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Author News & Interviews

Interview: Samira Shackle, author of Karachi Vice: Life and Death in a Divided City

Sep 9, 2021

Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, is a place of political turbulence in which those who have power wield it with brutal and partisan force. It takes an insider to know where is safe, who to trust and what makes Karachi tick. In KARACHI VICE, Samira Shackle explores the city of her mother’s birth in the company of a handful of Karachiites. Michael Barson, Senior Publicity Executive at Melville House, talks to Shackle about her inspiration for writing this powerful debut and the biggest culture shock she experienced after moving to Karachi from London in 2012. She also explains why she believes the population of Karachi has risen so dramatically since 1947 despite the violence and severely inadequate services, identifies the biggest potential challenge they will face over the next five years, and points to three works of narrative nonfiction that influenced her approach to writing KARACHI VICE.

Interview: Rob Leininger, author of Gumshoe Gone

Sep 9, 2021

Rob Leininger revived the hardboiled PI venue somewhat modeled after Travis McGee and Sam Spade, but in the humorous vein of Carl Hiaasen and Tim Dorsey. Kidnapped by a gorgeous gal in Reno, Mortimer Angel disappears for several days. When he finally makes contact with family and friends, he’s on a new case, one that takes him on an unexpected journey. That becomes a new case with more unexpected journeys. He travels more roads than ever before and ends up in a place he never could have predicted. Mort is gone. GUMSHOE GONE is the sixth book in this mystery-with-a-message series set in Nevada --- and Wyoming, as well as other western states. In this interview, Leininger chats with Bookreporter.com’s Dean Murphy about the current Mortimer Angel adventure, Mort’s world and a typical day in Leininger’s life.

Interview: Alan Maimon, author of Twilight in Hazard: An Appalachian Reckoning

Jun 11, 2021

TWILIGHT IN HAZARD is investigative reporter and Pulitzer Prize finalist Alan Maimon’s troubling account of how a perfect storm of events made a devastating impact on the residents in small Appalachian towns --- a case of severe and accelerating rural distress that, over the past 20 years, has expanded to send tremors through the rest of America. In this interview conducted by Michael Barson, Senior Publicity Executive at Melville House, Maimon talks about the challenges he faced when he was assigned to report on life in rural Eastern Kentucky following a two-year stint at the New York Times’s Berlin bureau, the urgent need to demystify the region so it can be understood by the rest of the country, and the possibility of income-generating hope on the horizon.

Interview: Rob Leininger, author of Gumshoe in the Dark

Jun 3, 2021

Rob Leininger revived the hardboiled PI venue somewhat modeled after Travis McGee and Sam Spade, but in the humorous vein of Carl Hiaasen, Tim Dorsey and Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum. GUMSHOE IN THE DARK is the fifth book in this laugh-riot-with-a-message series set in Nevada. Mort is now married to Lucy, and on the road tracking down a ne’er-do-well grandnephew unwittingly hell-bent on avoiding a $680,000 inheritance. He comes across the estranged daughter of Nevada’s attorney general, who has gone missing --- as have two local teens. In this interview, Leininger chats with Bookreporter.com’s Dean Murphy about the current Mortimer Angel adventure, Mort’s world and a typical day in Leininger’s life.

Interview: Jeff Guinn, author of War on the Border: Villa, Pershing, the Texas Rangers, and an American Invasion

May 27, 2021

In WAR ON THE BORDER, Jeff Guinn --- a chronicler of the Southwestern United States and of American undesirables (Bonnie and Clyde, Charles Manson, Jim Jones) --- tells the riveting story of Pancho Villa’s bloody raid on a small U.S. border town that sparked a violent conflict with the U.S. In this interview conducted by Michael Barson, Senior Publicity Executive at Melville House, Guinn talks about his decision to write a book about this period in Texas history, the boots-on-the-ground research he did that involved traveling as much of the border as he could during the pandemic, and the one historical figure he is so tempted to write a biography about.