Hank Garner's Blog, page 28

The Author Stories Podcast Episode 610 | David R. Dow Interview

Today’s author interview guest is David R. Dow, author of Confessions of an Innocent Man.

[image error]“Every person wrongfully convicted of a crime at some point dreams of getting revenge against the system.  In Confessions of an Innocent Man, the dream comes true and in a spectacular way.”—John Grisham, New York Times bestselling author of The Reckoning 

A thrillingly suspenseful debut novel, and a fierce howl of rage that questions the true meaning of justice.

Rafael Zhettah relishes the simplicity and freedom of his life. He is the owner and head chef of a promising Houston restaurant. A pilot with open access to the boundless Texas horizon. A bachelor, content with having few personal or material attachments that ground him. Then, lightning strikes. When he finds Tieresse—billionaire, philanthropist, sophisticate, bombshell—sitting at one of his tables, he also finds his soul mate and his life starts again. And just as fast, when she is brutally murdered in their home, when he is convicted of the crime, when he is sentenced to die, it is all ripped away. But for Rafael Zhettah, death row is not the end. It is only the beginning. Now, with his recaptured freedom, he will stop at nothing to deliver justice to those who stole everything from him.

This is a heart-stoppingly suspenseful, devastating, page-turning debut novel. A thriller with a relentless grip that wants you to read it in one sitting. David R. Dow has dedicated his life to the fight against capital punishment—to righting the horrific injustices of the death penalty regime in Texas. He delivers the perfect modern parable for exploring our complex, uneasy relationships with punishment and reparation in a terribly unjust world.

David R. Dow is the Cullen Professor at the University of Houston Law Center, where he teaches constitutional law and theory, contract law, the death penalty, and law-and-literature. A graduate of Rice and Yale, Dow is also the founder of the Texas Innocence Network (TIN), Texas’ oldest innocence project, and the co-founder (with his wife, Katya) of the Juvenile and Capital Advocacy Project (JCAP). Working through his death penalty clinic, Dow and his team of lawyers, clinical professors, students, and interns, have represented more than one hundred death row inmates during their state and federal appeals.

Dow is the author of both scholarly papers and texts, as well as books for a general audience. His first memoir, The Autobiography of an Execution (published by Twelve), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the winner of the Barnes & Noble Discover award for nonfiction. His second memoir, Things I’ve Learned From Dying (also published by Twelve), was named by NPR as one of the best books of 2014. Confessions of an Innocent Man, Dow’s first novel, was published by Dutton in 2019.

Dow and his wife Katya have one son, Lincoln. They live in Houston and Durango, Colorado, along with their dogs Delano and Soul.

[image error]Looking for something new to read? How about Dreams of Falling by Karen White?

Karen was on Author Stories back in Episode 413, and now Dreams of Falling is available in paperback.

Listen to Karen in Episode 413 here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyuQ7A9fTL8

Here’s the link to enter the drawing: https://www.facebook.com/authorstoriespodcast/posts/1059511797588658 Winner will be selected Friday, April 19. Winners must live in the U.S. Keep watching for more giveaways soon. Lots to come!

 

The Author Stories Podcast Episode 609 | Karen Keilt Interview

Today’s author interview guest is Karen Keilt, author of The Parrot’s Perch: A Memoir.

[image error]The Parrot’s Perch opens in 2013, when Karen Keilt, age sixty, receives an invitation to testify at the Brazilian National Truth Commission at the UN in New York. The email sparks memories of her “previous life”―the one she has kept safely bottled up for more than thirty-seven years. Hopeful of helping to raise awareness about ongoing human rights violations in Brazil, she wants to testify, but she anguishes over reliving the horrific events of her youth.

In the pages that follow, Keilt tells the story of her life in Brazil―from her exclusive, upper-class lifestyle and dreams of Olympic medals to her turmoil-filled youth. Full of hints of a dark oligarchy in Brazil, corruption, crime, and military interference, The Parrot’s Perch is a searing, sometimes shocking true tale of suffering, struggle―and survival.

Born and educated in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Karen Keilt moved to the US at the age of 27.

