S9 Ep190 - The Greek Girls’ Guide To Murder with Guest Kika Hatzopoulou - 9/27/23

Our guest this week, Kika Hatzopoulou, grew up in Greece with the foundation of Ancient Greece and its mythology all around her. She now lives in London and until recently was an acquisitions editor for a Greek publisher, where she read and recommended books being published in the US and Britain for acquisition and translation for Greek audiences. She tinkered with the idea of writing a book herself, combining the Greek mythology stories she learned as a child with the detective stories and gritty noir that she loves reading. The result is Threads that Bind.

The novel Threads That Bind is about three sisters who are descendants of the Fates (also known as the Morai), the three mythological sisters who hold everyone’s destinies in their hands via threads. Io, the youngest sister, is a private investigator who discovers that someone is kidnapping women, tampering with their threads and essentially turning them into zombies. She has numerous potential suspects from Greek mythology: the Furies, the Oneroi (who control dreams), the Graces (who bestow artistic gifts on humans), and the Keres (who are the spirits of violent death). It is a novel that opens up a world of mythological characters you may not know much about.

A sequel to Threads that Bind titled Hearts that Cut comes out in summer 2024.

In addition to being our novelist guest, she also serves as this season’s global reader since we talk to her about Greek education and writers. She also turns the tables on us during the Fast and the Furious, the first guest to have ever done so, and we were unprepared.

You can find Kika at her website at kikahatzopoulou.com/ and on Insta at @kikahatzapoulou

For show notes for any episode, go to our website at www.perksofbeingabooklover.com. We are also on Instagram @perksofbeingabookloverpod and on FB Perks of Being a Book Lover.

Books Mentioned in this Episode:

1- Threads That Bind by Kika Hatzopoulou 2- Hearts That Cut by Kika Hatzopoulou 3- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte 4- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith 5- Frindle by Andrew Clements 6- Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes 7- Their Vicious Games by Joelle Wellington 8- Good Girls Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson 9- Suddenly a Murder by Lauren Munoz 10- Orpheus and Eurydice (the original Greek myth) 11- Lore by Alexandra Bracken 12- Girl Goddess Queen by Bea Fitzgerald 13- Mythology by Edith Hamilton 14- Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot 15- The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan 16- Simon & the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli 17- What Bees Want: Beekeeping as Nature Intended by Susan Knilens 18- The Scholomance Trilogy by Naomi Novik 19- The Prison Healer by Linnette Noni 20- Wesley Yorstead Goes Outside by Stephanie Harper

5 Star Read Recommended by a Fellow Book Lover Fabee @devouredpages 1- The Ill-Made Mute by Celicia Dart-Thornton (and all of The Bitterbynde Trilogy)

Movies mentioned-- Rear Window (1954)

Theatre mentioned-- Hadestown