Author Provocateur

Author Provocateur

Novelist Josie Brown interviews authors on the creative process.

Episodes

November 11, 2025 29 mins

In Barbara Conrey's tragic contemporary novel of love, lust, family and redemption, A FINE LAYER OF DUST, Attorney Jake Trenton's perfectly ordered life unravels when he loses a promotion and his wife announces she wants to become a surrogate. While he spends even more time at the office to prove his worth, he worries about the effects on their family if Sophia carries a baby for a stranger.

 

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In Sara Goodman Confino's humorous historical novel, GOOD GRIEF, it's 1963, and Barbara Feldman, a widow of two years, finds her mother-in-law, Ruth, on her doorstep, and determined to ease Barbara's pain. Instead, her machinations exacerbate Barbara's healing. At times, Ruth's antics are as covert as they are funny, and as exasperating as they are touching.

 

Could you live with your mothe...

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August 12, 2025 17 mins

In Juliette Fay's historical novel, THE HARVEY GIRLS, readers are transported to 1920s America, where trains were the common mode of transportation through the parts of the country filled with tall majestic mountains and wild open ranges. This big-hearted tale of two very different women training for a very unique job—Harvey Restaurants—must learn to trust each other as one tries to save her f...

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June 10, 2025 25 mins

In Meredith Schorr's latest novel, ROOMMATING, sizzling chemistry and tender friendship develop between two accidental roommates in this hilarious rom-com from the author of As Seen on TV.

Sabrina is too busy with grad school and her job as a library page to think about dating. Until her elderly roommate, Marcia, invites her estranged grandson, Adam, to move into their two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan ...

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May 5, 2025 22 mins

In prolific suspense novelist and USA-Today and Publishers Weekly bestselling author Debra Webb's latest novel, THE SECRETS WE BURY, is the first in a new romantic suspense series whose protagonist, Dr. Rowan Dupont—formally Nashville, Tennessee Police Department's forensic psychologist—also happens to be an undertaker's daughter.

 

Rowan, who comes from the small town of Winchester, Tennes...

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May 5, 2025 22 mins

In USA Today best-selling author Kaira Rouda's latest domestic suspense novel, SOMEBODY'S HOME, the sale of house isn't a fresh start, but the beginning of a nightmare.


Julie Jones has left her suffocating marriage. Although it's on the wrong side of the tracks in Oceanside, California, she's hoping that her new house is the first step toward a new life with her teenage daughter, Jess. 

However, the previous owners have left somet...

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April 29, 2025 27 mins

According to internationally bestselling author David Baldacci, when you've written as many books as he has—ten series, or a total of thirty books, and counting; and another twelve stand-alone novels—there is one way to keep his writing razor-sharp: "Start from Square One: create a new character, a new series—a new world."

With his latest novel, LONG ROAD TO MERCY, Baldacci has done just that. His new pr...

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April 28, 2025 23 mins

In best-selling author Lisa Barr's latest thriller, WOMAN ON FIRE, rising young journalist, Jules Roth, is given an unusual—and very secret—assignment: locate a painting stolen by the Nazis more than 75 years earlier: It is the final request of World-renowned shoe designer Ellis Baum, who has a special relationship with the painting and knows his time on Earth in short.

 

But a cunning art ...

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January 16, 2025 24 mins

In Jason Pinter's second novel in the Rachel Marin thriller series, A STRANGER AT THE DOOR, Pinter has given Rachel a unique skill set: she has an uncanny ability to see clues that crime scene investigators may miss, making her a much-needed asset by her town's understaffed homicide detectives, including her love interest, John Serrano.

She's also a lethal killer.

This gives her leeway to do things that may be considered skirting t...

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September 24, 2024 29 mins

In New York Times best-selling Author Eileen Goudge's latest novel, All THEY NEED TO KNOW, Kyra, an abused wife of a rich, powerful man goes on the run, ending up across the country in a small California town where she hopes to hide out. Instead, she is embraced by the locals, who offer friendship, support, and acceptance—no questions asked. Inevitably, though,  terror comes ...

