Bookpleasures.com welcomes  as our guest William Manchee author of the Stan Turner Mystery series, the Rich Coleman novels, the Tarizon Saga and two stand-alone novels, Uncommon Thief and the Prime Minister's Daughter. He has also written a non-fiction work for small business owners, You Can Save Your Small Business. William is not only an author, but he is also a consumer lawyer practising in Dallas, Texas with his son Jim.

Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest DAVID UNGER, PhD, 

David  is a writer, therapist, educator, and author of the mystery series A Lesson in…, which currently has nine books, with two more coming soon.

He is also known for his series of relationship training manuals, which includes a guide to parenting teens.  A graduate of UCLA, he lives in California. He’s been a licensed therapist and Chair of a graduate psychology program most of his career.

Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest Amy S. Peele author of Match,  Cut and her most recent novel, Hold. 

Cut, received many awards, including the 2017 Independent Press Award, The Chanticleer International Book Award, a Pinnacle Book Achievement Award, and a Finalist designation from the 2017 International Book Awards. 

For thirty-five- years  Amy enjoyed a fascinating career in the organ transplant field which provides an authentic backdrop to her books.

Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest, singer/lyricist/choral director Sally Stevens. Sally has worked in film, television, concert, commercials and sound recording in Hollywood since 1960.

She sings the main titles for The Simpsons and Family Guy and her voice can be heard on hundreds of film and television scores. 

Sally has put together choirs for John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein, and many others for film scores, and was choral director for The Oscars for 22 years.

In the earlier years she toured with Ray Conniff, Nat King Cole and Burt Bachrach, and she has also written lyrics for Burt Bacharach, Don Ellis, Dominic Frontiere, Dave Grusin, and others. 

Her short fiction, poetry and essays have been included in Mockingheart Review, The OffBeat, Raven’s Perch, Hermeneutic Chaos Literary Journal, Los Angeles Press, The Voices Project, and Between the Lines Anthology: Fairy Tales & Folklore Re-imagined.  

Along with singing and writing, Sally's other passion is photography, and her black & white photographs of film composers have been included in exhibitions at the Association of Motion Picture & Television Producers headquarters in Los Angeles, and at Cite de la Musique in Paris, France.

Her memoir I Sang That: A Memoir from Hollywood has recently been published.

Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest ARMIN SHIMERMAN who is about to release the final book, Imbalance of Power, of the Illyria Trilogy.

Armin is a veteran of stage and screen, and is widely known for his portrayal of Quark on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Principal Snyder on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 

His other credits include notable appearances on TV shows from Hill Street Blues and The West Wing to CSI  and dozens of others.

His voice has been heard in many animated shows and popular game series such as Ratchet & Clank and BioShock. 

Armin is a renowned stage actor, having performed on Broadway and stages across the country. He is also a Shakespeare scholar and teacher, theatre arts lecturer, and former Associate Artistic Director of the Antaeus Theatre Company in Los Angeles. 

Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest Barry Wilker author of The Lapone Sisters.

Barry spent forty-three years working as an interior designer for myriad clients across the United States.

Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest award winning author Lucy Ferriss. Her recent novel, The Misconceiver has just been published.

Lucy was born in St. Louis and has lived on both coasts, in the middle, and abroad. She is the author of eleven books, including her latest collection, Foreign Climes: Stories, and the 2022 re-release of her prescient novel, The Misconceiver.

Other recent work includes the 2015 novel A Sister to Honor, as well as essays and short fiction in American Scholar, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere.

Forthcoming in 2023 is a book of essays from Wandering Aengus Press, Meditations on a New Century.

She received her Ph.D. from Tufts University and lives with her husband, Don Moon, in the Berkshires and in Connecticut, where she is Writer-in-Residence Emerita at Trinity College.

Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest, Rick Mater author of Six hours: Running For My Life in the Grand Canyon.

