A Book and a Chat with Catherine Astolfo

Today’s guest on “A Book and a Chat” is murder mystery writer Catherine Astolfo, who is the author of the Emily Taylor Mystery series.

Like Saturdays guest Rosemary McCracken, Catherine heralds from Canada and that is just one of many links with my last shows guest.

Catherine is a Past President of Crime Writers of Canada and is a member of Sisters in Crime (Toronto). She is co-owner of Scribes Digest, an ezine for “lovers of the written word” (www.scribesdigest.com.

The writing bug hit her at a very early age and she well remembers writing fantasy stories for her classmates in Grade Three. The fruition of this need to write however waited until she retired from education that she started actually finish her up until then just dabbled with novels.

Of course Catherine’s education background became par t of her work as the “Emily Taylor Mystery" series centers around an elementary school principal who becomes a reluctant sleuth through various circumstances. 

Catherine’s first book “The Bridgeman”, was honored with a Brampton Arts Award, receiving such rave reviews that the debut book was quickly followed by “Victim”, “Legacy” and “Seventh Fire” which finally revealed Emily’s dark past.

The novels have now been purchased and re-launched by “Imajin Books” adding to the list of those who have read and enjoyed the “Emily Taylor Mystery’s”.

Don Graves said about the series and Catherine’s writing: 

“When I reviewed your novel, Victim (An Emily Taylor mystery) I told my readers that I had discovered an exciting writer with a poignant capacity to tell a story full of energy and passion. Description, dialogue, plotting, all developed with the skill of a seasoned mystery writer. Victim made my top 10 books for 2007. I recently read Legacy. It solidified my feeling that you are a writer in for the long haul and should mature into a mystery author of the top rank in Canada.”

Catherine who has also won several awards for her short stories, including the prestigious Arthur Ellis Award for Best Short Crime Story in 2012 for her short story “What Kelly Did", is currently working on several new novels including two children’s mysteries and a darker mystery novel.

So listen now and share an interesting, and entertaining show as I chat with my special guest today on A Book and a Chat with Catherine Astolfo

Barry

Direct link to the show
A Book and a Chat with Catherine Astolfo

or you can download the mp3 file of the show from
"Catherine Astolfo"

You can find out more about my guest and their books at:
"Catherine Astolfo - Emily Taylor Mystery series"

Barry Eva (Storyheart)

My Blogs:

Book Information and Things UK - Across the Pond

Book and a Chat Radio Show Guests - A Book and a Chat

Funny, Weird Or Just Interesting News From Around the World - Laugh I Thought My Trousers Would Never dry

A Book and a Chat with Dr Christopher Otiko

Dr Christopher Otiko has has lived on three continents (Africa, Europe and North America,) and has now been a guest on “A Book and a Chat”.

While he has written a a semi autobiographical book “LOST IN THE USA” it is only now that he is finaly embarking on what I expect to be a long and successful medical thriller writer.

In his book “Santa” , which as we learned is the first in a whole series of books, Dr Otiko takes his own experiences from his time living in London, the knowledge and anecdotes from his medical background and mixes them with the strong female character that one might find in a Sidney Sheldon book.

The result is "Santa" a new medical thriller whose hero is Kim Kramer, a white American female medical student, whose London internship places her in a whirlwind of action adventure, murder, lies and conspiracy. As well as the murder and thriller part there is a romance theme running though the book as well as a sprinkling of educational medical knowledge a cocktail that will please readers of all ages and sexes.

The book also provides unique insights into the British medical system, which is quite different from the American medical education system. The characters are already demanding a second in the series and Dr Christopher shared with us that there are already eight or nne planned and thought out ready to feed the demanding reader.

As I said this book is one that will appeal to everybody and I can see the clamoring for a follow up will have Dr Christopher Otiko soon creating the second third and fourth books for us to read and enjoy.

