where fact and feeling are allowed to shake hands in the dark.
“Shattering the Mirror” is Lena’s metaphor for distorted selfhood. A child looks into the mirrors supplied by family and sees monstrosity, clumsiness, ugliness, badness. She believes the reflection because children do. Later, in first or second grade, after writing privately about a crush, Lena’s diary is discovered and read aloud by her mother before the family. The punishment is not only humiliation. It is exile from the self. From that day, she tells me, something in her stopped speaking personally. She became fluent in achievement instead
Some books arrive dressed as manuals, carrying the sturdy promise of advice. Others come as dispatches from the interior, written by someone who has survived the territory and returned with a map. Dr. Katie Rose Pryal’s Your Kid Belongs Here is both. It is a parenting book, certainly, but also a work of moral correction, a quiet indictment of the systems that have asked generations of children to earn their humanity by pretending to be someone else.
Heather J. Fitt’s career began, as so many literary careers do, with an act of discouragement. As a teenager in Scotland, she wanted to become a journalist. Another girl in her English class informed her that journalism was a narrow gate, that she herself was the better writer, and that Heather might as well abandon the idea. When we are young, we tend to believe the assessment of our friends. As a result, Heather mislaid the ambition for a couple of decades, carrying it from job to job like a letter whose address had been rubbed off.
Few writers understand the anatomy of a crime story quite like Caitlin Rother. A New York Times bestselling author, investigative journalist, and veteran of nearly twenty years in daily newspapers, she has built a career out of going where the easy answers stop. Across seventeen books, from true crime and memoir to psychological thrillers, she has explored addiction, suicide, mental illness, murder, corruption, and the machinery of justice with the eye of a reporter and the soul of a storyteller.
  📍 And the last sub-chapter is love. And because I think, Terry, if you die or if I die, then the only... we can't take anything with us, and the only thing we wonder, did we love our family and our friends? Did you- did we love them enough? Because actually, that's the only thing that is important.
He seems, at first glance, like the sort of man who arrived at crime fiction by way of every other American performance art. He grew up in Indiana in a house where music and theatre were not so much hobbies as atmospheric conditions. His father had played in rock bands, his mother sang in choirs and acted in plays, and Norman, obligingly, tried on everything: saxophone, comedy, improvisation, theatre, film, television, sitcoms, rock bands, screenplays. He moved to Los Angeles with the half-mad confidence of the young and talented, the kind of confidence that is really a disguise for uncertainty. He set about becoming several people at once.
There is something almost Victorian about the origin story of M.J. Dyer’s We Are Monsters. It begins not with a candlelit manor or a governess on the moors, but in a hospital room, where the author, recovering from brain inflammation, began seeing three identical sisters. They appeared first in nightmares and hallucinations. Later, in a charity shop, M.J. found an old photograph from the early twentieth century: three identical sisters, looking uncannily like the women her injured brain had invented. A less haunted writer might have taken this as coincidence. M.J. took it as instruction.
Lee Goldberg has spent much of his career turning murder into an oddly companionable profession. He’s the sort of writer who speaks about craft as if it were both a calling and a chronic illness. His new novel, Murder by Design, launches a fresh mystery series, though “fresh” may be too tidy a word for a book that seems purposefully engineered to scuff the furniture of the classic whodunit. At the center of the novel is Edison Bixby, a rich, handsome, infuriatingly brilliant man whose gift is not merely noticing what others miss but recognizing how the built world quietly bosses us around. In Bixby’s mind, architecture, lighting, retail layout, landscape design, all the little tyrannies of human arrangement become motive, means, and opportunity. The premise sounds unlikely until Lee begins talking about it, at which point the reader may find himself regarding the nearest shopping mall, airport terminal, or grocery aisle with fresh suspicion.
