Season 11, Episode 236 Eco-Thriller with guests Midge Raymond and John Yunker

Ashland Creek Press, an eco-fiction publisher, first came on our radar in the pre-COVID era when we interviewed Katy Yocom, author of Three Ways to Disappear, a novel set partly in India that focuses on animal conservation and a relationship between two sisters. But one of our other former guests, Jennifer Caloyeras, host of the Books Are My People podcast, also had a book published by Ashland Creek: her 2015 novel Strays. We’re always interested in small presses, so we were excited to talk to Midge Raymond and John Yunker about their work running one.

But Midge and John are also writers who have collaborated on a recently published novel titled Devils Island, which is set in Tasmania amongst the endangered and much-maligned Tasmanian devil. While this is a conservation-leaning novel, it is also a suspense story about a naturalist tour that goes very wrong, involving a disappearance and a death.

Books Mentioned In This Episode:

1- Three Ways to Disappear by Katy Yocom

2- Strays by Jennifer Caloyeras

3- Devils Island by Midge Raymond and John Yunker

4- My Last Continent by Midge Raymond

5- The Tourist Trail by John Yunker

6- A Five Star Read Recommended by a Fellow Book Lover Susan Cook @bookbookbagawk - Another Country by James Baldwin

7- The Funeral Cryer by Wenyan Lu

8- The Spare Room by Helen Garner

9- We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

10- Pines by Blake Crouch

11- Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

Media mentioned—

1- Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024)

2- True Detective—Night Country (Max)

3- The Bear (Hulu)

4- Eco-lit books —ecolitbooks.com/

5- Maria Island Walk - www.mariaislandwalk.com/

6- What do Tasmanian devils sound like? - www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW27vpK4ALQ