A Bookish Home

This week, I'm revisiting a recent episode and announcing a new project. A Bookish's Home new Substack Newsletter launched this week.  If your favorite way to discover new books is hearing from the authors themselves (and you’re short on time!) this newsletter is for you. The first edition is On Writing and Resistance: An Interview with Author Maria van Lieshout. This week on the podcast we're also revisiting one of my favorite episodes of the year with bestselling author Marjan Kamali in which we discussed The Lion Women of Tehran, a heartfelt, epic new novel of friendship, betrayal, and redemption set against three transformative decades in Iran. For folks in the New England area, Marjan will be appearing at the upcoming Newburyport Literary Festival on Saturday, April 26th in this event: On Friendship and Freedom: Marjan Kamali in Conversation With Jenna Blum

This week, Deanna Raybourn is here to discuss her new novel Kills Well With Others. Deanna’s first book in this series, Killers of a Certain Age, was dubbed “Golden Girls meets James Bond” by Buzzfeed and  was an instant New York Times bestseller, garnering rave reviews and landing on many “best of the year” lists. Now, readers’ favorite foursome of elite middle-aged assassins is back in Kills Well With Others. After the events of the previous novel and laying low for more than a year, Billie, Helen, Mary Alice, and Natalie are called back into action, embarking on a globetrotting wild ride to root out a mole within their organization.

I'm so happy to share that Patti Callahan Henry returns to the podcast this week to discuss her new novel!   The Story She Left Behind is a beautiful, hopeful historical novel that explores female creativity, second chances, mother/daughter relationships, and a real-life literary mystery while also whisking us off to England's Lake District and the world of Beatrix Potter.   Listen in as we dive into the kernels of curiosity and inspiration that led to the novel.

This week my guest is J.C. Cervantes, author of The Anatomy of Magic, about a young woman who learns to embrace all the messy imperfections of life and love with some help from her magical family. Perfect for fans of Encanto and Practical Magic, this is the companion novel to her adult debut, The Enchanted Hacienda,  which the New York Times Book Review dubbed "like dipping your brain into a jar of serotonin.”

This week my guest is Francesca Segal, author of Welcome to Glorious Tuga, the literary comfort read we all need right now. A complete and vivid world to escape to, Welcome to Glorious Tuga celebrates a fictional island, and the eccentric community who live there. Enchanting, uplifting and very funny, this is a captivating novel about love, belonging, and what it really means to come home.

Calling all my fellow recovering people pleasers - Amy Wilson, host of the What Fresh Hell podcast, is here this week to discuss her new book of essays from Zibby Books, which explores how women and mothers are conditioned to be "happy to help" and how we might try to do things a bit differently.

This week, Julia Kelly is back with us to discuss her new novel, The Dressmakers of London, about estranged sisters who inherit their late mother’s dress shop in World War II London.  We discuss unearthing women's everyday experiences in history, how rationing affected women's fashion during World War II, the lasting impact on clothing design,  ties to today's slow fashion movement, and much more.

Just in time for Valentine's Day —Melissa Ferguson is here this week to give us the inside scoop on "The Perfect Rom-Com" for writers and bibliophiles to pick up next. We discussed turning moments from her own writing journey into this romcom about an aspiring novelist, chronicling life with her family on Our Friendly Farmhouse, carving out a writing routine as a busy mom, the dilemmas of ghostwriting, and much more. Past guest of the podcast RaeAnne Thayne raves that with The Perfect Rom-Com, "Melissa Ferguson delivers yet another sparkling, laugh-out-loud romance!" 

This week, Tara Dorabji shares the path to publishing her debut novel, Call Her Freedom. A sweeping family saga and intergenerational love story, the book was also the winner of Simon & Schuster’s Books Like Us First Novel Contest, a competition for underrepresented writers to submit their manuscripts and win a book deal. A deeply moving novel about one woman’s love for her family, this is an epic investigation of colonialism, militarization, and the loss and innocence on the journey to creating home. 

 Today one of my favorite authors, Fiona Davis is back on A Bookish Home to tell us all about her dazzling new novel, The Stolen Queen.  For nearly a decade, Fiona Davis has introduced readers to the fascinating and often little known histories behind some of New York City’s most iconic landmarks through the eyes of female characters seeking the truth about themselves and the world around them. Now, in her enthralling eighth novel, The Stolen Queen, Fiona Davis delights readers with a story centered on the Metropolitan Museum of Art and its famed Met Gala, while for the first time, exploring a territory beyond New York City—Egypt’s Valley of the Kings.