Rick is a longtime runner and Emmy-nominated TV executive living in Los Angeles. 

He was a miler in high school, lettered in college, and has run the Grand Canyon twice as a cardiac patient. 

A heart attack survivor, he has four stents in his left anterior descending aorta and a defibrillator implanted in the side of his chest. 

Distance running saved Mater’s life. During a 2007 run, he was able to survive a heart attack brought on by a complete occlusion of the LAD (left anterior descending aorta). 

His survival was due to ancillary blood vessels created by his body in response to the rigors of distance running. 

This permitted enough blood to circulate around the blockage and prevent a massive fatal heart attack. 

He continues to run.

Once again Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest Susan Wakeford Angard author of On Wings of a Lion and now with her latest novel, The Persian Glories.

Susan graduated high school on the lot of Twentieth Century Fox Studio. During this time, she had leading roles in major television shows at Fox Studios, Warner Bros, Paramount, Universal and MGM.

Her fascination for Ancient art then led her to study for an art history MFA at UCLA. After leaving UCLA, Susan joined a family-owned TV Commercial Production Company, shooting consumer product commercials from McDonald’s to Budweiser, Purina and Boeing.

She traveled much of the world filming on location, including in the Middle East during the last months of the Shah of Iran’s regime. Susan became an eye-witness to the Islamic Revolution.

Her attraction to visual arts persisted leading to a career as an architectural interior designer and owner of an award-winning Los Angeles design firm and has won competitions on several episodes of Designer’s Challenge, an HGTV design show.

Susan wrote briefly for CBS episodic television but with a need to tell her own stories, she changed genres to write fiction. During this time, she raced vintage autos, was director of a prominent Arts Décoratif Collectors Gallery as well as raising four children.

Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest Jenna Podjasek, MD, author of Particles in the Air.

Jenna underwent internal medical training at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, followed by a two-year clinical and research fellowship in Allergy and Immunology. She lives with her husband, two children, and numerous pets in the suburbs of Chicago. 

Particles in the Air is her first novel.

Her novels include The Weary God of Ancient Travelers, Betwixt and Between, The Beekeeper’s Daughter and the soon to be published Between Before and After.

Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest Libby Sternberg. Libby is an Edgar Award finalist, a Launchpad Prose Top 50 finalist, and a BookLife quarter finalist twice, including once for her recent novel, DAISY.

She writes historical fiction, contemporary women’s fiction, young adult mysteries, and more, releasing her humorous works under the name Libby Malin, and her romantic comedy Fire Me was bought for film. 

Her novel Sloane Hall, a retelling of Jane Eyre, was one of only 14 books highlighted in the Huffington Post on the 200th anniversary of Charlotte Brontë’s birth. 

The character of Mark in the novel is based loosely on Dorothy Stangle's father and Deborah Driggs grandfather.

Deborah got hooked on performing at age seven as a figure skater and found fame in her 20s as a model and actress. By 26, she had appeared on the cover of Playboy three times and was chosen as the Playboy Playmate of the Month for the March 1990 issue. In 1992, she married Olympic gymnast Mitch Gaylord.

A decade later, she was divorced and desperately seeking a way to put food on the table.

After suffering a nervous breakdown, Deborah was forced to live with her mother, Dorothy, in a senior community in Florida. While there, she began to take daily walks—thanks to her mom’s dog—and interact with the locals. As she learned the stories and struggles of others, she no longer felt alone.

Deborah rebounded, got her life insurance license, and then took a detour into distractions to cover up how broken she was on the inside. In 2017, her whole life changed when she started the journey to face and find herself.

Gradually, she acknowledged her addiction to attention and tendency to abuse alcohol—and anything—to make herself feel better. Deborah now works as a healing coach, helping others work through their emotional trauma, get out of the victim mentality, and step into their highest self.   

Once again Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest Avraham Azrieli.

Avraham is a graduate of Columbia Law School and is also the author of several novels, his most recent being The Plot To Save America.

