S13:Ep261 - Honey Blossom Press with Guest Keisha Mennefee + Dog Days Book Recs

Our website - www.perksofbeingabooklover.com. Instagram - @perksofbeingabookloverpod Facebook - Perks of Being a Book Lover. To send us a message go to our website and click the Contact button.   You can find Keisha Mennefee at honeymagnolia.co and honeyblossompress.com   We have had great luck finding excellent books from small independent publishers, and so we periodically invite one on the show to tell us a little about how they operate. Our guest this week is Keisha Mennefee, a literary strategist who has worked with high profile Black artists like Jada Pinkett Smith and Kennedy Ryan.  She recently started her own publishing house called Honey Blossom Press. The mission of this press is to amplify underrepresented voices and powerful narratives that might otherwise go unheard. Some of their new titles include When Forty Blooms by Jacinta Howard and The Divorcetante by Mia Hentzelman.    And since it is August, and we’re in the dog days of summer, our book rec section is focused on dogs. Amy especially loves a book where a dog features as a significant character who not only has personality but moves the plot along and helps create the theme. We’ve got some children’s lit, teen lit, Japanese narrative, literary fiction, memoir, and apocalyptic fiction.    Books Mentioned In This Episode: 1- Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders 2- Mrs. Lincoln: A Life by Catherine Clinton  3- The Survivors by Jane Harper  4- Leave Only Footprints: My Acadia-to-Zion Journey Through Every National Park by Conor Knighton 5- Track of the Cat (Anna Pigeon series #1) by Nevada Barr 6- When Forty Blooms by Jacinta Howard  7- This Side of Beautiful by Tiye  8- The Divorcetante by Mia Hentzelman 9- Walk Through Fire: A Memoir of Love, Loss and Triumph by Sheila Johnson 10- The House on the Strand by Daphne duMaurier  11- Alive and Beating by Rebecca Wolf  12- The Firekeeper's Daughter by Angline Boulley  13- Warrior Girl Unearthed by Angeline Boulley  14-  A Five Star Read Recommended by Fellow Book Lover Katelyn @bookclubwithkatelyn - Sisters in the Wind by Angeline Boulley  15- Gather by Kenneth Cadow  16- Heroic Measures by Jill Ciment  17- The Body in Question by Jill Ciment  18- Because of Winn Dixie by Kate diCamillo 19- Speckled Beauty: A Dog and His People by Rick Bragg 20- The Boy and The Dog by Seishu Hase 21- A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World. by C.A. Fletcher 22- Harry the Dirty Dog by Gene Zion 23- Go, Dog, Go by P.D. Eastman 24- Martha Speaks series by Susan Meddaugh   Media Mentioned 1- Cat Video Fest - https://www.catvideofest.com 2- The Survivors (Netflix, 2025) 3- Untamed (Netflix, 2025) 4- Because of Winn Dixie (Disney, 2005) 5- 5 Flights Up (2014) 6- Martha Speaks (Prime Video, 2008)