There’s something irresistible about a mystery that sparkles. Not just with intrigue, but with history, beauty, and the quiet suggestion that every object, every artifact, every gem carries a story waiting to be uncovered. Sometimes, those stories have been buried for a reason. Today’s guest knows that better than most. C. B. Wilson is an award-winning author whose storytelling blends sharp mystery, a deep love of animals, and a lifelong fascination with gems and the secrets they hold. That passion goes all the way back to childhood, when a single Nancy Drew novel didn’t just inspire her to read, it inspired her to rewrite the ending. Since then, she’s built worlds where curiosity leads the way and where even the smallest clue can unlock something extraordinary.
The best suspense does not rely on shadows or sudden violence, but on the slow, suffocating realization that the systems meant to protect you may instead conspire against you. It is this more insidious terror that animates Liz Lazarus’s latest novel, Dawn Before Darkness. It’s a read that feels less like fiction and more like a carefully reconstructed warning. Liz did not arrive at storytelling through the usual avenues. Hers is a course that bends through the pragmatic corridors of engineering and corporate leadership. A graduate of Georgia Institute of Technology and a former executive at General Electric, she speaks of writing not as a youthful ambition but as something closer to an intrusion. The first novel, she tells me, “would not leave me alone.” It lingered, insistent, until it demanded form. That origin story matters, because it reveals something essential about her fiction. These are not stories she set out to tell. They are stories she could not avoid.
Peter Samuelson has the look of a man who long ago discovered that life is less a ladder than a series of trapdoors. The trick is not avoiding the fall but learning whom to pull up with you. A film producer by trade, a philanthropist by instinct, and a storyteller by force of personality, Peter has spent decades turning private compassion into public architecture. His 2025 book, Finding Happy: A User’s Guide for Your Life with Lessons from Mine, is not so much a memoir as a field manual for the young, the searching, and the occasionally bewildered adult who still suspects that meaning may be hiding somewhere beyond ambition.
Anonymous Jane, the collaboration between Australian novelist Luke Preston and Spanish film director Alice Waddington, appears to belong to that highly kinetic family of thriller that does not so much begin as detonate. Its heroine is not introduced with the polish of a franchise icon or the suave indifference of a tuxedoed assassin. Jane arrives already under pressure. She is a fixer, a spy, a weaponized problem-solver. Then the machinery of genre does something startlingly intimate. It gives her two diagnoses at once: pregnancy and terminal illness. That collision is the engine of the project. Preston, who has written as Jack Quade, began with a dissatisfaction familiar to anyone who has watched James Bond save the world and still seem emotionally untroubled by dinnertime. Bond changes the world around him, Preston tells me, but rarely changes himself. Jane was conceived as the rebuttal. Her mission is not merely geopolitical. The stakes have moved from the map room into the body.
In Hawai‘i Rage, Tori Eldridge does not merely set a mystery against the backdrop of Hawai‘i. She lets the land breathe, brood, and remember. The result is a novel that feels less like a whodunit and more like a slow excavation, where each layer of soil yields not just clues, but inheritance. At the center of the story is Makalani, an interpretive ranger whose professional instincts have been dulled by a posting beneath her capabilities. When she is drawn into investigating a rancher’s gruesome death, the narrative begins its quiet pivot. The family surrounding the dead man feels misaligned, as if their grief has seams, and Makalani begins to pull at them.
What happens when an unsettling, real-life moment completely reshapes a creative journey? In this episode, host Terry Shepherd sits down with acclaimed novelist Martha Conway to explore her deeply moving and speculative new novel, We Meet Apart. Set in 1990s Ireland, the book follows two grieving sisters, Gabby and Sabine, navigating a dual reality: one rooted in the world we know, and another shaped by an alternate history where Nazi Germany has invaded Ireland. Separated across these parallel timelines, they are able to meet for a limited time at twilight—a narrative mechanic beautifully inspired by 17th-century Irish folklore. It is a quietly devastating exploration of love, sisterhood, and how we handle loss. In this conversation, Terry and Martha dive deep into the writing process, discussing: The Flight That Changed Everything: How a terrifying emergency landing during a transatlantic flight served as the creative sign Martha needed to write a novel set in her ancestral homeland. Unlocking the Title: The Emily Dickinson poem that provided the perfect, bone-chilling title after endless lists of options fell short. Balancing the Tension: Martha's tactical approach to pacing a dual-timeline narrative, ensuring the emotional weight of grief matches the high stakes of a wartime occupation. The Power of Sisterhood: How growing up in a large family with six sisters shapes Martha's frequent exploration of complex sibling bonds. A Sneak Peek at What's Next: A look into her upcoming novel, which takes place in a dangerous 1820 New Hampshire factory town. Whether you are a fan of historical fiction, magical realism, or powerful family dramas, this episode offers a fascinating look inside a master storyteller's process.
