Episode #18: "Everyone Used Fake Names"
On this episode, we're excited to bring you Elizabeth Letts, Renee Rosen
and Tasha Alexander.
Elizabeth Letts is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of six novels and three works of narrative nonfiction, including Finding Dorothy, The Perfect Horse, The Eighty-Dollar Champion, The Ride of Her Life, and her latest novel, Fallen for France. Her books have been translated into multiple languages and been frequent selections for One Book, One Community programs at libraries and organizations across the country. Letts's earlier books have received the PEN Award, the Middle East Book Prize, and the Africana Book Award, among others, and have been selected as Indie Next and Library Reads selections. The Eighty-Dollar Champion spent more than forty weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and was a finalist for the Goodreads Reader's Choice Award.
Renée Rosen is a USA Today bestselling author of historical fiction and women's fiction. Her novels are inspired by iconic trailblazing women and pop culture. She is the author of ten novels, including Let's Call Her Barbie, Fifth Avenue Glamour Girl, The Social Graces, and Park Avenue Summer. Renée lives in Chicago, where she is currently working on her next novel, coming in June 2027
Tasha Alexander is the author of the New York Times bestselling Lady Emily mystery series. The daughter of two philosophy professors, she grew up surrounded by books and was convinced from an early age that she was born in the wrong century, spending much of her childhood under the dining room table pretending it was a covered wagon. Even there, she was never without a book in hand and loved reading and history more than anything. She studied English Literature and Medieval History at the University of Notre Dame.
She played nomad for a long time, living in Indiana, Amsterdam, London, Wyoming, Vermont, Connecticut, and Tennessee before settling down. She and her husband, the brilliant British novelist Andrew Grant / Andrew Child (she says “I may be biased but that doesn't mean I'm wrong”), live in southeastern Wyoming. She still doesn't have a covered wagon, but a log house went a long way toward fulfilling her pioneer fantasies. Andrew makes sure she gets her English characters right, and she makes sure his American ones sound American.
Read Along!
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An exquisite Arabian mare. A small boy leaving home in colonial North Africa. A young woman in France fighting to survive World War I. The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Ride of Her Life braids a sweeping novel of love, war, empire, and the power of kindness in a world descending into darkness.
“From Morocco to the Western Front, this thrilling saga is both sweeping and intimate.”—Helen Simonson, author of The Summer Before the War
“Fallen for France has everything—wartime intrigue, exotic locations, and beautifully flawed characters. Prepare to be swept away.”—Susan Meissner, author of A Map to Paradise
Beddou is six years old when he is sent off to apprentice far from his High Atlas village in Morocco. His mother gives him six amber beads to help him find his way home. That same month, a magnificent filly is born in Fes, in the splendor of the Sultan’s palace. For a brief, golden time, the mare belongs to the boy. But Beddou’s heart is broken when a soldier steals his horse and disappears into France just as the Great War roars to a start. Finding her seems impossible, but he vows to try.
Estelle, a young woman in France, finds a distressed Arabian mare wandering alone in the meadow behind her house. She is determined to look after this radiant creature just as tenderly as she cares for her vulnerable younger brother. But soon her world is torn apart, and she loses both the horse and her brother. She will spend the rest of the war searching for both.
Thomas is an Englishman hardened by his experience as a wartime veterinarian in France. He finds the mare and promises to protect her—and the woman who once loved her—but he doubts his own ability to keep anyone safe. As the pathways of the unforgettable mare and the boy’s desperate search intertwine, the separate strands of these strangers’ journeys converge, propelling them to make momentous choices that will change the course of their lives.
Spanning Morocco and France in the shadow of World War I, Fallen for France follows unforgettable characters whose lives are bound by a magnificent horse and a string of amber beads.
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THE USA TODAY BESTSELLER ∙ She was only eleven-and-a-half inches tall, but she would change the world. Barbie is born in this bold novel by USA Today bestselling author Renée Rosen.
As featured in The New York Post ∙ RuPaul's Book Club ∙ Book Riot ∙ The Nerd Daily ∙ Chicago Review of Books ∙ and more!
“A fresh and fun take on Barbie lore…clever and satisfying.”—Shelby Van Pelt, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Remarkably Bright Creatures
When Ruth Handler walks into the boardroom of the toy company she co-founded and pitches her idea for a doll unlike any other, she knows what she’s setting in motion. It might just take the world a moment to catch up.
In 1956, the only dolls on the market for little girls let them pretend to be mothers. Ruth’s vision for a doll shaped like a grown woman and outfitted in an enviable wardrobe will let them dream they can be anything.
As Ruth assembles her team of creative rebels—head engineer Jack Ryan who hides his deepest secrets behind his genius and designers Charlotte Johnson and Stevie Klein, whose hopes and dreams rest on the success of Barbie’s fashion—she knows they’re working against a ticking clock to get this wild idea off the ground.
In the decades to come—through soaring heights and devastating personal lows, public scandals and private tensions— each of them will have to decide how tightly to hold on to their creation. Because Barbie has never been just a doll—she’s a legacy.
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In this next enthralling mystery in Tasha Alexander’s bestselling series, Lady Emily chases down a killer in India along the misty banks of the sacred river Narmada.
1908: Lady Emily and her husband Colin Hargreaves, along with an eccentric group of English tourists, are vacationing in India at Ahilya Fort, the old home to the Maharaja’s family, when a man is found shot along the Narmada River. Emily and Colin jump into action, but their suspect list is large, including a wonderful spinster and her not-so-wonderful companion; a local doctor; a widow who lives nearby; an English explorer; and an Englishman who now runs a tea plantation near Darjeeling.
1740: Fifteen-year-old Ahilyabai has been married to the son of Malharrao Holkar, the Lord of the Malwa territory, for seven years. Now the time has finally come to produce an heir. But though Ahilya’s in-laws have shown her nothing but kindness, her notoriously-drunken husband remains a mystery to her, having rarely spoken to Ahilya since their wedding as children. Faced with this tortured and distant man, Ahilya’s sense of loyalty is tested as she attempts to balance fulfilling her duty with forging her own destiny. Her decisions will have ripple effects across time―including Lady Emily’s investigation almost two hundred years later.
Lady Emily’s case takes a dramatic turn when a shocking new person arrives at the fort―and when the killer strikes again shortly afterwards, she and Colin must race to uncover the villain’s identity before it’s too late.