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Welcome to The Best of Binge Reading 2023, Part One, the first of two shows featuring the most listened to episodes on our popular fiction podcast, chosen solely on the basis of the number of times you, our audience, listened to them.
They include an intriguing range of genres, from a contemporary thriller, to a French story in equal parts about food and love, a World War II spy mystery, a NZ historical family saga pre-dating European settlement, and two romances, one a fresh and funny romcom, the other a tender second chance tale of loss, regret, and the influence family has on life changing decisions…..
And like our audience, our authors reflect our international reach, with two Australians, a Kiwi, one French American, and one each from New York and Massachusetts.
We present brief excerpts from each show, with links for where to find them if you’d like to hear more… As in previous years, we’ve selected shows that aired between Dec 1, 2022 and Dec 1, 2023.
The second part of The Best Of The Joys of Binge Reading will air on January 16.
Kelly Rimmer: Spies – Lies – Betrayal
But now, here’s the first of this week’s guest authors, Kelly Rimmer. Her sweeping World War II suspense has sold more than 2 million copies worldwide and made international best seller lists, including the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today.
Her latest book, The Paris Agent, a fascinating dual timeline mystery with multiple romance lines moving from England and World War Two to the 1970s with the daughter of one of those people that was involved in the war. It’s a powerful story of two otherwise ordinary women who become spies dropped into Nazi occupied France.
I asked Kelly to tell us of the story’s genesis.
Kelly Rimmer: My daughter’s name is Violette. It’s a family name from my husband’s side.
And when I was pregnant with her, and we were talking about names, you do the Googling thing, trying to think about famous people with this name.
Or what the meaning of the name is. And I stumbled upon Violette Szabo, who was an SOE agent, in the F section of the SOE.
Her story was so inspiring and had stuck with me. I loved the idea that we were naming my daughter after someone so incredible.
And I had always intended, always hoped that I would come up with the right premise to write a book that was inspired by her.
And, maybe two or three years ago, I heard a podcast about Diana Rowden, who is another SOE agent, who I had never heard of, even though I’d done a little bit of reading about the SOE.
And I’ve also found her to be just such an incredible woman. The idea for this book came out of their stories, their real-life stories.
It’s fiction. I’ve taken a few liberties here and there with their stories. And they weren’t actually close friends, but in my book, my characters inspired by them are friends.
But for the most part, where I could, I followed the real history.
Traitors operating within the SOE
Jenny Wheeler: Part of its foundation is the understanding that’s emerged since the war that the Special Operations Executive, the branch of the British Secret Service that handled all of the dispensing of agents over France.
The ones that were so tremendously brave as to jump out of planes into enemy territory and work to support the Resistance…
Some of those people were betrayed from within the SOE even before they set foot on French soil.
Kelly Rimmer: There’s plenty of scenarios where agents landed and were met by Nazi troops on the ground as they were landing.
In hindsight, it’s very clear that there were people in the SOE who were betraying information through to the Nazis, but at the time they were operating blind in so many ways.
As soon as I came across that idea and this, gentleman named Henri Dericourt, who was thought to have potentially been quite senior in the SOE, and was very good friends with his second in command, best friends/
He was eventually tried for being a double agent, but was acquitted most likely because his friend Nicolas Bodington, perjured himself to get his friend off.
As soon as I came across that story, I thought it would be really interesting to write about these agents who have the best of intentions. Who have taken to their training with every, ounce of energy and, and dedication that they have and who go off hoping that they can do something to turn the tide of the war.
But they’re really fighting an uphill battle because there are people within the SOE who are working against them.
Kelly Rimmer on Binge Reading
www.thejoysofbingereading.com/kelly-rimmer-wwii-dual-timeline/
Kelly Rimmer’s website: Kellyrimmer.com
Fiona Lowe: When friends betray
Best selling fellow Australian author Fiona Lowe’s latest contemporary thriller, The Money Club, centers on the scenario of small town scammed by one of their own in a Ponzi scheme.
Fiona unpicks the moral quagmire of those who trade on the bonds of their closest friendships and families for money.
The story is based in a rural town outside of Melbourne, and it’s partly based on true events. Fiona explains.