Avraham grew up in Israel, where he received extensive Talmudic education, served as an intelligence officer and, after attending law school, clerked for the Israeli Supreme Court in Jerusalem. Residing primarily in the United States since 1990, he currently lives near Washington DC with his wife and children.

Bookpleasures.com  welcomes as our guest Ellen Pall. Ellen is the author of more than a dozen novels, including  Among the Ginzburgs, Corpse de Ballet, and Slightly Abridged. Her most recent novel, MUST READ WELL will shortly be published.

She has also written many features about people in the arts for The New Yorker and The New York Times, and published numerous personal essays, most recently in The New York Review of Books. 

Once again, Bookpleasures.com  welcomes as our guest Gary D. McGugan author of Three Weeks Less A Day, The Multima Scheme. Unrelenting Peril, Pernicious, Pursuit, A Web of Deceit, and his latest novel, A Slippery Shadow.

Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest Frederick Douglass Reynolds, author of Black White And Gray All Over. 

Frederick is a retired Black LA County Sheriff's homicide sergeant. He was born in Rocky Mount, Virginia, and grew up in Detroit, Michigan where he became a petty criminal and was involved in gangs.

Frederick worked in the Compton, California police force from 1985 until 2000 and then transferred to the sheriff’s department where he worked an additional seventeen years, retiring in 2017 with over seventy-five commendations.

Bookpleasures welcomes as our guest Hugh McTavish author of Covid Lockdown Insanity.

Hugh is a Ph.D. biochemist and immunologist and a patent attorney. He has authored 18 refereed scientific journal articles and is the inventor of 21 U.S. patents. He has also written two prior books on public policy and nature. He has started two pharmaceutical companies off his own inventions.

Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest Santino Zafarana author of Think Before You Shoot: The Art of Taking Creative Photographs. 

Santino was born in Sicily and introduced to photography by his uncle Salvatore Dolce, who gave him his first camera―a Kodak brownie. For more than 45 years, he has been devoted to taking photographs that capture the magic of light and the wonders of ordinary people and the everyday world. In addition to creating his own works of photographic art, he has helped thousands achieve their dreams of taking great photographs. He teaches and mentors at the Creative Photography Workshops school in Los Angeles, which he owns with his wife Tracey Landworth, an equally accomplished photographer.

S.W. grew up in the Bronx in a bi-cultural (Latina and Jewish) home. She moved to Manhattan after earning her Master’s degree in Public Policy and raised her family on the Upper West Side, where she still lives with her husband and two black cats. When not dreaming up fiction, she writes about social justice issues for nonprofit organizations

Author: Gary D. McGugan

ISBN: 978-1-9995656-7-1

Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest Richard Lewis Mater author of Beat.

Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest, Paul Mark Tag. Paul received multiple degrees in the field of Meteorology from Pennsylvania State University. He worked for the Naval Research Laboratory as a research scientist for over thirty years before leaving his job to write fiction full time.

In 2002, Tag started his first novel, a thriller entitled Category 5, which took advantage of his knowledge of meteorology and weather modification. Prophecy and White Thaw: The Helheim Conspiracy completed the trilogy.

After penning How Much Do You Love Me? that explored the travesty of the Japanese Internment, Tag returned to the excitement of writing thrillers. Retribution Times Two is the sequel to the trilogy and continues the original character set.

Steven is a professional sports, broadcast and digital media business executive with a career spanning over thirty years across the NBA, NFL, and MLB. He’s dealt with Fortune 500 companies, major consumer brands, professional athletes, and multi-platform integrated sports partnerships and media advertising campaigns.

He is also an accomplished playwright having written and produced a wildly successful theatrical production which led him to tackling his debut novel, Give Place to Wrath, the first in the Roger Viceroy detective series and The Counsel of the Cunning.

Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest Sandy Graham.

