http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL9773285375.mp3 What happens when the party is over? Can you ever truly escape your past? Jacke and Mike take a look at F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic 1931 story of guilt and melancholy, “Babylon Revisited.” F. SCOTT FITZGERALD (1896-1940) was the quintessential Jazz Age writer. While he’s known today primarily as the author of the near-perfect Continue reading

http://traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL8347744511.mp3 STEPHEN KING (1947- ) was born in the northern state of Maine, where he has lived most of his life. For more than forty years, he has been the world’s leading practitioner of scary fiction. He’s also won numerous awards, including the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters and the Continue reading

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:04:16 — 44.4MB) | Embed Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Email | RSS | More Author Christina Kovac (The Cutaway: A Thriller) joins Jacke for a discussion of crime fiction, writing a strong female protagonist, working in the local news business, and her “holy trinity” of female crime writers: Laura Lippmann, Tana French, and Megan Abbott. Learn more about the Continue reading

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 56:48 — 39.3MB) | Embed Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Email | RSS | More The poem called Beowulf (ca. 850 AD) was composed in Old English during what is known as the Middle Ages. Telling the tale of a hero who fights two monsters and a dragon, the three-thousand-line poem is traditionally viewed as one of the few bits of brightness Continue reading

Radha Vatsal, author of Murder Between the Lines: A Kitty Weeks Mystery, joins Jacke for a discussion of intrepid “girl” reporters in 1910s New York City and the books that likely influenced them. Authors discussed include Henry James, Edith Wharton, Mark Twain, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, Elizabeth Gaskell, and the wide range of scientific and Continue reading