Fiona Lowe: There’s a couple of things. My claim to fame, I’m not sure it’s a great one, is that I live in a regional city that has been subject to two of Australia’s worst Ponzi schemes.
In fact, we actually had, at one point, standing in our kitchen drinking our wine…
We had one of the perpetrators of one of these schemes We did not invest, but the fact that he was standing in our kitchen came about because of small towns, and the networks.
You are never too many handshakes away from anybody. When this scheme went down and $89 million dollars went missing, a lot of people in my town were affected and I observed the fallout from that.
I hadn’t actually intended to write a book about it. It was just like, isn’t this awful?
It was just sitting there in the back burner. And then another decade went by and the town got hit by another Ponzi scheme.
And I remember listening to an ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) podcast about a couple of blokes down in East Gippsland who had invested and lost money and they were trying to get their money back.
Families who lost everything to a ‘friend’
They believed that there was a middle man involved and they were trying to sort that out.
I remembered these families and these workplaces because Ponzi schemes and networks – entire extended families go down.
Entire sporting communities, sections of a factory. They all invest because they all trust each other. And I started to think if you lose everything, normally you can turn to someone in the family and they can help you out.
But if your entire extended family has lost everything, where does that leave you? And I thought, I need to write a book about this.
Jenny Wheeler: Early on there is the question raised of ‘were they gullible or were they greedy?’ And I guess sometimes this might surface in the press as well with the comment they shouldn’t have been so gullible.’ How did you tackle that aspect of it?
Fiona Lowe: That was the big theme of the book, what is need and what is greed? And that was my constant question that I was asking as I was writing the book. Is it greedy to want to own your own home? Is it greedy to want to educate your children? Is it greedy to want to own a Lamborghini and for other cars?
And who makes a decision about what is need and what is greed and where’s the line drawn? So that’s constantly being tossed aroundThe other thing about Ponzi schemes and with The Money Club is that this wasn’t a stranger that was suggesting that they invest.
This was a friend, someone they trusted, a man whose father was a financial advisor.
They came with gravitas. And trust is such a huge thing, if we trust people, we will take that step.
Fiona Lowe on The Joys of Binge Reading
www.thejoysofbingereading.com/fiona-lowe-contemporary-fiction/
Website: Fionalowe.com
Amy Poeppel: Fresh and funny romcoms
Fresh and funny romcom author Amy Poeppel’s latest literary romp, The Sweet Spot is a tale of spurned love, revenge, and the healing power of friendship.
Here’s part of our conversation about the book, Amy’s fourth novel.
Jenny Wheeler: The Washington Post said of The Sweet Spot; “She puts more planes in the air than an ambitious air traffic controller, and gracefully lands each one.”
You describe it as “a love letter to family friendships and Greenwich Village.” Tell us something about this fourth novel.
Amy Poeppel: I wanted to write a book that took place in Greenwich Village because that’s where I live. That is my neighborhood. It’s beautiful.
I happen to live in faculty housing at one of the biggest universities here, which is NYU.
I live in this large, very strange faculty dorm almost, which is I think a novel in and of itself at some point. I think that should be the next novel that I write.
But I walk around this neighborhood all the time and you see faces over and over again, even though this is a big city, but Greenwich Village feels like a village.
We have these beautiful brownstones. I’m always walking around Washington Square Park and looking up at these beautiful, iconic brownstones, and I just wondered “what goes on in there?”
I got this idea that I wanted there to be three women, all in the area, who don’t know each other, but at the start of the book, have pretty quickly every reason to hate each other.
They end up overcoming that and not only becoming friends, but they bond over this little baby that really has nothing to do with any of them, but he becomes their problem.
Funny stories with ‘interesting driven women’
Jenny Wheeler: You say you like to write funny stories in which “interesting driven women figure out who they are and what they want, fix their mistakes and build a life on their own terms and even find love.”
Now, that sounds like a lifelong project!
Amy Poeppel: I also, speaking of my wonderful women friends, my age, I’m just forever impressed at how well women manage the chapters of their lives.
We go through so many different iterations of ourselves and we reinvent ourselves so beautifully, I think.
So I really did want to pay tribute to that and those three women, the three main characters in the book.