Sandy is a dual citizen of Canada and the United States. He spent 35 years with The Boeing Company in a variety of engineering and management positions.

After retirement, he satisfied a long-standing urge to delve into creative writing. Sandy has authored the Pillage Trilogy, The Pizza Dough King, Murder – On Salt Spring?

His most recent novel, You Speak For Me Now is about to be published.

Dr. Berry is a Maternal-Fetal Medicine physician who has provided care to women with  high risk pregnancies for 37 years.  

Dr. Berry was born and raised in Minnesota, and from age eight, lived in a working class  north Minneapolis neighborhood. His professional musician and music teacher father,  along with his social worker and university faculty member mother, passed to him a love  of music, reading, and a respect for hard work. He received a full scholarship to a  Vermont boy’s boarding school where he finished grades 10 through 12.  

A major in English literature was his goal as an undergraduate freshman, but after  floundering and dropping in and out of mainly Macalester College over a four year  period, he read Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell To Arms, and like the novel’s  protagonist, the author joined an ambulance service in Minneapolis and was trained as  an emergency paramedic.  

He found his calling and was eventually admitted to Mayo Medical School where he  graduated in 1984. He completed an Obstetrics and Gynecology Residency at St. Louis  University followed by a Maternal-Fetal Medicine Fellowship at Wayne State  University. Although he refers to himself as a, “failed English major,” Dr. Berry never  lost his passion for creative writing or his goal of communicating his ideas about the  world of medicine and medical research through the medium of fiction. 

He has authored or co-authored a large number of medical publications.  Good day Dr. Berry and thanks for taking part in our interview.

Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest Kevin G. Chapman. Kevin is a corporate labor & employment lawyer who works for a major US media company.  

He frequently speaks at Continuing Legal Education seminars, has taught legal writing to law students, and is the past chairperson of the Labor & Employment division of the global Association of Corporate Counsel. When the work day is done, however, Kevin lives a much more exciting fictional life of crime and romance as the author of the award-winning Mike Stoneman Thriller series (and other novels, short stories, and screenplays).

Kevin's recent crime thriller in his Mike Stoneman Thrillers series, Perilous Gambit will be published November 24th, 2021

Fool Me Twice is available as a stand-alone short story free on Amazon.com (and most other ebook retail sites), or you can get it free from Kevin’s website. He has also written one complete screenplay (unproduced so far) and has another screenplay and two more novels currently in the works, one of which is a sci-fi space opera epic.

Kevin is a resident of Central New Jersey and is a graduate of Columbia College (‘83), where he was a classmate of Barack Obama, and Boston University School of Law (’86). Kevin loves talking fiction with readers, or talking law, politics, or baseball.

Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest Sandi Marx. Sandi is a popular Moth slam winner, she’s also been featured on PBS for Stories From The Stage, Women of Letters as well as her sold out solo show at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater.

Sandi has been a guest on dozens of podcasts on just about every topic, running the gamut of ghost encounters to being an awkward teen.

This past year, her award winning documentary, The Fabulist was screened at festivals all over the world, including Cannes, chronicling her late life career as a performer and her health challenges with Lupus. 

Bookpleasures welcomes as our guests Rosemary and Larry Mild whose recent novel,  Death Rules the Night, was recently published.

Rosemary and Larry have published award-winning novels, short stories, and essays. They coauthored the popular Paco & Molly Mystery Series; the Dan & Rivka Sherman Mystery Series; two Hawaii adventure/thrillers; a sci-fi novella; and three volumes of short stories, many of which appear in anthologies.

Bookpleasures.com is pleased to have as our guest, Ashley Elliott co-author of The Demon In Disguise.

Ashley was raised in Conway, Arkansas. A survivor and an advocate for victims, she devoted more than a decade to her quest for justice after her father’s murder and mother’s kidnapping.

She holds a BS in Organizational Communication from the University of Utah, and is an avid hiker, athlete, bodybuilder who has competed in and won medals in various competitions. She lives in Utah with her husband and children.

