BookSpeak Network

Science, soldiers, and potentially humanity are pitted against a biological killer in "Sudden Onset." A brilliant scientist, Mira Wallace is paired with Sgt. Rain Somerdale in a quest to find the destroyer. Along the way, joined by colleagues (some with ulterior motives), questions of science, morality, and ethics come into play, as all may end up questioning the meaning of it all. The f...

Today on Milford House Mysteries, co-hosts Sherry Knowlton and JM West talk about “Book Event Etiquette” – some tips for authors about how to best prepare for book events and some of the etiquette involved in a typical event. Book events offer a great way for authors to connect with readers – potential readers, longtime fans of their work, and everyone in between. Movies and TV shows about writers...

The time is 1911, in Piedmont, Italy. A budding young musician, Pietro thinks nothing but of music and working in the family vineyard with his grandfather, Nonno. Circumstance takes a tragic turn, as Pietro must pull up stakes, and armed with only his clarinet, emigrate to America. Also on a voyage of her own is Assunta, a woman who also seeks a new life. Settling in Pennsylvania, the two watch fa...

On this episode of The Milford House Mysteries, co-hosts JM West and Sherry Knowlton interview author Bruce J. Berger. Following a 40-year career as a trial attorney in Washington, DC, Berger turned fulltime to writing, earned a M.F.A. in Creative Writing from American University, and now teaches there. Berger's latest novel, The Music Stalker, was released in October by Black Rose Writing. K...

William (W.P.) Rigler has made his creative way through the written word as the author of "Certain Shadows I Have Known," "Stranger Thoughts," "Terror's Taste," and other works. With an eye for the paranormal, horror and fantasy, he is also known as Adam Dust in the science fiction world with "Masters of the Alpha Crystals."A graduate of the Broadcastin...

On this episode of The Milford House Mysteries, co-hosts Joan West and Sherry Knowlton interview author, C. Lee Ryder about her new book, Black Clover. InBlack Clover Ryder tells the true story of the heart-wrenching small town murder of her brother in the Amberson Valley of Franklin County, Pennsylvania. She also details the lengths to "which the legal system can be manipulated if the family...

An author, journalist, and educator, David Healey has proven himself prolific, in both the fiction and non-fiction worlds. "Pacific Sniper" is the latest in a series of novels that looks down the sight of that particular specialist, both from the American and Japanese perspectives, in an island battle. Healey's writings take us through world and civil wars, step into the Young Adult...

Mike Jacobs is a young, idealistic environmental lawyer working for the Department of Environmental Protection, and he is thrown into a case of intrigue, violence, and courtroom drama in "Amid Rage." A Western Pennsylvania strip mine is the battleground as its owner will do whatever it takes to get every bit of coal from the ground, and if it means buying off landowners (or stronger tact...

Lee Anne Post is the pen name for co-authors Catherine Baldau, Tara Bell, Ginny Fite, and K.P. Robbins. Stories by these award-winning authors have appeared in numerous journals and individually they have published nine novels. They have worked as reporters and editors, in politics and philanthropy, and in advertising and educational institutions. Having met in a writer’s critique group for over f...

On this episode of The Milford House Mysteries, co-hosts Joan West and Sherry Knowlton give a nod to the season with Halloween Haunts and Horrors in Books & Movies. Joan and Sherry talk about the origins of Halloween and the various traditions and creatures associated with the holiday. They spend most of the podcast talking about the many books, movies and television shows that have grown out...

Displaced is Linda Schwab’s Holocaust memoir, a retelling of her experience surviving 18 months in a man-made cave, another year as an exile in Poland and Germany, and three years as a refugee in a displaced persons camp. Just six years old when a band of Nazi soldiers arrived in her tiny shtetl in Myadel, Poland, Linda observed atrocities no child ever needs to witness. Written with historian Tod...

On this episode of The MIlford House Mysteries, co-hosts Sherry Knowlton and J.M. West welcome fellow Sunbury Press author, Carolyn Kleinman. Kleinman will talk to us about her debut novel, Love, Faith, and the Dented Bullet. A retired English and English as a Second Language teacher, Kleinman has always been a reader and a storyteller and enjoys writing books that explore how people respond to li...

