Books That Make You Podcast

Books That Make You Join With Aliens to Face a Common Threat How about genre-bending today? Beth Freely, award-winning author and BookFest Bellwether, is also a businesswoman and publishing industry professional. Raised in upstate New York and a temporary ex-pat in Great Britain, today she's settled and writing in New Mexico. Her novel, Beyond the Steps of Stone, illustrates in detail a future Ear...

Books That Make You Mix Historical Cultures, Artifacts and, indeed, Aliens KG Maw is back with us to discuss his book The Lazarus Project , the latest in his rich and stimulating "KV 66" series. Certainly a lot has happened since his previous visit, in both his fictional world and the real one. Ancient Egypt, the land of the Pharaohs, and the mysteries surrounding the pyramids, tombs, and more all...

Books That Make You Tuck In With a Great Mystery We all love a book that makes you want to pour a cup of joe and cozy up by the crackling fireplace. And that's what Donalee Moulton delivers in her debut novel, Hung Out to Die . The mystery follows Riel, a California-born transplant to Nova Scotia, where he is CEO of the Canadian Cannabis Corporation. Things seem to work out—until Riel finds his wo...

Books That Make You Think About Your Own Humanness as a Writer As with any art, writing is both a natural talent and a developed skill. Many folks erroneously believe it's all natural, or that storytelling is so ingrained in us that anyone can do it well. So far as we know, no other creature writes. Using the written word to relate stories is a very human endeavor. Until now. As everyone has heard...

Books That Make You Enter A Dark, Political Fantasy Realm We all love villains we can relish hating, and new realms we can escape into. Mix all this with a dark fantasy world, and political satire, and you might just get The Amber Menhir , the first book in "The Shadows of the Monolith" series. Debut author Jonathan N. Pruitt is a lifelong educator turned fantasy writer. His redemption arc took hi...

Books That Make You Try New Things and be…Brave-ish What happens when you're almost fifty, undergoing divorced and moving back into your parent's home to start from the beginning? If you're like Lisa Niver, you start by taking one "braveish" step at a time. For Lisa, each step took her away from her old world and into a bold new adventurous one. In her new memoir, Brave-ish: One Breakup, Six Conti...

Books That Make You Uncover—and Celebrate—Your Cranky Superpowers Yeah, everyone gets cranky. We all get on one another's nerves, indulge in moments where we grumble, snap or lash out at the ones we love, or whoever's in the unfortunate position of having to put up with us. But imagine if you could harness that crankiness, use it, even, like a superpower? With his latest book, Steven Joseph Cranky...

Books That Make You Rich—Then Send You Walking New York Streets with Madwomen As with all creatives, authors have many angles and interests. They can cross genre boundaries, producing books that, while superficially different from one another, harbor a thematic through-line—if you look hard enough.   A bestselling author, and founder of the Thought Leader Academy, Sara Connell helps coaches, write...

Books That Make You and Your Kids Better Connect Connecting with their Hidden Potential and Greatness It's important that kids come to recognize the true depths of their potential, before the world's "limiting stories" begin bombarding them, poisoning them from achieving what they hope—and can—for themselves. Bestselling author Sarah Vie discusses her children's book, Let Your Inner Golden Sparkle...

Books That Make You Enter a World of Old Occult Objects You Definitely Should Not Mess With We all love cautionary tales that warn of the things that shouldn't be messed with. So what happens when you mix horror and suspense with timeless topics like family, family history and the specter of potentially losing it all? You get one of those page-turners you never want to put down. Inspired by true e...

Books That Make You Envision Agriculture in an Apocalyptic America If society crumbled and you had to fend for yourself, how would you go about it? Do you know how to grow crops? Or purify water? Or protect the ones you love at all costs? In her dystopian book series "Asylum," Susy Smith explores these questions. In the gripping world she's created, a young woman must learn to live off the land on...

Books That Make You…Tune In Are you an audio book fan? Are your kids? Particularly beneficial for auditory learners, or for those of us who like to multitask while taking in our stories, the industry has come a long way since the days of "books on tape". Author Kelly Anne Manuel is known for connecting with children through her poetry and her books. She boasts a total of 31 books, one for each day...

Books That Make You Venture Across Magical Realms You're graduating from high school, getting ready to chase your dreams on Broadway—then, the whole shuts down. We all went through it. Depending on your age and career, though, it struck many of us more profoundly. But under that despair, creatives did what they do best: they created. Vianlix-Christine Schneider wrote her first book, Seaside Magic,...