His first book, Cool Creatures, Hot Planet: Exploring the Seven Continents, won several national awards, and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune named it a “Top Ten Green Book.”

Marty's second book, Endangered Edens: Exploring the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, Costa Rica, the Everglades, and Puerto Rico, won four national awards.

His novels, Time Is Irreverent, Time Is Irreverent 2: Jesus Christ, Not Again! and Time Is Irreverent 3: Gone for 16 Seconds are all Amazon #1 Best-Sellers in Political Humor. Hits, Heathens, and Hippos is Marty's sixth book, and like all of his books, it reflects his values of protecting human rights and the environment—and does so with a wry sense of humor.

Marty is also a popular college speaker, who has performed the stage-show version of Cool Creatures, Hot Planet on hundreds of college campuses.

Author: Gail Ward Olmsted

Publisher: Black Rose Writing

ISBN: 978-1-68433-721-7

Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest Owen Symes. Owen is a social historian, political activist and author of He Was Our Man in Washington: A History of the Obama Years.

Poisoned Jungle, James Ballard's debut novel, reflects the Vietnam War with graphic ferocity, portraying its horrible atrocities and evilness while rendering the historical context contemporary, vivid, and chaotic.

Bookpleasures.com welcomesas our guest James Ballard author of Poisoned Jungle. James served as an army medic in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam from December of 1968 to October in 1969. He has been exploring the repercussions of his experiences ever since. In his author’s note to Poisoned Jungle, he writes: “The impact of war is not only transformational on the human psyche—but ongoing. It sets in motion a powerful set of psychological consequences. Finding equilibrium with those forces is imperative.” 

Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest film and TV writer, and producer, Reuben Leder.

Reuben began his long career in TV, beginning with The Incredible Hulk. He went onto write and produce the first 6 seasons of Magnum P.I. for which he received 2 Emmy nominations. One episode that he wrote and directed received an NAACP Image Award nomination for the guest star.

Following were several other TV pilots and show running of existing shows, including his own creation, Berlin Break, a post-Cold War spy thriller shot in Berlin.

Reuben was also recognized by the voters of the WGA for participating in the writing of the 101 Best Written TV Series, Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Reuben also wrote and directed the feature film Baltic Storm, a fact-based political thriller examining the tragic North Sea sinking of the ferry 'Estonia'. It starred Greta Scacchi and Donald Sutherland.

He has recently published his first novel, You Might Feel a Little Prick.

David's book The Shooting Salvationist, appeared twice on the Wall Street Journal Bestseller list in 2011. This story has been republished (2019) titled, Apparent Danger.

Screenplays based on two of his novels, CAMELOT'S COUSIN and JACK & DICK, are currently being represented for production in Hollywood.

Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest Jeffrey Lyons. Jeffrey has reviewed more than 15,000 movies, 900 Broadway and off-Broadway plays. He has interviewed over 500 actors, co hosted three national movie review shows—Sneak Previews, MSNBC’s At the Movies, and Reel Talk—in his forty-five-year career continues in television, radio, and print. Jeffrey is the author of Stories My Father Told Me and the co-author of 101 Great Movie for Kids, as well as three books of baseball trivia, Out of Left Field, Curveballs and Screwballs, and Short Hops and Foul Tips.

He has recently published Hemingway and Me: Letters, Anecdotes, and Memories of a Life-Changing Friendship.

Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest Anne B. Gass author of Voting Down the Rose: Florence Brooks Whitehouse and Maine's Fight for Woman Suffrage. Her recent tome, We Demand: The Suffrage Road Trip has just been published.

The first of these, Paranoia & Heartbreak: Fifteen Years in a Juvenile Facility (Seven Stories Press) was a finalist for the Montaigne Medal; the second, In the Spider’s Web (Black Heron Press), won a silver award from Foreword Reviews in the true crime category.