Karen has enjoyed an eclectic career including Riding Master and General Manager of a men’s pro hockey franchise though she always gravitated back to her love of writing; first as a newspaper columnist in South Carolina, and later writing four screenplays including: “The Parrot’s Perch”, “Bethebotu”, a children’s fantasy about pink dolphins and mermaids, “The Gnashing of Teeth”, an adaptation of the coming-of-age novel by James Raymond about the Korean War and “Maracanazo”, a wonderful story about two young men from different worlds both dreaming of winning the World Cup. Karen enjoys traveling, hiking, Anusara Yoga, amateur photography, and horseback riding and lives in Arizona with her husband and their dog Luna. Karen’s first book, The Parrot’s Perch was written in 2010 and is a fictionalized account of events that occurred in Brazil in 1976.

On April 30, 2010, the Brazilian Supreme Court ruled to uphold a 1979 law stating that crimes committed by members of the military regime were political acts and therefore covered by amnesty. That law remains in place today. The Court’s ruling makes it clear that the Brazilian Amnesty Law violates Brazil’s international obligations and that it represents an obstacle in the search for truth.

Amnesty International has condemned the Brazilian Supreme Court’s blocking of this recent reinterpretation of the 1979 Amnesty Law that protects members of the former military government from being put on trial for extrajudicial killings, torture and rape.

“The ruling places a judicial stamp of approval on the pardons extended to those in the military government who committed crimes against humanity,” said Tim Cahill, Amnesty International’s Brazil researcher.

In April 2010, Mr. Cahill went on to say, “In a country that sees thousands of extra-judicial killings every year at the hands of security officials and where many more are tortured in police stations and prisons, this ruling clearly signals that in Brazil nobody is held responsible when the state kills and tortures its own citizens,” said Tim Cahill.

In 2013 Karen gave her testimony to the Brazilian National Truth Commission at Brazil’s permanent mission to the UN in New York City. That investigation resulted in new information about Karen’s ordeal at the hands of Brazilian police. Following that investigation, in 2018 Karen wrote a memoir titled The Parrot’s Perch – A Memoir of Torture and Corruption in Brazil. A parrot’s perch is a device commonly used for torture in Brazil’s jails and prisons.

The Author Stories Podcast Episode 608 | Lea Geller Interview

Today’s author interview guest is Lea Geller, author of Trophy Life.

[image error]A refreshingly honest, laugh-out-loud novel about losing the life you always wanted…and finding the life you were meant to have.

For the last ten years, Agnes Parsons’s biggest challenge has been juggling yoga classes and lunch dates. Her Santa Monica house staff takes care of everything, leaving Agnes to focus on her trophy-wife responsibilities: look perfect, adore her older husband, and wear terribly expensive (if uncomfortable) underwear.

When her husband disappears, leaving Agnes and their infant daughter with no money, no home, and no staff, she is forced to move across the country, where she lands a job teaching at an all-boys boarding school in the Bronx. So long, organic quinoa bowls and sunshine-filled California life. Hello, processed food, pest-infested house, and twelve-year-old-boy humor—all day, every day.

But it’s in this place of second chances (and giant bugs), where Agnes is unexpectedly forced to take care of herself and her daughter, where she finds out the kind of woman she can be. Ultimately, she has to decide if she prefers the woman and mother she has become…or the trophy life she left behind.

Authentic and sharply witty, Trophy Life is proof that granny panties and mom coats might not be the answer to everything; they’re simply comfortable (if slightly unattractive) reminders of what happens when one life ends…and real life begins.

Lea Geller is a recovering lawyer who lives in New York with her husband and children. She began her writing career by blogging about her adventures in the trenches of parenting, and got the idea for Trophy Life when her two sons were in middle school.

When Lea’s not eavesdropping on her children, she can be found running, drinking diner coffee, and occasionally teaching middle-school English. She enjoys embarrassing her family by posting pictures of her vegetable garden on Instagram (#IgrewDinner). You can follow her at www.leageller.com.

The Author Stories Podcast Episode 607 | Marcia Butler Interview

Today’s guest is Marcia Butler, author of the fantastic new novel Pickle’s Progress.

[image error] Buy on Amazon

In her debut novel, PICKLE’S PROGRESS, Marcia Butler brings her talents to a dark, quirky New York story that explores the bond between identical twin brothers, the women they love or want to be loved by, a dog named The Doodles, and the depths of bad behavior they will stoop to to get what they want.

“Marcia Butler possesses truly scary X-ray vision and intelligence.”

—Richard Russo

“New York City is all about three things: Money, real estate and sex, and in PICKLE’S PROGRESS, Marcia Butler has neatly tied them all together by focusing on one scarily dysfunctional family.”