But Evelyn also, and she’s our sort of outsider, but slightly older character, not much older, but I wanted each of those women to find a way to reinvent themselves and come out in a better place than they started.
Jenny Wheeler: You bring in that idea of The Sweet Spot very nicely in the book, because there is a bar called The Sweet Spot, which has a fairly central part to play as well.
And each one of the characters in a different way and in a different part of the book seems to recognize for themselves, oh, this is a sweet spot for me, or this is my sweet spot.
It’s nicely threaded into the book.
The Sweet Spot is a neighborhood bar
Amy Poeppel: Yes, and coming up with the idea for the bar was so much fun because I wanted this family to get to the privilege of living in this brownstone, but I didn’t want to make life too easy for them.
So first I filled it with things that weren’t their own things that they were going to have to live with, and set up a situation where they couldn’t just clear out the house.
Then I thought, well, let’s also not have it be one of these absolutely beautifully renovated brownstones. Let’s give them an unrenovated brownstone with the big air conditioning units in the windows and really terrible appliances, and a kitchen that needs to be gutted and redone.
And I thought, that’s good. They’re pretty uncomfortable now.
And then I thought, what if I could make them a little bit more uncomfortable?
I was walking around my neighborhood and I thought, ‘Let’s put a bar in the basement’ because that’s happens here all the time.
You might have a dry cleaner in the basement or a bakery and I thought, no, let’s have a bar in the basement, because that would create a little extra mayhem.
Amy Poeppel on The Joys of Binge Reading
www.thejoysofbingereading.com/amy-poeppel-fresh-funny-romcoms/
Amy Poeppel Website: Amypoeppel.com
Juliette Fay: Second chance love
Juliette Fay is the award-winning, best-selling author of tender novels that raise questions of loss, regret, second chances, and the influence families play in life-changing decisions.
Juliette talks about her latest novel, The Half Of It, described by the critics as “an immensely satisfying page turner, perfect for fans of Josie Silver and Jojo Moyes.”
Jenny Wheeler: I wondered right at the beginning, how would you define it in terms of genre fiction? Is it a romance, is it a second coming of age story? How would you classify it?
Juliette Fay: I would classify it as contemporary fiction. It’s not really a classical romance story in that there’s a lot more going on. It’s really about the entire life of the main character Helen Spencer, who’s 58 years old, and it’s about her relationships with her friends and her children.
There is a romance at the center of it, or a potential romance. But I like that phrase, second coming of age. I think that she’s at a point in her life where she really needs to make a course correction and that’s the crux of it.
There aren’t very many books with main characters in their fifties and sixties. It’s very few. I mean, you have to really dig.
It seems that there’s books of characters in their seventies, eighties, and nineties, and then twenties, thirties and forties. I Feel like everybody is in their thirties in most of the books. But your fifties and sixties are such a fascinating time because as you say, you get a second chance to think things through.
Writing her way to a ‘happy brain’
Jenny Wheeler: You’ve got a piece online that you wrote for Psychology Today about writing your way to a happy brain. It was a lovely piece, but it indicates that you might have gone through a similar kind of revision of your life, but at an earlier age. Would you mind talking about that?
Juliette Fay: Yes. Right. It’s no big secret. I had my fourth child and I had quit my job. I was working part-time, so I was home with the kids and I was actually quite unhappy. I love my children. I love being with them. But I really felt like I was not using my brain. I used to joke that I was a wiper of spills, a wiper of bottoms, a wiper of noses, like I was a professional wiper.
And I felt very constrained by the fact that I didn’t have anything that was mine. And I tried a bunch of different things, like I knew and my husband knew that I was not happy and I needed to find something. And so I started writing and I describe it it’s a little bit like falling in love.
Like I couldn’t wait to get back to my characters. I couldn’t wait. I was about 40. And it was, I would say, a little midlife crisis of, okay, this is great. I’m very grateful that I have all these little, crazy people running around and my wonderful husband, but it’s still not enough.
I still need something else. And I was able to feed that need with writing. And it’s been a wonderful thing for the last, 20 years.