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September 3, 2024 27 mins

In THE WHISPER SISTER, Jennifer S. Brown delivers an atmospheric coming-of-age story set in Prohibition-era New York, tracing one immigrant family's fortunes and a young girl's journey from the schoolyard to the speakeasy.

 

The streets of New York in 1920 are most certainly not paved with gold, as Minnie Soffer learns when she arrives at Ellis Island. Her father, who left Ukraine when Minn...

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July 30, 2024 30 mins

In prolific screenwriter Daniel Pyne's latest thriller, WATER MEMORY—Black Ops specialist Aubrey Sentro may be one concussion away from death. But when pirates seize the cargo ship she's on, she must decide whether to risk her life to save her fellow passengers.

As she plays their deadly game of cat and mouse, she pushes herself to survive by focusing on thoughts of her children. She's never told them what she really does for a liv...

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Hank Phillippi Ryan's latest thriller, HER PERFECT LIFE, Lily Atwood, is an award-winning on-air television reporter with a seemingly perfect life. A job she loves that earns her incredible celebrity status, a seven-year-old loving daughter, Rowen, who goes to a posh private school; and the perfect beautiful home in a safe neighborhood. But not everything is as perfect as it seems. Lily has several dark secrets—including the fact t...

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June 28, 2024 27 mins

Novelist Josie Brown interviews best-selling author James Rollins on his thriller,  CRUCIBLE.

Something old—in this case, an ancient witch hunter's tome—and something new: artificial intelligence, which goes by the less frightening initials AI.

When combined, they are a hair-raising combination in James Rollins' thriller, CRUCIBLE.

Rollins success as a thriller author comes from his research. His deep dives into subjects from our p...

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June 24, 2024 20 mins

In New York Times bestselling author Robert Dugoni's latest thriller, A COLD TRAIL, Seattle homicide detective Tracy Crosswhite returns home to Cedar Grove, where a brutal murder and her haunted past come to a crossroads.

There her husband, lawyer Dan O'Leary, is drawn into representing a local merchant whose business is jeopardized by the town's revitalization. At the same time, Tracy is urged by the lo...

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In FIELDS' GUIDE TO ABDUCTION—the first novel of Julie Mulhern's POPPY FIELDS  funny mystery series—Hollywood influencer Poppy Fields's trip to  Mexico, is much less relaxing than sunbathing by breathtaking infinity pools or attending glittering parties on patios overlooking the Pacific. Instead, she's got ...

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March 20, 2024 9 mins

In ONE HIT WONDER, the first novel in Kristi Roses's Samantha True funny mystery series—her heroine, rookie forensic photographer—discovers that her small Washington town of Wind River has a sinister underbelly when it is hit with not just one murder, but two. And what does a Sasquatch sighting have to do with it? Well, you'll have to read it to find out.

Kristi and I talk about the fun she has surroundi...

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When Maggie Lee — the heroine of JB Lynn's novel— THE HITWOMAN AND THE FAMILY JEWELS — is asked by her mob boss employer to kill a cop, she wants to say no—especially when she finds out the cop in question is someone she once dated—

Until that former date—Patrick Mulligan, whom she still cares about—tries to kill her too.

JB and I talk about her wild-and-crazy cast of characters—mobsters an...

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March 17, 2024 20 mins

In the first novel in Camilla Chafer's sixteen-book Lexi Graves series, a boring temp job immediately becomes exciting—and deadly—when Lexi finds one of the company's bosses face down in a pool of blood. When it's discovered that millions of dollars missing from the company's coffers, Lexi is also the chief suspect. Throw in the fact that her sexy new boss is not all he seems to be, and you see why Lexi may be in over...

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March 11, 2024 29 mins

IT COULD BE WORSE, Dara Levan's heartbreaking debut novel, is a tour de force chronicling a woman's journey through  the anxieties, trials, and tribulations with pregnancy, childbirth, and early motherhood—all the while addressing one parent's toxic narcissism and the other's enabling of it.

Despite the dark circumstances that propel her protagonist Allegra's an...

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