Alma Norris inherited the Quick Stop gas station and grocery store when her father was killed by an armed robber around the time I flamed out at the cop shop. The place was a regular 10-7 location for police officers because the coffee was always free and Alma, then her father’s employee, was a knock-out. Since his death, stress, a sedentary lifestyle, and access to an inventory of junk food had put on the pounds. I still saw the bathing beauty behind the tired blue eyes. We shared “Last Man Standing Syndrome,” the realization that you were the only survivor of your generation, without kids or siblings to lean on. A gym membership and a little self-discipline in the potato chip isle could open up procreational possibilities for Alma, a topic I occasionally suggested, and she always ducked. The Paloma Quick Stop became the address of record on my PI license, a mail drop for my few financial obligations and a public meeting place for conversations with clients. That’s Alma’s cell number you’ll find on my business card. The Quick Stop doesn’t have a land line. Neither does the salt box house her father left her. So, she simply says, “Hello,” whenever the phone rings and personalizes the conversation when she figures out who is calling and why.
In the long tradition of New York love stories, the collaboration between Ashley Wren Collins and Jordan Rockwell arrives with a kind of self-awareness that feels both modern and faintly nostalgic. Their novel, SHE WROTE, HE WROTE: A New York Love Story, is not merely about romance, but about the mechanics of seeing and being seen, of telling a story from opposite sides of the same emotional street. It is, in essence, a duet. The authors’ own origin story carries the improbable rhythm of a romantic comedy. They orbited each other for years, nearly meeting, missing, and re-missing again, until chance, that most New York of muses, intervened in a train station and later, on a beach. Their early encounters, marked by mismatched timing and comic misfires, seem less like prelude and more like proof of concept: that chemistry, when it finally ignites, often does so with the benefit of delay.
Sometimes it's best to let the characters control the story.
There is a moment, late in Journey Back Into the Vault: In Search of My Faded Cuban Childhood Footprints, when author Mario Cartaya sits on a balcony in Havana and encounters a boy he once was. The scene unfolds as a memory, whole, insistent, and strangely alive. Mario’s memoir is, on its surface, a story familiar to the American imagination. A child leaves Cuba in 1960 under the shadow of political upheaval, grows up in the United States, learns a new language, absorbs a new culture, and ultimately thrives. He becomes an architect of note, builds a successful firm, and is honored in the country that became his home. Yet the book resists the tidy arc of immigrant triumph. It is less concerned with what was built than with what was buried.
What happens when history repeats itself and the global balance of power shifts overnight? In this episode, host Terry Shepherd sits down with Dr. Ralph DeFalco, the "Renaissance man" and author behind the chilling political thriller, The Counterfeit. Ralph discusses the historical patterns and current geopolitical trends that inspired his vision of a fractured, post-conflict America. We explore a world where the United States has been economically crippled and politically compromised, forcing its citizens to navigate a new reality of desperation and foreign influence.
What happens when a legal case cracks open a wound a man has kept sealed his entire life? In this episode, award-winning broadcaster Terry Shepherd dives deep with legendary trial lawyer, radio host, and author Mike Papantonio to discuss his latest legal thriller, A Death in Arcadia. From the brutal reality of Florida’s youth detention centers to the high-stakes world of corporate litigation, Papantonio shares the real-life inspirations behind his fiction. He reveals how a 100-year history of abuse at a North Florida facility and a candid conversation with Paris Hilton led him to write this powerful story.
