Books and Brews Podcast

Books and Brews Podcast

The Books & Brews Podcast is the place where literature and beer meet. Each month we welcome a new guest author to read and discuss their work. Author Laura Vosika leads in-depth interviews to delve into the motivations, inspirations and preoccupations of each guest. Certified Cicerone® Michael Agnew pours beers specifically selected to pair with the writer's work. It's an hour of entertaining erudition that hits your mind and your mouth.

Episodes

January 29, 2026 62 mins

Books and Brews: the place where beer and literature meet!
In 1977 at the age of 21, Christiane Scarpino miraculously survived a terrorist bombing when she left her desk, just 10 feet from the bomb, to go get her morning donut and coffee from a co-worker. Missing Pieces tells the story of the bombing, the aftermath of dealing with the FBI's interrogations, and the long-term PTSD impacts.

We talked about Christiane's name-change tha...

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Books and Brews: the place where beer and literature meet!
Kristie Wolf weaves tales about fearless heroes and badass heroines who fight for justice and love while burning up the pages. Kristie's passion for writing romance ignited during her teenage years when she told her mom she was going to write a novel someday. She did, and now she can't stop. As the daughter of a Vietnam Veteran, wife of a Marine, and Navy mom, she enjoys wr...

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Books and Brews: the place where beer and literature meet!


Jake Needham is an American lawyer who became a screen and television writer through a series of coincidences too ridiculous for anyone to believe. When he realized how little he actually liked movies and television, he started writing crime novels.


Jake has lived in Asia and Australia since 1980, first in Sydney, then in Hong Kong, and from 1992, in Bangkok. He and his w...

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Books and Brews: the place where beer and literature meet!
Ashley Fontainne is an author and co-author of more than 30 novels, known for her intricate plots and writing in genres from dark comedy to mystery/thrillers to suspenseful paranormal.

Andrea Emmes, a singer, performer and one-time magician's assistant who has narrated many of Ashley's books, steps into writing for the first time with their co-authored paranormal and psycho...

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Books and Brews: the place where beer and literature meet!


Róbert Geréb is a boundary-pushing author and accomplished AI developer. As co-author of Jack the Ripper's Assassins—the cornerstone of The Dighton Chronicles, built on multigenerational oral history from a Romani-Viking lineage—he melds immersive storytelling with rigorous historical research. He also penned two nonfiction guides through Aspect Books: EASY MILLIONAIRE MAT...

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Books and Brews: the place where beer and literature meet!

Hiram Johnson is retired law enforcement officer, currently teaching criminal justice as an adjunct, a father, author and creator. His book Reason to Fight: a search or truth is a surprising tale of a family mystery.

We talked about the event that landed his grandmother in prison for murder, prison conditions for women in the 1920s, his search for his shrouded family histor...

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Dona Masi is a writer and editor whose short fiction and articles are used in reading and writing assessments throughout the United States.


Her articles on several subjects have appeared in several newspapers. She is also a playwright, and two of her plays were performed at the Provincetown Theater Company.
In her writing she loves bringing relatable characters to life and depicting them in all their heroic and flawed humanity. He...

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Books and Brews: the place where beer and literature meet!


Bill McCormick is an award-winning and critically acclaimed author of several novels, graphic novels, and comic book series, and has appeared in numerous anthologies. He began writing professionally in 1986 for the Chicago Rocker Magazine in conjunction with his radio show on Z-95 (ABC-FM) and went on to write for several other magazines and blogs. He wrote a twisted news ...

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Books and Brews: the place where beer and literature meet!


Clay Gilbert has always believed in the power of the imagination to dissolve differences and forge connections between people. Since 2013, he has published thirteen novels, from science-fiction and horror to YA dystopia and urban fantasy.


His works include the science-fiction series Children of Evohe, which began in 2013 with Annah and the Children of Evohe, as well as th...

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Books and Brews: the place where beer and literature meet!


Michael Modzelewski (Mojo-less-key) grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of a famous NFL football player with the Cleveland Browns, Ed "Big Mo" Modzelewski. Michael graduated from Indiana University with a degree in English Literature. He is the author of five books, including INSIDE PASSAGE, about a two year stay on a wilderness island in the Inside Passage to Alaska. Afte...