Jerome is also the author of Sergeant Dickinson, a Viet Nam war novel published by Soho Press and favorably reviewed by the New York Times Book Review, Booklist, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, Asian Wall Street Journal, and other journals and reviews, and In Georgia: A Yankee Family in the Segregated South, a collection of stories and a novella. 

Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest Michael J. Coffino author of Truth Is in the House.

Michael has authored, co-authored, ghostwritten, edited, and coached in multiple genres, including memoir, business, and sports.  Truth Is in the House is his first work of fiction.

Prior to joining the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Decatur Book Festival as interim director, she was the Journalism Educator at the Andrew P. Stewart Center’s after-school studio program that serves the children of Atlanta’s Pittsburgh neighborhood. She has lived in Decatur with her husband and two daughters since 2006.

Bookpleasures welcomes as our guest Gavin Larsen author of Being a Ballerina: The Power and Perfection of a Dancing Life.

Gavin began her studies as a ballet dancer t the tender age of eight and performed as a professional for eighteen years until 2010, when she retired. Her career included performing the Pacific Northwest Ballet, the Oregon Ballet Theatre, the Suzanne Farrell Ballet, and the Alberta Ballet and guest artist with Ballet Victoria.

Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest Denise George. Denise is the author of 31 traditionally-published books, (with Penguin Random House, Tyndale House, Zondervan, LifeWay, Bethany House, etc.) and more than 1500 magazine/newspaper articles, including Redbook, Essence, History News Network, Christianity Today, AAA, Guideposts, etc.

She writes on topics: Civil Rights, World War II, and books about Christian living. Her latest book, Called to Forgive (with Anthony Thompson, Bethany House, 2019) just received a starred Publishers Weekly review.

For years, she taught writing to publish classes, and has traveled widely, speaking to universities, seminaries, churches, etc. She is married to Dr. Timothy George, founding dean of Beeson Divinity School, Samford University, Birmingham, AL.

Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest Pamela Burke author of 20 Women Changemakers: Taking Action Around the World and 20 Women Storytellers: Taking Action with Powerful Words.

Pam is a member of the broadcasting industry and print media for more than 30 years, journalism and writing has always been a passion for her. Her first foray into the industry started at the age of 8 when she started her own newspaper. In more recent years, She held titles as a television executive, bureau chief, producer and reporter.

Throughout her career, she has produced several female-oriented television programs including the award-winning Working Mother, Attitudes and The Working Women’s Survival Hour.

Since the age of 8, Pamela started working for her neighborhood newspaper and later worked her way up to become a producer and/or executive for NBC; LIFETIME Cable Network; USA Network; USA TODAY–The Television Show; King World and CBS; A&E Cable Network; and DISCOVERY Planet Green.

Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest Debora G. De Farias author of Standing Tall. Debora graduated in Dentistry from the University of Brasilia, followed by a Master's Degree in Health Sciences, she also obtained her equivalent D.D.S degree from the University of Florida when she moved to the United States in 2001.

Debora is passionate about her health career, literature and arts. An avid reader since the age of four, she grew up surrounded by books, fascinated especially by the true stories of those unknown heroes and heroines that are part of our history.

Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest, Jacquelyn H. Berry, Ph.D. Jacquelyn is a writer, cognitive scientist, and tech entrepreneur devoted to the study and practice of expertise.

An advocate for augmented learning and a founding member of Artificial Intelligence for Africa, she has spoken before the United Nations. 

She recently traveled to Egypt as a Fulbright Scholar where, in addition to her research on human-computer interaction among Arabic-English bilinguals, she taught a class about achieving outstanding goals, which led her to write FIND YOUR CARROT.

She is also an also an avid Tetris player, golfer, and birder, as well as a mother and beauty pageant competitor, currently holding the title of Mrs. Dutchess County, New York.

