Sorry for the period of radio silence, victims and perpetrators. I'm going to try to get at least two interviews per month uploaded each month. I figured it was time for a little punishment to go with all our crimes. OK, maybe a lot of punishment. I drove over to Nashville and talked to Vanderbilt history professor Joel Harrington about his new book, The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century. Frantz Schmidt was the master executioner of Nuremberg in the late 1500s. His father was forced into the execution profession, and Frantz had little choice but follow, yet he worked tirelessly to restore the family's honor.

Here's my interview with Maureen Johnson about her new novel The Madness Underneath, the second book in the Shades of London series. Louisiana high-school student Rory Deveau is recovering from a run in with a killer who imitated the crimes of Jack the Ripper, and now she has to make some tough decisions while being pulled in different directions by family, friends, and government while attending boarding school in London.

In this episode, I talk with Jenny Milchman about her debut novel, Cover of Snow.  It's the suspenseful story of Nora Hamilton, a home restoration contractor, who wakes up to find her world turned upside down. Her small town becomes difficult to navigate as the Adirondack Mountains snow piles up, and she doesn't know if she can trust anyone to tell her the truth. 

credit Jonathan Worth

Here's my interview with author Cory Doctorow about the sequel to his best-selling novel, Little Brother. The new book, Homeland, also a New York Times bestseller, picks up with Marcus Yallow, a teenage hacker who took on the Department of Homeland Security over their illegal tactics, as he tries to get his life straight and work for a congressional candidate. However, government operatives want revenge and some members of the hacking community think he isn't doing enough.We also talk about Creative Commons Licensing and the tragedy of Aaron Swartz's death.

Here's an interview with George Saunders about his new collection of short stories Tenth of December that I originally conducted for Chapter16.org, the literature website for HumanitiesTennessee.  George Saunders isn't normally thought of as a crime fiction writer, but almost all of his stories have a crime, an act of violence, or another moral wrong at their centers. It's an interesting conversation with a man whose book was called "the best book you'll read this year" by The New York Times.

This week I'm going to kick off a run of three interviews with writers who mix in varying levels of science fiction into their work. In two weeks, I'll have an interview with George Saunders, who some say is currently the greatest writer of short stories in the world. His stories often have violence or a crime at the center of them and hints of science fiction weirdness at the edges. The New York Times recently called his new collection of stories, Tenth of December, "the best book you'll read this year."

In four weeks, I hope to have an interview with Cory Doctorow. Known for his crusading work with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, he has a sequel to his hit novel Little Brother, coming out today. It's called Homeland, and it is set in a dystopian near future where a hacktivist is working against a repressive government in a thriller aimed at young and full-fledged adults. 

But for this episode of Mysterypod, I have a book that is also being released today, Man in the Empty Suit by Sean Ferrell. It's the story of a time traveler who gets together with different-aged versions of himself for a birthday party. The narrator for the story is the thirty-nine year-old self known as "The Suit", and he has to figure out how to stop his forty year-old self from being murdered at the party. 

The Big Interrogation: Aric Davis lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan and has set his new novel there. Rough Men follows Will Daniels, a writer dragging himself out of the gutter, and the path he takes after his son Alex is killed. Complicating matters is the fact that his son had just robbed a bank and killed a customer. Justice for Will, in this case, is difficult to reconcile with his new, more legit life.

The Big Interrogation: Thomas Maltman's first novel, the Civil War-era set The Night Birds won an Alex Award, a Spur Award, and the Friends of American Writers Literary Award. His new novel, Little Wolves is set in a small Minnesota town at the end of summer in 1987. A high school boy walks into town and kills a sheriff and then himself. His father and his English teacher both search for understanding in a town that has hidden many ills over the years.

Sorry victims and perpetrators, but I don't have an interview ready to go for this week. I hope to have one for next week.

Day Twelve: Another tale of true crime for the last of the 12 Crimes of Christmas. Alex Heard reminds of us of one of America's highest profile rape trials that became an international story. The Eyes of Willie McGee: A Tragedy of Race, Sex, and Secrets in the Jim Crow South was an Edgar finalist for true crime book of the year.