—Charles Salzberg, author of Second Story Man and the Shamus Award-nominated Henry Swann series

“Butler’s blazingly original debut is a quintessential, moving, witty, New York City story about the love we think we want, the love we get, and the love we deserve, all played out with symphonic grace. I loved it.”

—Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You and Cruel Beautiful World

“Invigorating, sly and mordantly funny, PICKLE’S PROGRESS offers a comic look at the foibles of human nature and all the ways love can seduce, betray and, ultimately, sustain us.”

—Jillian Medoff, bestselling author of This Could Hurt

Marcia Butler has distinguished herself in multiple artistic fields—as an oboist, she has been hailed by the New York Times as a “first-rate artist”; her interior design work has been featured in top shelter magazines; and The Creative Imperative, her documentary film, will be released in the spring of 2019. “Her courageous memoir is a testament to the power of art to inspire and heal,” TheWashington Post said of her much-lauded The Skin Above My Knee (Little, Brown 2017), which New York magazine called “original and lyrically written.”

The Author Stories Podcast Episode 606 | Rachel Howzell Hall Interview

Today’s author interview guest is Rachel Howzell Hall, author of They All Fall Down.

[image error] Buy on Amazon

For fans of thrilling contemporary suspense, Rachel Howzell Hall’s brilliant stand-alone novel brings seven sinners to a private island for a reckoning that will leave you breathless.

It was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime.

Delighted by a surprise invitation, Miriam Macy sails off to a luxurious private island off the coast of Mexico with six other strangers. Surrounded by miles of open water in the gloriously green Sea of Cortez, Miriam is soon shocked to discover that she and the rest of her companions have been brought to the remote island under false pretenses―and all seven strangers harbor a secret.

Danger lurks in the lush forest and in the halls and bedrooms of the lonely mansion. Sporadic cell-phone coverage and miles of ocean keeps the group trapped in paradise. And strange accidents stir suspicions, as one by one . . .

They all fall down

RACHEL HOWZELL HALL is the author of seven novels, including the critically-acclaimed Detective Elouise Norton series. Her standalone thriller THEY ALL FALL DOWN will be published April 2019 and pays homage to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. The third in her Lou Norton series, Trail of Echoes, received a coveted Kirkus Star and was one of Kirkus Reviews ‘Books That Kept Us Up All Night.’ Land of Shadows and Skies of Ash (Forge) were included on the Los Angeles Times’ “Books to Read This Summer” for 2014 and 2015, and the New York Times called Lou Norton “a formidable fighter–someone you want on your side.” Lou was also recently included in The Guardian’s Top 10 Female Detectives in Fiction.” She is also collaborating with James Patterson and BookShots on “The Good Sister” in the New York Times bestselling The Family Lawyer.

A featured writer on NPR’s acclaimed ‘Crime in the City’ series and the National Endowment for the Arts weekly podcast, Rachel has also served as a mentor in AWP’s Writer to Writer Program and is currently on the board of directors of the Mystery Writers of America. She was named one of Apple iBooks’ “10 Authors to Read in 2017.” She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter.

The Author Stories Podcast Episode 605 | Deborah Burns Interview

Today my guest is Deborah Burns, author of Saturday’s Child: A Daughter’s Memoir.

[image error] “Devilishly sharp… a masterful balance of psychological excavation and sumptuous description.”

―Kirkus Reviews

An only child, Deborah Burns grew up in prim 1950s America in the shadow of her beautiful, unconventional, rule-breaking mother, Dorothy―a red-haired beauty who looked like Rita Hayworth and skirted norms with a style and flare that made her the darling of men and women alike. Married to the son of a renowned Italian family with ties to the underworld, Dorothy fervently eschewed motherhood and domesticity, turning Deborah over to her spinster aunts to raise while she was the star of a vibrant social life. As a child, Deborah revered her charismatic mother, but Dorothy was a woman full of secrets with a troubled past―a mistress of illusion whose love seemed just out of her daughter’s grasp.

In vivid, lyrical prose, Saturday’s Child tells the story of Deborah’s eccentric upbringing and her quest in midlife, long after her parents’ death, to uncover the truth about her mother and their complex relationship. No longer under the spell of her maternal goddess, but still caught in a wrenching cycle of love and longing, Deborah must finally confront the reality of her mother’s legacy―and finally claim her own.

