Season 6 Line-Up
Here’s the full line-up for Season 6
Apr 28 S6-00 100th Episode Craig Johnson – The Longmire Series
In this 100th episode, Landis visits with one of his favorite authors and writing instructors, Craig Johnson, author of the New York Times bestselling mystery series which became the basis for the hit Netflix series “Longmire.”
This episode was recorded in a cross-country remote podcast that gives new meaning to the phrase, “Social Distancing,” because Craig Johnson participated from his ranch in Ucross, Wyoming, population 25, while Landis was sheltering-in-place in his home in Charlotte.
Craig Johnson is the recipient of the Western Writers of America Spur Award for fiction, the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award for fiction, the Nouvel Observateur Prix du Roman Noir, and the Prix SNCF du Polar. His novella Spirit of Steamboat was the first One Book Wyoming selection.
May 5 S6-01 Tom Hanchett – Live – Sorting Out The New South City
In this LIVE episode at our first Dinner and a Podcast at Poplar Tapas, we meet Tom Hanchett, author of “Sorting Out the New South City: Race, Class, and Urban Development in Charlotte, 1875 to 1975 (2nd Edition).
The New York Times says that “Tom Hanchett’s Sorting Out the New South City [discovers] surprising things about the development of Southern cities.” And Southern Cultures says of the book: “This is a southern story of the emergence of mercantile, industrial, banking, and real estate entrepreneurs and how they shaped a city in an era of black disenfranchisement, Jim Crow, and the waning political power of white workers. . . . [Hanchett] provides a broad context for understanding that the shape of our cities is far from happenstance.” The re-release of the book serves as a call for cities not to forget their past as they chart their future.
May 12 S6-02 Sarah Archer – The Plus One
In this episode, we meet Sarah Archer, author of “The Plus One,” a novel about what happens when a female robotics engineer who can’t find a date to her sister’s wedding to pacify the unrelenting pressure by her mother to get a man, decides to build her own date, the perfect man for her.
Dating is hard, and apparently, being dateless at your perfect sister’s wedding is even harder, which is why, when Kelly couldn’t find Mr. Right, she built him. Renee Carlino, author of “Blind Kiss,” calls it “simply unputdownable,” a story full of laughter and tears.
May 19 S6-03 Scott Syfert – The First American Declaration of Independence?
In this episode, we meet Scott Syfert, author of The First Declaration of Independence? The Disputed History of the Mecklenburg Declaration of May 20, 1775, and we explore the facts behind the controversy as to whether Mecklenburg County was first to declare independence from Great Britain.
Ken Burns, documentary filmmaker, says: “Scott Syfert has rescued and brought vividly to life a little-known story of our Revolutionary past and the urgent need by our ancestors for freedom.”
May 26 S6-04 Cynthia Newberry Martin – Tidal Flats
In this LIVE podcast episode recorded at Main Street Books in Davidson, North Carolina, we meet Cynthia Newberry Martin, author of “Tidal Flats,” a novel where marriage is at the heart of the story and where conflicting choices could undermine the union.
Rebecca Makkai, author of “The Great Believers,” says that Cynthia Newberry Martin is a tremendous writer, with a Woolfian talent for taking the full measure of small moments,” and Joshua Mohr, author of “Sirens and Damascus,” aptly notes that “the novel swirls with light and love.”
June 2 S6-05 George Hovis – The Skin Artist
In today’s episode, we meet George Hovis, author of “The Skin Artist,” an edgy story set in the shadows of the shiny banking city we know as Charlotte, North Carolina.
Fred Chappel, author and winner of the North Carolina Award for Literature, says that “Hovis displays a world we know and try to turn our gaze from. But the story is too powerful…and we readers watch, hypnotized, as the descent gathers friends, lovers and family into its vortex. Can such dark passages lead to hope?”
June 9 S6-06 Mary Kratt – Poetry and Charlotte History
In this episode, we meet Mary Kratt, author of the poetry collection, “Watch where you walk,” the history book, “Charlotte, North Carolina, A Brief History,” and many other books.
Fred Chappell, former North Carolina Poet Laurate says of “Watch where you walk,” that it is “clean-lined, economical, pointed, and soulful,” and that “these lyrics strike to the heart of things immediately, then linger with musical suggestion in the mind.”
Mary’s book, “Charlotte, North Carolina, A Brief History” (The History Press) is an example of one curious search into Charlotte’s history, which is filled with interesting stories and pictures, too.
June 16 S6-07 Jack Grossman – Child of the Forest
In today’s episode, we meet Jack Grossman, co-author of “Child of the Forest,” a highly acclaimed nonfiction book about a young girl’s fight for life following the Nazi invasion of her small town in Eastern Poland.
“Child of the Forest” won the 2019 Best Indie Book Award in the non-fiction category, an IBPA Benjamin Franklin Silver Award and was a Finalist in The International Book Awards. Jack was nominated as Author of the Year by The Artists Music Guild Heritage Awards has spoken widely to students and adults about this story. One reader calls the book a must read: “An incredibly riveting true story of a young girl’s tenacity to survive,” saying “we can all learn something from Charlene Perlmutter Schiff.”