The Horse-Sized Crow Kirsten reveals that the book originated from a single, startling dream of a crow the size of a horse. While the image was jarring, she felt curiosity rather than fear, leading her to create a female "mad scientist" protagonist—a rarity in a genre typically dominated by male figures like Frankenstein. Logic, Longing, and Motherhood The conversation explores the character of Agnes, a scientist who begins the novel having lost her parents, her job, and her child. Kirsten explains how Agnes’s scientific mind attempts to "solve" her daughter Mina’s birth defect through a breeding program, inadvertently crossing the line between care and control. Key Discussion Points: Generational Inheritance: How Agnes is shaped by her mother’s poetic journals and her father’s history in the Vietnam War. The Isolation of the Pandemic: How writing during the global lockdown informed the book's themes of solitude and scientific obsession. The Voice of Science: Kirsten describes the effort of developing Agnes’s scientific tone and the use of a journal format to sustain tension. The Art of Revision: Why Kirsten views the first draft as "vomiting the clay" and revision as the essential "sculpting" of a story. "The things that we bury do not stay dead." For readers who seek the "pleasurable dread" of the dark and the unsettling, this interview offers a deep dive into the craft of a writer who isn't afraid to get "close to the bone". Connect with Kirsten Kashock: Website: kirstenkashock.com
In this episode of In Conversation with Terry Shepherd, Terry dives deep into the writer's craft with author and artist Karen Ann Phillips to celebrate the release of A Deadly Hook, the third and final installment in her popular Rocky Nelson series. What happens when a peaceful weekend in the Sierra Nevadas is interrupted by a Bigfoot sighting and a shocking murder? Karen shares how her protagonist, Raquel "Rocky" Nelson—a retired boxer with a soft heart and a knockout punch—navigates a sinister mystery that leaves one of her own friends as the prime suspect. Inside This Episode A Different Kind of Sleuth: Why Karen chose to make her protagonist a 55-year-old boxer instead of a traditional bakery owner to set her apart in the "cozy" genre. Art Imitating Life: The autobiographical elements behind Rocky, including Karen’s own boxing lessons and her "money pit" experience owning a vintage trailer. Handling Heavy Themes: How Karen weaves sensitive topics like suicide and sibling rivalry into a traditional mystery while maintaining a "heartfelt" tone and a happy ending. The Romantic Tussle: Rocky’s ultimate choice between the "hot firefighter" and the "handsome detective". The Writing Process: Karen’s transition from short stories to novels, her use of "sprints" for discipline, and the mentors who helped her along the way. About Karen Ann Phillips Karen Ann Phillips is a novelist and a professional cover designer. She is an active member of the writing community, including Sisters in Crime and Capital Crimes. While A Deadly Hook wraps up Rocky’s journey, Karen is already at work on her next project: The Mother Daughter Detective Agency. Connect with Karen: Website: karenaphillips.com Featured Book: A Deadly Hook Mentioned in this Episode Sisters in Crime & Capital Crimes (Sacramento Chapter) Eight Weeks to a Complete Book by Becky Clark Writing mentors: Cindy Sample and Penny Warner
The hallways of the Department of Justice suggest permanence. The floors shine with the sort of institutional polish that implies continuity rather than creativity. One imagines ambition moving briskly there, not imagination. Yet for Chad Boudreaux, who reported to Main Justice on September 10, 2001, the building would become less a monument to order than an antechamber to narrative possibility.
When a respected judge is killed, three unlikely heroes — a young lawyer, a theology doctoral candidate, and a quirky tech genius — have just 72 hours to decode the clues buried in his computer. What they uncover sends them on a desperate chase across Florida, hunted by a relentless killer, and ultimately face-to-face with a secret that could change the world. Gary shares the remarkable journey behind the book: from poetry and songwriting as a kid, to careers in tech and law, to 15 drafts over 20 years before finally publishing his debut. He talks about the spiritual concept of "the Words" — his belief that creativity connects us all — and why themes of human destiny, interconnectedness, and justice run through every page. You'll also hear his surprisingly chilling take on artificial intelligence, what Henry VIII has to do with the future of political freedom, and why Joshua Sutton — his protagonist — will be back for a sequel.