Margaret is the author of 21 books, including In Sweet Company: Conversations with Extraordinary Women About Living a Spiritual Life and her most recent tome, Coming Home: Finding Shelter in the Love and Wisdom of Paramahansa Yogananda.

She has written 150+ blogs, stories, interviews, and essays for outlets ranging from Beliefnet to Yoga International to the Chicken Soup for the Soul series to the Collective Women’s Initiative and Feminist.com. 

She earned degrees in Art Therapy, Psychosynthesis, and Leadership Studies and uses her passions for storytelling and “conversations that matter” as catalysts that help others connect with their best instincts and chart the life they long to lead. 

She has facilitated more than 250 keynotes and retreats for organizations such as The Parliament of World Religions, UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, and American Montessori Society, and served as a delegate to the United Nations conference, The Global Peace Initiative of Women, in Geneva. 

Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest, dancer, singer and actor, George Chakiris. George is best known for his appearance in the 1961 film version of West Side Story as Bernardo, the leader of the Sharks gang, for which he won both the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture.

He has recently published My West Side Story: A Memoir.

Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest, Suzy Beamer Bohnert. Suzy has recently written College, Covid, and Questions:  Tips and Advice for Incoming Freshmen, Undergraduates, Transfer Students, and Parents. 

Growing up Suzy played sports participating in leagues, playing in gyms, and gathering the neighborhood kids to join in pickup games until the streetlights were too dim to light the sporting site. 

 She launched her writing career as a newspaper sports editor. During that job, Suzy interviewed numerous coaches, athletes, and fans about sports, putting complicated games into simple words.

Bookpleasures.com once again welcomes as our guest Michael J. Merry. Michael has publisher ten works of fiction, his most recent one being Waters of the Chagres. 

Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest, Anahid Nersessian. Anahid received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, and has taught at Columbia University and UCLA.

Her first book, Utopia, Limited: Romanticism and Adjustment was published by Harvard University Press in 2015, and her second book, The Calamity Form: On Poetry and Social Life, by the University of Chicago in 2020.

She has recently published, KEATS’S ODES: A LOVER’S DISCOURSE (University of Chicago Press).

Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest Hank Garrett who was raised in Harlem in a multi-cultural neighborhood. In the 1950s, poverty was a way of life. Survival was the goal and violence was the means. By age 12, Hank was carrying a .25 caliber handgun. 

A serendipitous meeting with Sammy Davis Jr. changed the trajectory of Hank’s life, and Hank stepped into the worlds of comedy, acting, martial arts, and wrestling. Lying about his age, at 17, Hank balanced a career as a pro wrestler with doing comedy acts at various clubs, all while still attending high school. By age 19 he had landed a role in a successful television series.

Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest Canadian author Elka Ray, whose novels include the Toby Wong mystery series, set where Elka grew up, on Canada's Vancouver Island. 

As well as writing mysteries and suspense for adults, Elka's also written and illustrated a series of kids' picture books about Vietnam, where she lives by the beach with her family.

Bookpleasures.com is excited to have as our guest Dr. Barbara Natterson-Horowitz.

Barbara develops bio-inspired strategies for understanding and addressing human health challenges. Her work focuses on the natural world and evolutionary biology as sources of insight for health and development.

A Professor with faculty appointments in the UCLA Division of Cardiology, Harvard Medical School and Harvard University’s Department of Human Evolutionary Biology, she co-directs the UCLA Evolutionary Medicine Program and its graduate degree program (M.S. Biology).

Studying a diverse range of animals in natural settings she has uncovered evolved adaptations with relevance to heart failure, sudden cardiac death, seizures, dementia, movement disorders, infertility and psychiatric conditions including anxiety, compulsive and eating disorders.

In 2018, she first offered, Coming of Age on Planet Earth a course which uses a comparative and evolutionary frame to better understand the transition from adolescent to adult life across species.

Bookpleasures.com welcomes as our guest Michael K. Smith author of In the Shadow of Gold.