Hope in Hell: How We Can Confront the Climate Crisis & Save the Earth (Earth Aware Editions, April 2021).  It's no longer a Climate Crisis.  It has become a Climate Emergency. Ultimately optimistic despite the dire challenge presented to the world, Porritt explores current science and new technologies, mobilization of younger people and political action, and encouraging intergenerational...

Henry enjoys going to visit his grandfather in Athens, Ohio. One day, they discover a pawpaw tree; Henry doesn't know what it is, but Grandpa sure knows about it. In learning about pawpaw, Henry learns about doing something new and different and has fun in the process. Kaitlin Kuliich is a journalist, a reporter for WTAP Television, the former editor of The Avenue News, and a realtor. Her fir...

Losing Earth: A Recent History by Nathaniel Rich (MCD, April 2019)By 1979, we knew nearly everything we understand today about climate change―including how to stop it. Over the next decade, a handful of scientists, politicians, and strategists, led by two unlikely heroes, risked their careers in a desperate, escalating campaign to convince the world to act before it was too late. Losing Earth is t...

Hope Matters: Why Changing the Way We think is Critical to Solving the Environmental Crisis (Greystone Books, Oct 2020) by Elin Kelsey. Fears about climate change are fueling an epidemic of despair across the world: adults worry about their children’s future; thirty-somethings question whether they should have kids or not; and many young people honestly believe they have no future at all. In the f...

On this episode of Milford House Mysteries, we feature co-host JM West and her new book of historical nonfiction, Madam Bessie Jones: Her Life and Times. Co-host Sherry Knowlton will interview West about her decision to take on a scandalous southcentral Pennsylvania figure and an unsolved murder for her first foray into historical non-fiction. We’ll also talk about West’s Carlisle Crime Cases seri...

(A highly prescient fiction account that helps all of us see the bleak future we are creating.)Blue Karma (Mar 2019, Spaekona Press) by J.K. Ullrich. Came out digitally in 2015.  In the near dystopian future, water is the coin of the realm.  People steal it.  People die for it.  Empires depend on it.  Water.  It covers almost three quarters of the planet, comprises more than half the human body, a...

The Pulaski Saga takes readers back in time, to the Antebellum Period of the American South, through the Civil War, and years beyond. Havre de Grace, Maryland, 1841 is the backdrop for Ben Pulaski, a sailor who returns home to find his house gone to a flood, and his family in disarray. Determined to remake himself, and get back on the good side of his long-suffering wife Sonja, Pulaski takes on an...

The Good Ancestor, A Radical Prescription for Long-Term Thinking (Nov 2020, The Experiment) is by leading public philosopher Roman Krznaric.  A timely perspective for this moment in history. Businesses eschew civic responsibility for immediate gains, politicians throw their support behind whatever will win the next election, and we all struggle to focus our attention beyond the next alert from our...

Chris Fenwick has been a visionary and entrepreneur throughout her career in a variety of roles. She is the author of the visionary fiction novel "the 100th Human", nearing its 15th anniversary since release. She is also the author of the State Changers fantasy series. 

The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Destruction (The New Press, Jan 2019)After nearly a decade overseas as a war reporter, the acclaimed journalist Dahr Jamail returned to America to renew his passion for mountaineering, only to find that the slopes he had once climbed have been irrevocably changed by climate disruption. In response, Jamail embarks on a journ...

Lawrence Knorr and the members of BANG, a hard rock trio from South Philadelphia, recounted the band's meteoric rise to fame during the early 1970s in their book The BANG Story: From the Basement to the Bright Lights. In this episode, host Lawrence Knorr delves into the business side of drummer Tony Diorio, who is a natural entrepreneur. Tony's family owned several five and dime retail o...

Sunbury Press miraculously brought together the daughters of Valentyn Koval and Julian Wojtowych by publishing Oxana Koval Lapchuk’s, book, “The Journalist, A Holocaust Story.” Tanya Wojtowych, daughter of Julian, found the book and then its author on the internet and realized that the man named “Stefan” on page 66 was her father. Both women were filled with gratitude to discover they were not alo...

In The 100% Solution: A Plan for Solving Climate Change (Melville House, Mar 2020), Solomon Goldstein-Rose, a leading millennial climate activist, makes clear what needs to happen to hit the 2050 target: the manufacturing booms we must spur, the moonshot projects we must fund, the amount of CO2 we’ll have to sequester from the atmosphere, and much more. Written because the author couldn’t find a c...