n her powerful new memoir, Hostage: A Memoir of Terrorism, Trauma, and Resilience, Mimi takes us back to September 6, 1970. She was twenty years old, returning home to New York from a summer on a kibbutz in Israel, wearing a green mini-dress, expecting an ordinary flight and an ordinary landing. Instead, her plane was hijacked by armed members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and forced into the desert of Jordan. For six days, passengers were trapped in sweltering heat without running water or flushable toilets, caught in fear, uncertainty, and the relentless pressure of survival. Most were eventually released. But Mimi, falsely accused of being an Israeli soldier, was held along with thirty-one others in Amman as violence exploded around them, and the reality of what could happen at any moment settled in.
What happens when a Silicon Valley pioneer trades the boardroom for the open road? 🏍️✨ I recently sat down with Michael Yang, the founder of MySimon, to talk about his incredible new memoir, "Coming Alive on the Ride." Michael reached the "Silicon Valley summit" early, but he discovered that the view from the top can be surprisingly isolating. From arriving in San Jose as a teenager with no English to navigating the unpredictable world of tech and eventually riding a motorcycle to the tip of Patagonia, Michael’s story is about much more than business—it’s about "shin-na-geh" (a state of joyful immersion). Here are a few takeaways from our conversation: - Adaptability is everything: Whether it’s a broken shifter in a Patagonia storm or being pushed out of a company you built, how you pivot defines your success. - The "Personal Exit": The most important exit isn't financial; it’s stepping beyond your comfort zone to rediscover yourself. - Confidence is balance: Much like riding a motorcycle or standing up to a bully, confidence is a skill that must be practiced daily. If you’ve ever felt "stalled" despite hitting your goals, Michael’s journey is a powerful reminder that reinvention is always possible if you just keep moving.
What happens when an unemployed newspaper reporter returns to Hawaii to ghostwrite for a controversial developer? In Jennifer’s debut novel, "Ghosts of Waikīkī," the answer is a cocktail of mystery, family secrets, and a murder investigation led by—of course—the protagonist's ex. Now officially available in paperback, Jennifer sat down with Terry Shepherd to pull back the curtain on her writing process. From "sheltering in place" during the 2020 pandemic to sneaking in chapters during lunch breaks and finding plot breakthroughs in Zumba class, Jennifer’s story is a masterclass in persistence and passion.
Gemini said How well do we truly know the people we love? In the latest episode, I sit down with Danielle Girard to discuss her haunting new thriller, "Pinky Swear." This isn't a story of cartoon villains or "moral origami." Instead, it’s a dive into the "slanted middle"—the messy, gray area where devotion slides into delusion. Born from the "ashes of a collapsed marriage" and the quiet, wintry silence of Montana, Danielle’s 17th novel is a work of emotional archaeology. We dig into: The Ultimate Betrayal: What happens when a surrogate vanishes just days before the birth? The Reality of Evil: Why the most terrifying threats aren't monsters, but the ordinary betrayals that erode our safety. Professional Reinvention: Danielle’s journey of starting over mid-career and finding a new voice in the "fog." "Writing is like driving in the fog... trusting that the road will reveal itself in increments no longer than a single headlight beam."
Today’s guest writes the kind of cozy mysteries that feel like coming home. Warm-hearted, sharp-witted, and packed with real charm. The kind where the sleuth is relatable, the stakes are personal, and the animals aren’t just background scenery. They’re true characters you end up rooting for.
What happens when a life built on discipline, survival, and excellence finally makes room for joy? In this episode, we explore Steeped, the powerful memoir of retired neurosurgeon Dr. Craig Yorke, whose journey stretches from the charged streets of Boston’s Roxbury to the operating rooms of America’s heartland, and ultimately back to the music that first shaped him.
What does it actually take to bring that dash of vanilla extract to your kitchen counter? Emmanuel Laroche shares the history and culture of Vanilla and Madagascar.