So listen now and share an interesting, and entertaining show as I chat with my special guest today on A Book and a Chat with Dr Christopher Otiko

Barry

Direct link to the show
A Book and a Chat with Dr Christopher Otiko

or you can download the mp3 file of the show from
"Dr Christopher Otiko"

You can find out more about my guest and their books at:
"Dr Christopher Otiko - Santa"

Barry Eva (Storyheart)

STARTING JUNE 4th I AM ON MY VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR.
PLEASE STOP BY AND FIND OUT MORE ABOUT ME AND MY NEW BOOK



My Blogs:

Book Information and Things UK - Across the Pond

Book and a Chat Radio Show Guests - A Book and a Chat

Funny, Weird Or Just Interesting News From Around the World - Laugh I Thought My Trousers Would Never dry

A Book and a Chat with Charles Rosenberg

The name Charles Rosenberg might well not mean anything to you, but you might well have seen some of his work on television. “Death on a High Floor” is his first novel, but you might well have heard himon TV and radio.

Charles is not a stranger to crime, nor for that fact drama. He was half of the “on-air” legal analysts for E! Entertainment Television's live coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial, he also provided commentary for E!'s coverage of the Simpson civil trial. This after writing a book “The Trial of O.J. Simpson: How to Watch the Trial and Understand What’s Really Going On”.

Also he has been the credited legal script consultant to the popular prime time television shows Boston Legal, L.A. Law, The Practice and Showtime Channel's The Paper Chase.

With all this plus his own background of practicing and teaching about law both in the US and Europe, it’s not surprising that his debut book “Death on a High Floor” is a classic legal thriller.

As we learned during the show, Charles did start writing a novel but that never was completed (up to now anyway) though one of the characters from that first draft does appear in “Death on a High Floor”

About Death on a High Floor:

On the surface, Death on a High Floor is a classic legal thriller, complete with tense courtroom scenes. As the novel opens, Simon Rafer, the managing partner of Marbury Marfan, a glitzy, L.A.-based international law firm of more than a thousand lawyers, lies dead in the firm's swank 85th floor reception area. An ornate Swiss dagger protrudes from his back.


Simon, it turns out, had recently paid $500,000 for the ancient world's most infamous coin, the EID MAR denarius, minted by Brutus to commemorate his assassination of Julius Caesar. On the back of the coin appear double daggers, the helmet of liberty and the Latin words EID MAR (Ides of March). The police quickly conclude that Simon was killed in a dispute with the seller over the authenticity of the coin. The question, "Real or fake?" echoes through the novel.

Robert Tarza is a sixty-something senior partner at Marbury Marfan. He had recently sold the coin to Simon and is instantly suspected of being the killer. Robert is proper, self-contained and sardonic but has lived his entire professional life, literally and metaphorically, on the "high floors." He is utterly unprepared to deal with being accused of murder, let alone prepared to deal with the police, the ravenous media, and the generally unsupportive reactions of those he had thought of as his close friends. The title of the book, Death on a High Floor, is thus simultaneously a description of both the physical place where Simon Rafer was murdered and the metaphorical place where Robert's psychological death spiral begins, as he falls from highly respected attorney to common criminal. On a deeper level, Robert's fall from grace is what the novel is really about, and I hope reader's will take from it not only a better understanding of how criminal procedure really works, but an appreciation for what it is like, emotionally, to be falsely accused.

While a second separate book is already underway, there is also a promise of a follow up the “Death on a High Floor".

As one reviewer put it…

Death on a High Floor" is a great book. The suspense starts on page 1 and continues until the very end. Once I began reading it, I could not put it down. I finished it in two days only because I had to go to work. Otherwise, I probably would have read it all in one sitting. I'm looking forward to Rosenberg's next book!

So listen now and share an interesting, and entertaining show as I chat with my special guest today on A Book and a Chat with Charles Rosenberg

Barry

Direct link to the show
A Book and a Chat with Charles Rosenberg

or you can download the mp3 file of the show from
"Charles Rosenberg"

You can find out more about my guest and their books at:
"Charles Rosenberg - Death on a High Floor"

Barry Eva (Storyheart)

My Blogs:

Book Information and Things UK - Across the Pond

Book and a Chat Radio Show Guests - A Book and a Chat

Funny, Weird Or Just Interesting News From Around the World - Laugh I Thought My Trousers Would Never dry

A Book and a Chat with Lauren Carr

My guest on today’s “A Book and a Chat” fell Lauren Carr fell in love with mysteries when her mother read Perry Mason to her at bedtime. As she shared with us, her mother thought that no book was worth reading unless there was a body or two in the plot.

