238: Storm Watch by C. J. Box

Steve chats with C. J. Box, author of Storm Watch, the 23rd book in his bestselling Joe Pickett series, about his early experiences with libraries, how he gets started with a new book, how his characters have changed over the years, and what it’s like to see his creations adapted for the screen.

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C. J. Box is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of 30 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 Maltese Falcon Award (Japan), the Macavity Award, the Gumshoe Award, two Barry Awards, and the 2010 Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association Award for fiction.  He was recently awarded the 2016 Western Heritage Award for Literature by the National Cowboy Museum as well as the Spur Award for Best Contemporary Novel by the Western Writers of America in 2017.  Over ten million copies of his books have been sold in the U.S. and abroad and they’ve been translated into 27 languages.  Two television series based on his novels are in production (BIG SKY on ABC and JOE PICKETT on Spectrum Originals and Paramount+). He is an Executive Producer for both series.

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 currently serves on the Wyoming Office of Tourism Board. They have three daughters and two grandchildren. He and his wife Laurie live on their ranch in Wyoming.

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Storm Watch

235: Romance Novels, with Falon Ballard and Robin Bradford

Steve first chats with Falon Ballard, author of Not My Type and Lease on Love, about her experience with libraries, her writing process, her two novels and her podcast, and which Marvel romance she would love to write. Then, Steve gets the rundown on the romance genre with Robin Bradford, author of the Readers’ Advisory Guide to Romance!

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Falon Ballard is the author of Just My Type and Lease on Love. When she’s not writing fictional love stories, she’s helping real-life couples celebrate, working as a wedding planner in Southern California.

Robin Bradford has earned a BA and MA in English, an MS in Library Science, and a JD, but has found a home in building reader-focused, popular collections in public libraries. She was recognized as RWA’s 2016 Librarian of the Year, and Emerald City Library Conference’s Librarian of the Year in 2022. She is addicted to books and dedicated to helping others discover a love of reading. She has worked with authors to help get their titles into these collections, and wrote the forthcoming ALA’s Guide to Romance Fiction to further help libraries with their romance collection. She also worked with libraries to push for equal treatment of genre fiction, and worked with readers so that they can find their favorite authors on their library’s shelves.

SHOW NOTES:

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Just My Type
The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Romance

229: The Librarian Spy by Madeline Martin

Steve chats with Madeline Martin, author of The Librarian Spy, about her childhood experiences with libraries, her love of history and historical fiction, how she does her research, and the wonder of visiting the Library of Congress!

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Madeline Martin is a New York Times and International Bestselling author of historical fiction and historical romance.

She lives in sunny Florida with her two daughters (known collectively as the minions), one incredibly spoiled cat and a man so wonderful he’s been dubbed Mr. Awesome. She is a die-hard history lover who will happily lose herself in research any day. When she’s not writing, researching or ‘moming’, you can find her spending time with her family at Disney or sneaking a couple spoonfuls of Nutella while laughing over cat videos. She also loves to travel, attributing her fascination with history to having spent most of her childhood as an Army brat in Germany.

SPONSOR:

Syndetics Unbound, from ProQuest and LibraryThing.
Today’s show is brought to you by Syndetics Unbound, from ProQuest and LibraryThing. Syndetics Unbound helps public and academic libraries enrich their catalogs and discovery systems with high-interest elements, including reader’s advisory, cover images, summaries, author profiles, similar books, reviews, and more. Syndetics Unbound encourages serendipitous discovery and higher collection usage, and was awarded Platinum distinction in the LibraryWorks 2021 Modern Library Awards

To learn more about Syndetics Unbound, visit Syndetics.com. While there, be sure to visit the Syndetics Unbound Blog for news and analysis, including a break-down of libraries’ top titles and other stories of interest to the library community. Again, that’s Syndetics.com, to learn more about today’s sponsor, Syndetics Unbound.

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The Librarian Spy

225: The War Librarian by Addison Armstrong

Steve chats with Addison Armstrong, author of The War Librarian and The Light of Luna Park, about her experiences with libraries, what she likes about writing historical fiction and dual timelines, finding story ideas in her historical research, and how her love of school supplies and ants fueled her writing life as a young girl!

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Addison Armstrong graduated from Vanderbilt University in 2020 with degrees in elementary education and language and literacy studies and received her master’s degree from Vanderbilt in Reading Education in 2021. The Light of Luna Park was her first novel. She lives with her husband in New York, New York, where she teaches elementary school.

SPONSOR:

Syndetics Unbound, from ProQuest and LibraryThing.
Today’s show is brought to you by Syndetics Unbound, from ProQuest and LibraryThing. Syndetics Unbound helps public and academic libraries enrich their catalogs and discovery systems with high-interest elements, including reader’s advisory, cover images, summaries, author profiles, similar books, reviews, and more. Syndetics Unbound encourages serendipitous discovery and higher collection usage, and was awarded Platinum distinction in the LibraryWorks 2021 Modern Library Awards. To learn more about Syndetics Unbound, visit Syndetics.com. While there, be sure to visit the Syndetics Unbound Blog for news and analysis, including a break-down of libraries’ top titles and other stories of interest to the library community.

SHOW NOTES:

Addison Armstrong
The War Librarian
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217: Dion Graham

Steve chats with Dion Graham, actor and audiobook narrator, about his love of libraries from an early age, how he approaches books he’s going to be narrating, representation in audio work, and some of the recent books he’s narrated.