June 23 S6-08 Megan Miranda – The Girl From Widow Hills
In this episode, we meet Megan Miranda, a New York Times best-selling author whose latest book, “The Girl From Widow Hills,” releases today, June 23, 2020.
R.L. Stine, best-selling author of “Goosebumps and Fear Street, says this of the book: “Sleep-walking is creepy. You’re asleep, but you’re walking through the night—like the living dead. I knew when I started ‘The Girl from Widow Hills’ I was in for some shivers. But I had no idea the terrors that were in store.”
Megan is the New York Times bestselling author of All the Missing Girls, The Perfect Stranger, and The Last House Guest.She has also written several books for young adults, including The Safest Lies, Fragments of the Lost, and Come Find Me.
June 30 S6-09 Mark Peres – On Life and Meaning
In this episode, we meet Mark Peres, author of the book and the podcast by the same name, “On Life and Meaning,” a collection of 100 essays inspired by the 100 guests who appeared on the podcast he hosted for 100 continuous weeks between 2017 and 2019.
Guests who appeared on the podcast and who are featured in the essays include artists, writers, philosophers, civic leaders, consultants, executives, entrepreneurs, religious leaders, innovators, creators and more. Mark talked with them about their work, life and higher purposes, because as he says, the heart of the project was “the notion that we all want to know and be known.”
Mark saw the podcast as “an art installation: a gallery of portraits of people making a difference in the world.” The book is a gallery, too, with stunning black and white photos of the guests and essays about what makes their hopes and dreams and lives, special.
July 7 S6-10 Cat Warren – What the Dog Knows
In this episode, we meet Cat Warren, author of “What the Dog Knows: Scent, Science and the Amazing Ways Dogs Perceive the World,” a New York Times Bestseller.
REBECCA SKLOOT, The New York Times Book Review, says: “What the Dog Knows is a fascinating, deeply reported journey into scent, death, forensics and the amazing things dogs can do with their noses: sniffing out graves, truffles, bedbugs, maybe even cancer. But it’s also a moving story of how one woman transformed her troubled dog into a loving companion and an asset to society, all while stumbling on the beauty of life in their searches for death.”
July 14 S6-11 Kimberly Motley – Lawless
In this episode, we meet Kimberley Motley, author of the book “Lawless,” which recounts her unrelenting fight for justice in one of the world’s most dangerous places.
This is an extraordinary story of a US woman who became the first foreign lawyer to practice in Afghanistan. The book is a memoir, but it also has the feel of a page-turning suspense novel, where Kimberley Motley faces one unique, difficult and dangerous legal case after another.
Through sheer force of personality, ingenuity and perseverance, Kimberley’s legal work swiftly morphed into a personal mission – to bring “justness” to the defenseless and voiceless.
July 21 S6-12 Meagan Lucas – Songbirds & Stray Dogs
In this episode, we meet Meagan Lucas, author of”Songbirds & Stray Dogs.”
Step Post, Columnist with LitReactor, says of the book: “Quite possibly my favorite debut novel of the year. ‘Songbirds and Stray Dogs’ has everything I love about Southern fiction—atmosphere, a deep attention to place and, most importantly, tough, unforgettable characters, spearheaded by the indomitable Jolene. Megan Lucas is the very definition of a badass, female grit lit author.”
July 28 S6-13 Vernon Glenn – Friday Calls
In this episode, we meet Vernon Glenn, author of “Friday Calls: A Southern Novel,” which is set in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, mostly on a sinful Friday night.
Kirkus Reviews describes Glenn’s prose as “full of color and motion,” and says that “Friday Calls is a lyrical Southern tale of rippling effects.” When things go wrong on a Friday night on both sides of the tracks and on the tracks themselves, lives change quickly and the law comes to collect.
Aug 4 S6-14 Robert Inman – The Governor’s Lady
In this episode, we meet Robert Inman, author of “The Governor’s Lady,” and other novels. Library Journal says of “The Governor’s Lady” that “Inman beautifully blends old-fashioned Southern storytelling with tense political drama. Readers with an interest in American politics, fierce women, or family relationships will enjoy this novel, whose strongly developed characters and plot suspense will keep them from putting this book down until the very last page.”
D.G. Martin, host of “North Carolina Bookwatch” on UNC-TV says its “…a terrific story with a cast of unusual characters” and Lee Smith, author of Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger says that “Robert Inman hits the ground running and keeps up the pace in this suspenseful page-turner, which takes us behind the headlines as a Southern governor’s wife assumes the office herself so he can run for president. The real question is, how does Robert Inman know so much about state politics, public marriages, and human nature? And how did he come up with such believable characters—not only the ambitious ex-governor and his plucky, likable wife, but also the fascinating hangers-on who attach themselves to any rising political figure? The Governor’s Lady—a heady mix of sex and sexism, politics and greed, trust and perfidy—is as timely as the morning’s news.”