She worked as an editor with the federal government, and while there read a book from the library on how to write a screenplay. Using the instructions in this book, she wrote a screenplay and sent it to a literary agent listed in the back of the book. This was the early 1990’s before Internet. Well, a couple of weeks later, she had an agent. Less than a month after that, my screenplay was at Universal Studios with an actor (who I will not name since he dumped her) and a producer who want to make my screenplay into a pilot for a television series.

“That was easy”… or so she thought.

The actor dropped the project for a better offer elsewhere; and the promised pilot collapsed. her agent shopped the screenplay elsewhere and said everyone loved the script, but no one wanted to take a chance on an unknown.

So Lauren dropped the agent and began writing.

Her first two mystery books were the start of the Joshua Thornton Mystery series, “A Small Case of Murder” and “A Reunion to Die For”.

"Joshua Thornton is a hero most sublime, and his five children provide the perfect backdrop for a man searching for the next plateau. Chester, West Virginia is every town, and its inhabitants are fun and pivotal to the plot. “

These have now been followed by a two books in the Mac Faraday Mystery series firstly “It’s Murder, My Son” and now her second book in the series ”Old Loves Die Hard”.

What does a homicide detective do with all his spare time when he comes into a multi-million dollar inheritance and a luxurious estate on Deep Creek Lake? If you’re Mac Faraday, you pursue the lifestyle of a millionaire playboy between solving mysteries.

In Old Loves Die Hard, Lauren Carr continues the rags-to-riches story of Mac Faraday, an underpaid homicide detective who inherits two-hundred-and-seventy million dollars and an estate on Deep Creek Lake, Maryland, from his birth mother on the day his divorce becomes final.

Carr placed the Mac Faraday mysteries on Deep Creek Lake, where she and her family often vacation, because the resort area struck her as the perfect location for a detective. “Deep Creek has everything I love to find in a mystery,” Carr says. “From a diversity of characters to locations either up on the mountain or down on the lake. Deep Creek has it all.”

After years of working as an editor in Washington, Carr gave up life in the big city to return to small town life and her native West Virginia. “I love a good mystery,” said author Lauren Carr. “Growing up in a small community, an argument at the corner store can become a murder by dinner. Making the story a reality on paper is a real thrill.”

In Old Loves Die Hard, Carr picks up where she left off in It’s Murder, My Son. Mac Faraday is settling nicely into his new life at Spencer Manor when his ex-wife Christine shows up—and she wants him back! Before Mac can send her packing, Christine and her estranged lover are murdered in Mac’s private penthouse suite at the Spencer Inn, the five-star resort built by his ancestors.

The investigation leads to the discovery of cases files for some of Mac’s murder cases in the room of the man responsible for destroying his marriage. Why would his ex-wife’s lover come to Spencer to dig into Mac’s old cases?

With the help of his new friends on Deep Creek Lake, Mac must use all of his detective skills to clear his name and the Spencer Inn’s reputation, before its five-stars—and more bodies—start dropping.

With more books on the way, the name Lauren Carr will soon by now mystery to detective story readers.

So listen now and share an interesting, and entertaining show as I chat with my special guest today on A Book and a Chat with Lauren Carr

Barry

Direct link to the show
A Book and a Chat with Lauren Carr

or you can download the mp3 file of the show from
"Lauren Carr"

You can find out more about my guest and their books at:
"Lauren Carr - Old Loves Die Hard"

Barry Eva (Storyheart)

My Blogs:

Book Information and Things UK - Across the Pond

Book and a Chat Radio Show Guests - A Book and a Chat

Funny, Weird Or Just Interesting News From Around the World - Laugh I Thought My Trousers Would Never dry

A Book and a Chat with Jeff Sharrett

My guest on today’s A Book and a Chat is mystery writer Jeff Sharrett, sharing with us about his Jimmy O’Brien books, including his new book “Detour to Murder”.