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Bestselling author Beth Duke's Anywhen is the ultimate outsider story—a young woman yearning to belong across time itself. With universal themes of love, jealousy, sacrifice, friendship, joy, loss, and forgiveness, this genre-defying novel is a story like no other...one that will stay with you long after the final page. 


Beth read from her latest book, Anywhen, that combines sci-fi, time travel, and historical fiction. We talked a...

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A lifelong Sherlockian, Richard T. Ryan is the author of nine Sherlock Holmes novels and currently working on his tenth.  He's also written a well-received murder mystery "Deadly Relations which has been produced twice off-Broadway. He pursued graduate studies at Notre Dame where he majored in medieval literature.


Our talk ranged from Knights Templar finding Minnesota in the 1300s to the reasons Arthur Conan Doyle killed Sherlock ...

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Books and Brews: the place where beer and literature meet!
Michael Colon is a novelist and freelance writer, born and raised in New York City. His author's story is about hard work, perseverance, and believing in the power of imagination. His inspiration comes from various societal abnormalities, the beauty in cultural differences, and his  own life experiences.

His debut novel, The Gift from Aelius, is about an artificial intellig...

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John Graham shipped out on a freighter when he was 16, hitchhiked through the Algerian Revolution at 19 and was on the team that made the first ascent of Denali's North Wall at 20, a climb so dangerous it's never been repeated. He hitchhiked around the world at 22, working as a correspondent in every war he came across. A US Foreign Service Officer for 15 years, he was in the middle of the 1969 revolution in Libya and the war in Vi...

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J.P. Reedman lives in Wiltshire near to Stonehenge. Born in Canada, she has had a lifelong interest in ancient and medieval history, and is often found lurking around prehistoric sites, ruined castles and abbeys, and interesting churches with camera in hand. She became a full-time writer in 2018. 

Series include: I, Richard Plantagenet, 5 books chronicling Richard's life from childhood to Bosworth, and Medieval Babes, a set of stan...

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Michael C. Keith is the author of an acclaimed memoir––The Next Better Placea young adult novel––Life is Falling Sideways––and 20 story collections, including, Of Night and Light, Everything is Epic, Sad Boy, And Through the Trembling Air, Hoag's Object, The Collector of Tears, If Things Were Made To Last Forever, CaricaturesThe Near EnoughBits, Specks, Crumbs, FlecksSlow Transit, Perspective Drifts Like a Log on a River, Le...

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    September 18, 2024 62 mins

    Steve Downes is a contemporary Irish poet and novelist, currently living and working in Ireland. Educated in N.U.I. Maynooth, he holds a Degree in Classical History and a Masters in Cultural Anthropology.

    Steve has published poetry; science fiction, including Cosmogonic Marbles, Temporal Tome, Gadzooks Armageddon  and Botolf Tales (the Botolf Chronicles), Warworld: Shadows & Dominions (part 1), Murder on the Alpha Centauri Express ...

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    Kathy Murray is a certified personal trainer with over thirty years' experience in the fitness industry. She is a graduate of The Ohio State University where she was a member of the 1983 National Cheerleading Championship Team. After college she competed in and won the United States Aerobic Championship in 1986 and spent the year traveling the world as a Fitness Ambassador and worked as a free-lance educator to teach fitness to Eur...

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    Like any good soldier's son, Frank Warner moved with his family from fort to fort, accepted each change, and was ready to move again. Then, in 1960, Frank's father was ordered to Fort Huachuca (WahCHOOka), Arizona. This was the fifth Army post of Frank's childhood, the first place he never wanted to leave. So when his father was ordered to Vietnam in 1963, sending Frank and the rest of the family to Pennsylvan...

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    Sharon Bennett Connolly is the best-selling British author of several non-fiction history books. A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Sharon has studied history academically and just for fun – and has even worked as a tour guide at a castle. She also writes the popular history blog, www.historytheinteresngbits.com and co-hosts the podcast A Slice of Medieval, alongside historical novelist Derek Birks. 

    Sharon regularly gives t...

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