Juliette Fay on The Joys of Binge Reading
www.thejoysofbingereading.com/juliette-fay-tender-touching-stories/
Juliette Fay’s website: Juliettefay.com
Monty Soutar: For Such A Time As This
Monty Soutar is a respected New Zealand historian who took a big step and turned his life upside down to write a game changing novel. a story of nation building through the eyes of its original people
Kāwai – For Such A Time As This, is the first instalment in what is to be a three book family saga, which went straight to the top of the bestseller lists in New Zealand and stayed there for 22 weeks.
it’s in the tradition of Alex Haley’s Roots, introducing readers to pre-European Maori life in much the same way as Alex Haley’s tale of tracing his roots back to Africa captivated an international audience.
Monty’s story of how he came to write it is like a ‘road to Damascus’ encounter. He explains:
Monty Soutar: In 2019, I finished my most recent non-fiction book, which was Nga Tamatoa, A History of Maori participation in the First World War.
It’s a huge book.
It took me about five years to research and write, so I was pretty almost burned out after that and decided to go on holiday with my wife. And because I’d put so much time into that I felt there was an opportunity to just to sit back and have a blow, really.
We were heading to Greece for three months to spend time with our friends. But before I left, I had an inkling that there’s something I’m supposed to do next, and it’s not non-fiction.
The audience I was really interested in was young people. I felt that fiction was the way to reach them, but I just didn’t quite know what I was going to write.
I was half asleep and I heard this voice. I didn’t actually hear it, but this impression in my mind just said, ‘Get Roots.’ It was clear.
I woke up about an hour and a half later and I said to my wife, ‘Hey, we’ve got to get this book, Roots.’
Roots TV series was well known to me from the 1970s.
I said, well, the book’s so old, you probably have to go to second hand bookshop or a rare bookshop.
A serendipitous encounter
We’re driving back to Gisborne and we get to this little place called Paeroa, which is a little town between Auckland and Gisborne, on a Sunday when you wouldn’t expect anything to be open.
I was asleep and my wife was driving and she nudged me and she said, ‘Hey, look. There’s a Red Cross book sale on the side of the road,’ and I looked up and sure enough, and there were these boxes of books there that were being sold and on a Sunday.
We stopped and we said, ‘well, let’s have a look. Who knows, that book Roots might be here?’
They had them in alphabetical order in the boxes A- Z and I walked straight to the box that had the Rs, the books with Rs, and they’re all spine down.
In this particular box there was one book sitting on top of all the others with the cover down.
The book was sitting there like it was waiting for somebody, and I turned it over and it was the Roots book by Alex Haley.
I looked at my wife, she looked at me, and we knew then that whatever I had heard, whatever this impression voice was, it meant something that I was supposed to do.
I took the book to Greece and I read it. I came to the understanding in my mind that I’m supposed to write a novel like this
I felt that I was to write a saga like that, which followed a number of generations of a Maori family in order to tell the history of this country in a way that it’s never been told before.
After a seven day fast and a retreat, I started to hear this impression again in my head.
And I wrote down what I was being told. And there were three big things that I believed I had to do once I got back to New Zealand.
Clearly instructed to do three things
One was to leave my job. I worked for the government as a historian. Two was I had to sell my house – or our house, my wife and I. I understood that was to give me some income to be able to write the series that I’ve started on.
The third one was to write the series. So leave work, sell a book (should be sell our house), write the series.
If I hadn’t seen the Roots book there, sitting on that box, I might’ve had some doubts, but I believed that there was some sort of divine guidance that was leading me into doing this, that I was ready to do it, no questions asked, but I had to ask my wife, of course, because it was going to have an impact on her.
And I can say that she wasn’t keen, immediately, but through some things that happened I think she realized this is something that has to be done and, I’m meant to do it.
We came back to New Zealand and I followed that plan and that’s how I got to into writing the Kawai series.
Jenny Wheeler: And it has sold very well, hasn’t it
Monty Soutar: Well, it went straight to number one, New Zealand fiction in the week it was launched and it stayed there for 22 weeks at number one.
I heard that’s some sort of a record. And I really can’t explain why people, well, such a diverse group in the population, are reading it, because it’s not one group of people.
It’s a wide range. I mean, the greatest thrill I get is people who come to me and say, ‘Look, I’ve never read a book since I left secondary school, but this book has encouraged me to read’ and I think that has to be put down that people do actually want to know something about the history of this country.