As we heard during the show, Jeff has had enough experiences during his life to fill several books of his own story, from flying a plane for a gambling relative to writing biographies for would be politicians. And while there are no exact links to the characters in his so far four books, you can bet there’s a few of the perhaps more seedy characters that relate to some people he’s met in his life.

Jimmy O’Brien is a defense attorney to the dregs of the criminal world, the novels immerse the reader in the politics, society, and industry of Los Angeles in the 1970s, all the while maintaining a style more reminiscent of 1940s who-dunnit narratives than anything else. They’re classy, surprising, and endearing – in a murder mystery kind of way.

From his first two books “The Brimstone Murders” and “Guilty or Else”, Jeff has built up a following in the mystery world, his books clever, gripping, and addictive filled with multiple layers of suspense that keep the reader wanting more. His latest novel and many say his best so far “Detour to Murder”, is linked to the film noir icon, Detour.

About Detour to Murder:

Why did Al Roberts meekly confess to a brutal murder in 1945, then nearly three decades later swear that he’s innocent?

Jimmy O'Brien, defense attorney to the dregs of the criminal world, digs into the past, igniting a powder-keg that threatens to expose the long-held secrets behind Detour, the iconic Hollywood film documenting Roberts' story. Secrets that could destroy the underground aristocracy holding power in Los Angeles, city of broken dreams.

Each book while being part of the same series with several characters in each book, are equally readable as a standalone novel, with several more books in the pipeline already I’m sure we’ll hear a lot more of Jimmy O’Brien and Jeff Sharrett.

So sit back and listen to today's interesting and entertaining show as I host today's "A Book and a Chat with Jeff Sharrett".

Barry

Direct link to the show
"A Book and a Chat with Jeff Sharrett".

or you can download the mp3 file of the show from
"Jeff Sharrett"

You can find out more about my guest and their books at:
"Jeff Sharrett - Detour to Murder"

Barry Eva (Storyheart)

My Blogs:

Book Information and Things UK - Across the Pond

Book and a Chat Radio Show Guests - A Book and a Chat

Funny, Weird Or Just Interesting News From Around the World - Laugh I Thought My Trousers Would Never dry

A Book and a Chat with Jacque Heebner

From Babe, Watership Down and Animal Farm to Aristacats, Lady and the Tramp and Charlottes Webb animals have been popular in both books and films. My guest today has produced a book and created a character that I’m sure will join that group of much loved literary heroes.

Author Jacque Heebner is a Los Angeles socialite, designer, animal rights activist and former Daily News journalist who has taken her love of cats and I might add dogs, and shaped it into long awaited celebrity-endorsed murder mystery novel… “First Person Cat”.

Set in the surreal world of Beverly Hills power, money and celebrity, the book is written from the point of view of Tiffany, a humanesque diva-feline brought up on caviar, Perrier, mansions and an acute appreciation of diamonds.

Tiffany or “Tiff to her close friends, a regal Tortoise-shell Persian, is a witnesses to the murder of her owner-mother, a Cher-like rock star with two hot daughters, at her home in Beverly Hills. Tiffany seems to smell the murderer’s thoughts and hear human words. By what creative methods can she expose the person who murdered her human mother and reveal this to investigators?”
You’ll need to read the book for that answer…

During the show Jacque not only shared the origins of the book and how it developed into the success it is today, but also many enjoyable stories and anecdotes mixed into what was a really enjoyable and much too short thirty minute show.

Jacque proved a delightful and entertaining a guest as her book “First Person Cat” is to read. So sit back and listen to today’s “A Book and a Chat with Jacque Heebner”

Barry

Direct link to the show
"A Book and a Chat with Jacque Heebner"

or you can download the mp3 file of the show from
"Jacque Heebner"

You can find out more about my guest and their book at:
"Jacque Heebner - First Person Cat"

Barry Eva (Storyheart)

My Blogs:

Book Information and Things UK - Across the Pond

Book and a Chat Radio Show Guests - A Book and a Chat

Funny, Weird Or Just Interesting News From Around the World - Laugh I Thought My Trousers Would Never dry