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photo by: JoAnna Perrin

Dion Graham, from HBO’s The Wire, also narrates The First 48 on A&E. A multiple Audie Award–winning and critically acclaimed actor and narrator, he has performed on Broadway, off Broadway, internationally, in films, and in several hit television series.

SHOW NOTES:

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Dion’s audiobook work for Penguin Random House

204: Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray

Steve chats with Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray, authors of The Personal Librarian, about their early childhood experiences in libraries, why they found Belle da Costa Greene’s story so compelling and relevant to our modern times, and why they’re writing soulmates.

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Marie Benedict is a lawyer with more than ten years’ experience as a litigator. A graduate of Boston College and the Boston University School of Law, she is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Only Woman in the Room, The Mystery of Mrs. Christie, Carnegie’s Maid, The Other Einstein, and Lady Clementine. All have been translated into multiple languages. She lives in Pittsburgh with her family.

Victoria Christopher Murray is an acclaimed author with more than one million books in print. She has written more than twenty novels, including Stand Your Ground, an NAACP Image Award Winner for Outstanding Fiction and a Library Journal Best Book of the Year. She holds an MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business.

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Today’s show is brought to you by Syndetics Unbound, from ProQuest and LibraryThing. Syndetics Unbound helps public and academic libraries enrich their catalogs and discovery systems with high-interest elements, including cover images, summaries, author profiles, similar books, reviews, and more. Syndetics Unbound encourages serendipitous discovery and higher collection usage, and was recently awarded Platinum distinction in the LibraryWorks 2021 Modern Library Awards. To learn more about Syndetics Unbound, visit Syndetics.com. While there, be sure to visit their “News” tab to check out the Syndetics Unbound Blog for news and analysis, including a break-down of 2020’s most popular titles in public and academic libraries.

SHOW NOTES:

The Personal Librarian
Marie Benedict
Victoria Christopher Murray

198: Imbolo Mbue

Steve chats with Imbolo Mbue, author of How Beautiful We Were and Behold the Dreamers, about how a library display helped inspire her to start writing, the characters and themes she tackles in her work, writing as catharsis, and what it’s like to get a phone call from Oprah.

IMBOLO MBUE is the author of the New York Times bestseller Behold the Dreamers, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and was an Oprah’s Book Club selection. The novel has been translated into eleven languages, adapted into an opera and a stage play, and optioned for a miniseries.

Her new novel, How Beautiful We Were, was published in March 2021.

A native of Limbe, Cameroon, and a graduate of Rutgers and Columbia Universities, Mbue lives in New York.

Today’s show is brought to you by Syndetics Unbound, from ProQuest and LibraryThing. Syndetics Unbound helps public and academic libraries enrich their catalogs and discovery systems with high-interest elements, including cover images, summaries, author profiles, similar books, reviews, and more. Syndetics Unbound encourages serendipitous discovery and higher collection usage, and was recently awarded Platinum distinction in the LibraryWorks 2021 Modern Library Awards. To learn more about Syndetics Unbound, visit Syndetics.com. While there, be sure to visit their “News” tab to check out the Syndetics Unbound Blog for news and analysis, including a break-down of 2020’s most popular titles in public and academic libraries.

189: Esther Safran Foer

Steve chats with Esther Safran Foer, the author of I Want You to Know We’re Still Here, about releasing a book during a pandemic, her time at Sixth & I, the exploration of her past leading to the writing of her memoir, and whether she sought writing advice from her sons.

Photo by Laura Ashbrook Photography

Esther Safran Foer was the CEO of Sixth & I, a center for arts, ideas, and religion. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband, Bert. They are the parents of Franklin, Jonathan, and Joshua, and the grandparents of six.

SHOW NOTES:

I Want You to Know We’re Still Here
Interview with Jonathan Safran Foer
Interview with Franklin Foer
Yizkor Books at NYPL
Library of Congress digital map collection
Sixth & I

183: January LaVoy

Steve chats with January LaVoy, actress and audiobook narrator, about her experience with libraries, how she finds the right voice for each audiobook she narrates, the care she takes in translating an author’s story in audio, and working with a little-known actress named Meryl Streep to bring Charlotte’s Web to life.

An Audiofile Magazine “Golden Voice” since May 2019, January LaVoy has an extensive body of work in both narration and commercial voiceover.  With hundreds of audiobook titles to her credit, she has received more than two dozen Earphones Awards, sixteen Audie Award nominations (including four wins), and was named Publishers Weekly’s “Audiobook Narrator of the Year” for 2013. Her voice has been heard in national campaigns for products such as Revlon, Toll House, United Health Care, Dannon, Asthma.com, Home Depot, and Obama for America.

181: Susan Elia MacNeal

Steve chats with Susan Elia MacNeal, New York Times bestselling author of the Maggie Hope series; the newest book in the series The King’s Justice is out now. Susan discusses how libraries inspired her career, how the Maggie Hope series came to be, and why she writes historical fiction.

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Susan Elia MacNeal is the New York Times bestselling author of the Maggie Hope mysteries. MacNeal won the Barry Award and has been nominated for the Edgar, Macavity, Agatha, Left Coast Crime, Dilys, and ITW Thriller awards. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and son.

SHOW NOTES:

Susan Elia MacNeal – Books