Monty Soutar on The Joys of Binge Reading
www.thejoysofbingereading.com/monty-soutar-for-such-a-time-as-this/
Monty Soutar on line: Facebook: @montysoutarauthor
Samantha Vérant: Food For Love
French American author Samantha Vérant delivers perfectly seasoned fiction that combines her passions in life – France, food and love. And her latest book, The Spice Master at Bistro Exotique, set in Paris, is a romantic and culinary delight.
I first asked Samantha about The Spice Master at Bistro Exotique,
Jenny Wheeler: It’s a fantastic story of a French American chef in Paris, setting up a new restaurant, but all of your books show passion for two things, France and food, and I wondered which came first?
Samantha Vérant: Well, honestly, food came first. When I was nine years old, I was ripping out recipes from Bon Appetite and Gourmet Magazine.
And I think my pièce de résistance came when I was eleven and I made a 20 pound Sundae Pie with chocolate leaves for decoration.
I molded them from actual leaves. It’s a big joke in my family because my father was like, ‘this pie weighs so much,’ but I’ve always been drawn to the kitchen and cooking.
And then when I moved to France! Hello French recipes!
Jenny Wheeler: Yes. You provided a generous number of recipes for readers in all of these books and in Bistro Exotique. it’s a fantastic looking ice cream recipe, Charles’s Coconut Ice Cream.
Do you get a lot of good feedback from people? Do they make some of your suggestions?
Readers love the recipes
Samantha Vérant : Oh yeah, they do. And I think it’s an added bonus to have recipes in the book, especially since I’m describing the food.
And what if somebody who’s ‘oh my God, that sounds so great,’ and they want to make it?
And so before writing out the recipes, of course, I test them a lot and I have my two French critics here, or three actually, my French family.
They eat really well when I’m testing.
Jenny Wheeler: That’s wonderful. Yes. You mentioned your French family. Rather provocatively on your website, you say that you quotes “married a sexy French rocket scientists that you met in 1989 brackets, (but ignored for 20 years.)”
Now you can’t leave a teaser like that without giving us a little bit of background story there.
Samantha Vérant: I met my French husband (Jean Luc) at a cafe in Paris in 1989. I was 19, he was 26, and I was with my best friend Tracy, who is also – it’s in the memoir.
This story’s in Seven Letters From Paris. He wrote me, after our brief rendezvous, he wrote me seven love letters, and I didn’t write him back until 20 years later.
I’m now married to him. Our 13th wedding anniversary is May 7th.
Jenny Wheeler: When you went to France and started eating French food, was there a particular meal or dish which still resonates for you today?
Wild Boar was hard to swallow
Samantha Vérant: I think all of them, but the one that resonates with me the most was my first Christmas in France. it was Civet de Sanglier, which is wild boar.
And my brother-in-law was like, ‘I shot it myself,’ and I looked at the sauce and I nudged Jean Luc with my elbow. I said, ‘What is the sauce?’ And he’s like, ‘It’s wonderful. It’s blood sauce.’”
And I went, ‘Oh, I don’t think I can eat this.’ I took a bite. It wasn’t for me, but since then it was ‘feet into the fire’ with some French meals. But that’s the most memorable one. And I actually do like it after having it a second and third time.
Clearly, I’m not a vegetarian!
Samantha Vérant on The Joys of Binge Reading
www.thejoysofbingereading.com/samantha-verant-food-for-love/
Samantha Vérant’s website: http://www.samanthaverant.com/
The ice cream recipe from The Spice Master at Bistro Exotique:
Charles’s Coconut Ice Cream Recipes Link http://www.samanthaverant.com/2022/12/happy-holidays-and-easy-recipe-from.html
Jenny Wheeler: That’s it for today… A taster of six of the twelve most popular shows we aired on The Joys of Binge Reading in 2023, according to the number of times you listened to them.
If you like what you’ve heard follow up on the links and listen to the full episode. And leave us a review so others will find us too.
The second part of the Best of The Joys of Binge Reading will air in two weeks, on January 16.
That’s it for now. See you next time and Happy Reading