Deborah Burns is a former Chief Innovation Officer and brand leader for ELLEgirl, ELLE Décor, Metropolitan Home, and ELLE Global Marketing. Now a media industry consultant, she helps brands, executives, and professional women reinvent themselves through her expertise, coaching process, and website, skirtingtherules.com, which she founded. Beneath her business leader’s exterior, however, always beat the heart of a writer, and several years ago she began the creative journey to write this memoir and tell her mother’s story.

She lives on Long Island, New York with her husband and their three children.

The Author Stories Podcast Episode 604 | Sondra Helene Interview

Today’s author interview guest is Sondra Helene, author of the new novel Appearances.

[image error]Samantha―the fashionable wife of a successful businessman and doting mother of one―struggles to negotiate the spheres of intimacy between her husband and her family of origin. Samantha loves her husband, Richard, and she loves her sister, Elizabeth. But the two of them can barely exist in the same room, which has caused the entire family years of emotional distress. Yet it’s not until Samantha’s sister is diagnosed at age forty-three with lung cancer that her family and her marriage are tipped into full-blown crisis.

A story of love, loss, forgiveness, learning to live with grief, and healing, Appearances will resonate with anyone who has ever experienced tension in their familial relationships―even as it serves as a poignant reminder that no amount of privilege can protect us from family conflicts, marital difficulty, or mortality.

Sondra Helene is a board member and writer at GrubStreet, Boston’s center for literary life. Her publications include “Jewish Magic Protected My Sister” in Lilith Magazine, “The Switch” in Voices of Caregiving: Stories of Courage, Comfort and Strength; and “Losing My Sister and the Long Road Back” on better50.com. She has studied fiction and nonfiction at GrubStreet, the Fine Arts Work Center, Gotham Writers Workshop, the Sirenland Writers Conference, and Kripalu. She is a graduate of Ithaca College and Columbia University. A past president of the Friends of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, she has also been involved with fund-raising for the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Lung Cancer Research Foundation. Helene is a Life Member of Hadassah, a member of Combined Jewish Philanthropies, and a former overseer of the Boston Ballet. She has two grown children and lives outside of Boston with her husband.

The Author Stories Podcast Episode 603 | Hanna Jameson Interview

Today my guest on Author Stories is Hanna Jameson, author of The Last.

[image error]For fans of high-concept thrillers such as Annihilation and The Girl with All the Gifts, this breathtaking dystopian psychological thriller follows an American academic stranded at a Swiss hotel as the world descends into nuclear war—along with twenty other survivors—who becomes obsessed with identifying a murderer in their midst after the body of a young girl is discovered in one of the hotel’s water tanks. 

Jon thought he had all the time in the world to respond to his wife’s text message: I miss you so much. I feel bad about how we left it. Love you. But as he’s waiting in the lobby of the L’Hotel Sixieme in Switzerland after an academic conference, still mulling over how to respond to his wife, he receives a string of horrifying push notifications. Washington, DC has been hit with a nuclear bomb, then New York, then London, and finally Berlin. That’s all he knows before news outlets and social media goes black—and before the clouds on the horizon turn orange.

Now, two months later, there are twenty survivors holed up at the hotel, a place already tainted by its strange history of suicides and murders. Those who can’t bear to stay commit suicide or wander off into the woods. Jon and the others try to maintain some semblance of civilization. But when the water pressure disappears, and Jon and a crew of survivors investigate the hotel’s water tanks, they are shocked to discover the body of a young girl.

As supplies dwindle and tensions rise, Jon becomes obsessed with investigating the death of the little girl as a way to cling to his own humanity. Yet the real question remains: can he afford to lose his mind in this hotel, or should he take his chances in the outside world?

Hanna Jameson is the author of the London Underground mystery series the first of which, Something You Are, was nominated for a CWA Dagger Award. She lives in London.

The Author Stories Podcast Episode 602 | Lisa Scottoline Interview

Today’s author interview guest is Lisa Scottoline, author of the new book Someone Knows.

[image error] Bestselling and award-winning author Lisa Scottoline reaches new heights with this riveting novel about how a single decision can undo a family, how our past can derail our present, and how not guilty doesn’t always mean innocent.

Allie Garvey is heading home to the funeral of a childhood friend. Allie is not only grief-stricken, she’s full of dread. Because going home means seeing the other two people with whom she shares an unbearable secret.

