In Walks a Woman

Heather Aimee O’Neill published her debut novel, THE IRISH GOODBYE, on the last day of September, and it’s already started a reading wildfire:  People Magazine just made it their Pick of the Week, it’s Apple Books’s October Staff Pick, and Jenna Bush Hager announced it as her “Read with Jenna” on the Today Show last week.  Go, Heather!  

Join Sonja and Vanessa as they ask Heather about dyslexia, her early years as a poet, the me...

Welcome to Season 4: “Haunting Women”!

Here’s your first scare: Ann Radcliffe’s 1794 gothic classic, THE MYSTERIES OF UDOLPHO, is 290,897 words long.  For the average reader, reading at a speed of 300 WPM, that would take 13 hours and 5 minutes to read. And that does not count potty and snack breaks. If you are up for it, go for it!  If not, as Sonja likes to say, we offer “Cliff’s Notes for Adults,” and we’ll bravely take you throu...

As with the first part of our Udolpho episode, this is full of spoilers, so don’t listen if you are up for reading about 300 pages (approximately half) of this Ann Radcliffe novel.  However, if you are seeking a lively summary that will allow you to chat confidently about THE MYSTERIES OF UDOLPHO at your next cocktail party, do push play.

When you do, you will find yourself waist deep in banditti and pirates (which might seem like t...

In the third of our author interviews, Sonja & Vanessa are proud to feature another Lawrence, Kansas local author:  Rachel McCarthy James.  If the name sounds familiar, it’s because she co-authored 2017’s cold-case cracking tour-de-force, Man on the Train, in which she and her coauthor, Bill James, solve a hundred-year old serial axe murderer mystery.  In her new book, Rachel traces the history of the axe as tool, weapon, and c...

This book and this episode is like a fruit smoothie by the sunny seashore–light, sweet, gentle first love vibes. This is a YA selection we have chosen to find out what the youngest set values in romance stories.  Appropriately, it is not an “E” episode–first time in the season!  Sonja and Vanessa are joined again by their Designated Gen Z Reader, Sage McHenry, to better understand the meteoric rise of this book series…now televisio...

Welcome to our 2nd episode of “In Walks a Woman Writer”!   Amy Stuber joined us in the studio, and the time flew by.  Listening to this conversation, you’ll feel like you are sitting in your favorite coffee shop with Amy who is so kind, so unassuming–and yet so ridiculously talented.  

Amy’s 2024 short story collection, Sad Grownups, won the prestigious Pen/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection.  The collection is...

Sonja and Vanessa go on a thrilling journey with Millennial reader and Romantasy fan/expert, Haley Bajorek.  If you’ve ever wondered what Romantasy is, why it has a huge fan base, whether it’s for you, and where to start, this episode fills in all the blanks!

For Gen X readers like Sonja and Vanessa who grew up on tales such as Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, the focus of this episode, Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses (...

Welcome to our first episode of “In Walks a Woman Writer”! 

We are proud to kick off this special author series with talented Kansas poet and veteran teacher, Melissa Fite Johnson.  You are in for a treat as Melissa’s warmth will make you feel welcome, and, like Sonja and Vanessa, you’ll be grateful for Melissa’s shrewd insights about life and writing.  

Melissa’s third collection, Midlife Abecedarian, is filled with nostalgia, self...

First, you should rush to read Sarah Waters’s The Paying Guests, a fantastic romance thriller set in 1922, post World War 1 England.  We don’t give spoilers, exactly, but the historical context we cover gives you some idea of events and situations that come up in the novel.  And the novel is wall-to-wall women’s issues:  society’s expectations of decorum, cooking, cleaning, birth control, wifely duties, sex, widowhood, spinsterhood...

Ernest Hemingway’s 1929 A Farewell to Arms is almost always captioned as a tragic romance.  Is it?  Tragic, yes.  Romance…debatable.  Is Frederick Henry a compelling romantic hero and Catherine Barkley an inspiring romantic heroine?  Join Sonja and Vanessa as they run through the text (SPOILER ALERT), and give their verdict on the love story.

This show will also offer you a mini Hemingway bio, an explanation of his writing philosoph...

Sonja and Vanessa LOVE Alice Winn’s 2024 novel, In Memoriam, a moving love story of two soldiers fighting on the fabled Western Front in World War 1.  Winn nimbly weaves numerous, real historical events through the friends-to-lovers romance of two teens who fight bravely for their country but have to keep their love secret from that very government–on pain of death.

Our goal in this episode is not to summarize or spoil the novel, bu...

Sonja and Vanessa dip into a wonderful historical romance novel by Julie Ann Long, The Perils of Pleasure, Book 1 of 11 in her marvelous Pennyroyal Green series.  We set up the first three chapters, but that’s just the premise of the book, and there are no spoilers.  We discuss the literary lineage of regency romance novels, like this one, both to Pride and Prejudice and even to Tristan & Iseult.   

Sonja brings up some thought-...

If you like your literature with a side of pop culture, you’ll love what’s on the menu for today: Rachel Feder’s clever & informative study, The Darcy Myth: Jane Austen, Literary Heartthrobs, and the Monsters They Taught Us to Love (2023).  Let’s face it, whether or not we have read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and whether we love or hate it, Lizzie and Mr. Darcy’s love story has had a massive influence on our culture, sp...

Sonja and Vanessa have read a 500 page novel for you (or a measly 400 pages, depending on which edition you read).  You’re welcome! 

It’s about a 15 year old girl named Pamela, who is the most beautiful woman on earth (according to everyone in the novel), and she’s a servant girl who is “accomplished” (in Pride and Prejudice fashion…even to the extent that everyone marvels at how well she carves a chicken–now that’s an accomplished...

This episode focuses on acts 3-5 of Romeo and Juliet. Our spotlight is on Juliet because, when you read the original play, it’s hard not to think that Juliet DESERVES more of the spotlight than most directors share with her. 

Hear about many moments and lines that often don’t make it into productions of the play or feature films.  What does that do to our perception of Juliet?  Doesn’t it, inevitably, distort her?  In Acts 3-5, Jul...

In this second episode in the series, Sonja and Vanessa travel through the play, keeping a sharp eye on Juliet.  Is Juliet as demure as many stage performances make her seem?  Romeo makes the first move at the party, but by the end of the night, is he the one in charge of the relationship?  And let’s really consider what’s said in the famously “romantic” balcony scene…how much of it really fits the term “romantic”?  The answers to ...

To watch the courtly love story in action, Romeo and Juliet seems like the best place to start.

In the first of a 3-part series, Sonja and Vanessa offer helpful historical and literary foundations that help us read/understand the play.  Learn about original source material, Renaissance Italian government, marriage practices, and why, in William Shakespeare’s acting company, Juliet would have been played by a young man.  After ex...