In the wake of heartbreak, some of us retreat, some of us rebuild—and some of us make a plan. For Corey Seemiller, a forty-something lesbian determined not to drown in loneliness, that plan became a mission. Days after a viral photo of her ex with a new love flooded her feed, Corey armed herself with a meticulously detailed checklist for healing and reinvention.
Dr. Kearse’s memoir, The Other Madisons: The Lost History of a President’s Black Family, reads less like a genealogical pursuit than a careful reopening of a wound America has never fully allowed to heal. The story began not in archives or libraries, but in a quiet domestic gesture. In 1990, her mother arrived at her Massachusetts home carrying a box filled with photographs, marriage certificates, clippings, fragments of remembrance. Inside lay a sentence whispered to Madison descendants for generations, a family instruction passed down with the intimacy of prayer. Always remember you are a Madison. You come from African slaves and a president.
My guest is author and health practitioner Angela M. Petersen, and her new book is The Wellness Glitch: Remembering What It Really Means to Be Well. Angela has built her career at the intersection of functional health, hormone optimization, metabolism, and real-world biology, and she’s not afraid to say what a lot of people have started to suspect. The modern wellness industry may have lost the plot.
Ghost Town, the newest novel from Dr. James R. Gregory—a writer whose own journey from global branding visionary to bestselling storyteller is as compelling as the tales he creates. We meet Sammy Murphy, a young man raised in near-total isolation, navigating a life shaped by dark mine shafts, long-buried secrets, and a longing for connection he can barely name. His story intertwines with that of Barry Bacon, a titan-in-the-making whose ambition rivals the Carnegies and Rockefellers of his age. As Bacon’s empire begins to crack under the weight of its own excesses, and Sammy experiences an unexpected awakening through a brief but life-altering love, both men are forced to confront the deeper truths about power, belonging, and what it means to be fully human.
Today, Joe Battaglia joins us to talk about the real-world tensions that inspired the novel "Beneath the Rings," the journalists who risk everything to shine light into the dark, and what it takes to blend global politics, Olympic spectacle, and pulse-pounding suspense into a story that feels frighteningly close to reality.
RED GRADE: A Jenn Herrington Wyoming Mystery, drops us into the rarefied world of elite polo when a celebrated player dies mid-match—an apparent accident that quickly unravels into something far more sinister. Underground betting, performance-enhancing drugs, and the quiet violence of privilege all surface as former prosecutor Jenn Herrington is pulled back into the legal arena. Then the case turns personal. The evidence begins pointing toward Jenn’s own husband, forcing her into an impossible choice between justice and the man she loves.
I’m excited to welcome Julie Snider, whose debut novel, Chapel Bay Secrets, follows Brenda Kato, a Japanese American librarian in a quiet coastal California town, where a threatened book ban and long-buried tensions force everything she thought was safe into question. With themes of censorship, identity, bigotry, LGBTQ+ belonging, grief, and community, Chapel Bay Secrets is both timely and deeply human.
Whether it’s a word count on your current work in progress, a text or email to an important person in your life, or a comment inspired by a post you enjoyed, it all counts!
In his new book, Making It Up: A Revolutionary Way to Bond with Kids Through Play, Christopher Mannino draws on the principles of improv and theater to show parents how to step into their children’s imaginative worlds—no acting background required. With the simple idea of “yes, and…,” he offers practical, playful techniques that fit into busy lives and transform just ten minutes a day into deeper connection, more confidence, and a lot more joy.
"I needed one credit to graduate. My adviser set up an independent study project where I would spend the day at a local indie bookstore and write my reflections. What happened there still gives me nightmares." Curious Books: A short story collection with paranormal seasoning. Plus stand-alone tales and a peek at Jessica Ramirez's early years as a rookie cop.
In From Work to What’s Next, the Charleses draw from sixty combined years of experience to reimagine the transition from paycheck to purpose. They share stories of real people confronting the “now what” of retirement, unpack the myths of financial freedom, and introduce tools like the Financial Ikigai framework and Dynamic Income Planning to build a next chapter that’s both practical and deeply personal.