Books That Make You Go on Amazing Time-Traveling Adventures with Your PopPop Very often, children's books give us stories that become a foundational fixture in one's early life, emphasizing wonder, exploration and love of learning. Retired accountant and children's book author William Stevenson—known also as PopPop to young Ricky— has given us a wonderfully imaginative, historical series inspired...

Books That Make You Explore Antarctica, Facing Down Dangers and—A Lost 8 th Continent? We read books from the safety of our home, maybe our back porch, batting away a few summer mosquitos or, in the fall, curled up before the fireplace. It's amazing how books transport us to certain dangerous places—real and imaginary—and unveil realms most of us can only dream about. In his new release, Mighty Ba...

Books That Make You Write and Publish Your Own Successful Book When you read books, you often, in time, feel that tug to write your own. Every writer who ever was started their creative life as a reader. So now that you feel that pull to put pen to paper, or fingertips to keyboards, just how do you go about it? In Self-Publish & Succeed , trusted best-selling author and entrepreneur Julie Broad sh...

Books That Make You Become the Best Dad You Can Be Parenting can be tough, full of challenges and unknowns, and the struggles of young moms are well known. It's important, too, to offer guidance and support to young dads. J Hall—author, educator, podcaster, and all-around family guy—has just released his first book, God Help Me! I'm a Young Dad: 10 Essentials for Becoming the Dad Your Kids Need ....

Books That Make You Acknowledge Pride Month June is Pride Month. It's especially poignant this year, too, with so many LGBTQ+ books being challenged across the country, and winding up on banned-book lists. Author Lee Wind's "Queer as a Five-Dollar Bill: The Podcast" will drop thirty-six episodes in June 2023, as both a celebration of Pride Month and a response to the book-banning and intimidation...

Books That Make You Reconsider an Element Like Calcium Even as so many things connect us in this world and in nature, often we fail to see the most fundamental, and important, elements. Literally. Not Korynn Newville. She kicks off her new series "Indiscernible Elements" with a unique take on the element calcium, in her book, Indiscernible Elements: Calcium . Yes, that well-known health benefit to...

Books That Make You Enter a Fantastical, Magic-Filled Saga Following Three Generations of Witches   There is nothing like a series with tons of fun, twisting family drama to get us turning pages. But what's it like when said family happens to be comprised of witches?   Marieke Lexmond's series "The Madigan Chronicles" is six books covering three generations of headstrong witches, and the fate of f...

Books That Make You Understand a Mother's Love, and Follow a Journey of Strength and Perseverance Christy Texeira, mother and BookFest-award-winner, has a new book, Pink Elephants , which tells the story of a family pushed to the edge as they face the reality of their daughter's rare, life-threatening illness. The book beautifully chronicles their private moments of tenderness, as we reconcile our...

Books That Make You Launch into Outer Space – With No Less Than Snoodles Steven Joseph, beloved children's book author, crankiness expert and humorist, has darkened our door a fourth time to offer tongue-twisting laughs with his latest installment of the "Snoodles" Saga: Snoodles in Space: A Snoodle, The Zoodle Kidoodles, and One Happy Schmoodle . Steven discusses how the beloved series was concep...

Books That Make You Charge Up a Mountain on a Motorbike We all love coming of age stories, those tales of the struggles and obstacles to fit in, and to find yourself. Danger Peak is the BookFest Award winner that swings us back to the 1980s with three teens members of The Wild Boars, the motorbike-racing club. With the unwitting help of their quirky technology teacher, Dr. Howard, they build Rober...

Books That Make You Go On a Science Fiction Adventure That's Both Epic and Inclusive A writer since she was a child, Rebecca Inch-Partridge grew up writing stories about The Bionic Woman meeting, say, Captain Kirk. Escaping the Dashia , her first novel, is a YA science fantasy that tells the story of young telepath Twyla, abducted by her mother and forced to participate in the criminal organizatio...

Books That Make You Stand at the Crossroads of God, Science, Technology and History A scientist who believes in both God and evolution, Mark J. Rose is also an author who whisks readers back in time with his series Matt Miller in the Colonies, a set of historical science-fiction stories. Along with his curiosity and creativity, he carries an adventurous and exploratory spirit, which has him travel...