The Kathryn Zox Show

Ep: 1857 Dr. Alfiee Breland-Noble - Rise and Thrive

Step into your strength, embrace your brilliance, and rise—no matter the challenges life presents. This is Dr. Alfiee Breland-Noble's heartfelt message to every young person seeking healing, hope, and belonging. Drawing on 30 years of research, clinical experience, and community work, she leads a journey of self-discovery and growth, blending practical guidance with culturally grounded science rich in heart, history, and humanity. This is a living toolkit for thriving. Dr. Breland- Noble, a psychologist, scientist and mental health thought leader is founder of The AAKOMA Project and one of Melinda French Gates's Leaders, championing innovative solutions to advance the health and wellbeing of women and girls worldwide. She's a regular media contributor to The Grio, Today Show, The Breakfast Club, the NY Times and others.

Ep: 1856 Liz Lazarus - Dawn Before Darkness

Dawn Smith, a veterinarian tech living in rural South Carolina, catches her new, hot boyfriend in a series of lies and abruptly ends their relationship. He is not happy. He begins to stalk and harass her, forcing Dawn to seek a restraining order. Undeterred, he launches a deeply personal attack —inventing a false scenario to sue for guardianship and conservatorship of Dawn's infirm mother. And just when Dawn thinks things can't get any worse, she is faced with an impossible choice: rekindle the relationship or lose her mother forever. Liz Lazarus' riveting thriller is based on her own harrowing experience battling for the guardianship of her 88-year-old mother. Liz has an engineering degree from The Georgia Institute of Technology and an MBA from Northwestern's Kellogg Graduate School of Management.

EpL 1855 Sheila Yasmin Marikar - Incidentals

Sheila Yasmin Marikar delivers a sharp, "White Lotus"-style satire set at a luxury Maldives resort. Celebrating their fifth anniversary, Sarah Shetty and Sam Gupta escape their failing marriage and stalled careers with a lavish vacation funded entirely by points and miles. At the resort, they become entangled with an older, wealthy couple whose generosity masks troubling inconsistencies. As Sarah imagines the opportunities this friendship could bring, tensions rise and hidden motives surface. When a body is discovered beneath the resort's overwater bungalows, paradise quickly unravels. With wit and emotional precision, she explores marriage, ambition, disappointment, aging, and the fragile illusions people create to survive. Marikar's travel writing, culture chronicles and feature-length profiles have appeared in such prominent outlets as The New Yorker, The NY Times, The Economist, and Vogue.

Ep: 1854 Lucy Ashe - The Model Patient

It is London in the early 1960s, a city shedding postwar restraint as fashion, art, and youth culture ignite the Swinging Sixties. Amid shifting sexual politics, women still face rigid expectations. Evelyn Westbrook, a young model trapped in a fragile marriage, begins psychoanalysis to regain stability while resisting her husband's pressure to have children. The newly introduced contraceptive pill promises freedom but also invites secrecy, stigma, and fear. As Evelyn's sessions intensify, the relationship with her therapist grows increasingly unsettling, blurring professional boundaries and leaving her uncertain whether her distress reflects illness or genuine danger. Drawing on personal experience, Lucy Ashe explores mental health, power, consent, and the dismissal of women's intuition with striking authenticity and emotional depth throughout the novel. Ashe trained at the Royal Ballet School before changing course to study English Literature at Oxford University, where she graduated in 2010.

Ep: 1853 Sharon Virts - Masque of Honor

Drawing on a deeply rooted family legacy—five ancestors who fought for American independence and another, a Hessian soldier who sided with the British—Sharon Virts brings uncommon authenticity to her fiction. A member of the Daughters of the American Revolution and owner of SELMA, a historic Virginia estate she carefully restored, Virt channels her passion for early American history into layered stories of honor, deception and desire, all inspired by real events. Can historical fiction serve as a bridge between the past and the present? Virt maintains history is not just a record of events but a conversation between generations. She is recognized as one of Washington Life Magazine's philanthropic 50 in 2020 and is a 2024 Loudoun History Award honoree.