Twenty years earlier, a horrific incident shattered the lives of five teenagers, including Allie. Drinking and partying in the woods, they played a dangerous prank that went tragically wrong, turning deadly. The teenagers kept what happened a secret, believing that getting caught would be the worst thing that could happen. But time has taught Allie otherwise. Not getting caught was far worse.

Allie has been haunted for two decades by what she and the others did, and by the fact that she never told a soul. The dark secret has eaten away at her, distancing her from everyone she loves, including her husband. Because she wasn’t punished by the law, Allie has punished herself, and it’s a life sentence.

Now, Allie stands on the precipice of losing everything. She’s ready for a reckoning, determined to learn how the prank went so horribly wrong. She digs to unearth the truth, but reaches a shocking conclusion that she never saw coming–and neither will the reader.

A deeply emotional examination of family, marriage, and the true nature of justice, Someone Knows is Lisa Scottoline’s most powerful novel to date. Startling, page-turning, and with an ending that’s impossible to forget, this is a tour de force by a beloved author at the top of her game.

Lisa Scottoline is The New York Times bestselling author and Edgar award-winning author of 30 novels, including her upcoming, AFTER ANNA. She also writes a weekly column with her daughter Francesca Serritella for the Philadelphia Inquirer titled “Chick Wit” which is a witty and fun take on life from a woman’s perspective. These stories, along with many other never-before-published stories, have been collected in a New York Times bestselling series of humorous memoirs including their most recent, I Need A Lifeguard Everywhere But The Pool. Lisa reviews popular fiction and non-fiction, and her reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Lisa has served as President of Mystery Writers of America. Lisa graduated magna cum laude in three years from the University of Pennsylvania, with a B.A. degree in English, and her concentration was Contemporary American Fiction, taught by Philip Roth and others. She graduated cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania Law School where she taught a course she developed, “Justice and Fiction.” Lisa is a regular and much sought after speaker at library and corporate events. Lisa has over 30 million copies of her books in print and is published in over 35 countries. She lives in the Philadelphia area with an array of disobedient pets, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

The Author Stories Podcast Episode 601 | C. J. Box Interview

Today’s author interview guest is C. J. Box who returns to the show to talk about his new Joe Pickett novel Wolf Pack.

Listen to C. J.’s first visit to the show here

[image error]Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett encounters bad behavior on his own turf–only to have the FBI and the DOJ ask him to stand down–in the thrilling new novel from #1 New York Times-bestselling author C.J. Box.

The good news is that Joe Pickett has his job back, after his last adventure in The Disappeared. The bad news is that he’s come to learn that a drone is killing wildlife–and the drone belongs to a mysterious and wealthy man whose son is dating Joe’s own daughter, Lucy.

When Joe tries to lay down the rules for the drone operator, he’s asked by the FBI and the DOJ to stand down, which only makes him more suspicious. Meanwhile, bodies are piling up in and around Joe’s district in shocking numbers. He begins to fear that a pack of four vicious killers working on behalf of the Sinaloa cartel known as the Wolf Pack has arrived. Their target seems to be the mystery man and everyone–including Joe, Nate, and others–who is associated with him.

Teaming up with a female game warden (based on a real person, one of the few female game wardens at work in Wyoming today) to confront these assassins, Joe finds himself in the most violent and dangerous predicament he’s ever faced.

C. J. Box is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of over twenty-two novels including the Joe Pickett series. He won the Edgar Alan Poe Award for Best Novel (Blue Heaven, 2009) as well as the Anthony Award, Prix Calibre 38 (France), the Macavity Award, the Gumshoe Award, the Barry Award (twice), the Western Heritage Award for Literature, and 2017 Spur Award for Best Contemporary Western. The novels have been translated into 27 languages. Open Season, Blue Heaven, Nowhere To Run, and The Highway have been optioned for film and television. Millions of copies of his novels have been sold in the U.S. alone.

Box is a Wyoming native and has worked as a ranch hand, surveyor, fishing guide, a small town newspaper reporter and editor, and he owned an international tourism marketing firm with his wife Laurie. In 2008, Box was awarded the “BIG WYO” Award from the state tourism industry. An avid outdoorsman, Box has hunted, fished, hiked, ridden, and skied throughout Wyoming and the Mountain West. He served on the Board of Directors for the Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo and is currently serving on the Wyoming Tourism Board. He lives in Wyoming.