The Book Show: Recent Episodes
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Each week on The Book Show, host Joe Donahue interviews authors about their books, their lives and their craft. It is a celebration of both reading and writers.
Few contemporary writers have examined the inner life with the intensity and candor of Karl Ove Knausgaard. His latest is “The School of Night.” In it, he interrogates memory, identity, art, and the meaning we try to impose on our lives.
George Saunders is one of the most original voices in American fiction. His new novel, “Vigil,” follows Jill “Doll” Blaine, an afterlife usher summoned to guide an unrepentant oil tycoon toward death. Over one wild night, Saunders confronts power, greed, climate reckoning, and mercy itself.
Karen Russell's latest, “The Antidote,” is a dust bowl novel and a reckoning with a nation’s forgetting that enacts the settler amnesia and omissions passed down from generation to generation.
In his latest biography, “Mark Twain,” Ron Chernow brings to life the man known as the father of American literature, Mark Twain. Chernow peels back the layers of this complex figure, showing us the man behind classics like “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “The Innocents Abroad.”
Ann Packer’s newest novel, “Some Bright Nowhere,” marks a profound return after a decade: it tells the story of Eliot and Claire, married nearly forty years in a quiet Connecticut town, facing the toughest chapter of their lives when Claire’s long-running illness draws toward its end.
In his newest novel, "Buckeye," Patrick Ryan explores the ways families hold together even as the past threatens to pull them apart. Moving between generations, Ryan explores how we inherit not just our parents’ habits and hopes, but their unfinished business.
Michael Connelly has long been a master at mapping the evolving landscape of crime and justice in America, and in his latest, "The Proving Ground," he turns his attention to one of the defining questions of the moment: what happens when artificial intelligence crosses dangerous ethical lines—and real people pay the price?
Mona Awad’s books walk the line between the surreal and the deeply human. Her latest novel, “We Love You, Bunny,” is a darkly glittering fable about love, obsession, and the masks we wear.
Author Dan Chaon’s latest, “One of Us,” carries readers into early twentieth-century America where a traveling carnival offers both wonder and menace. At its heart are orphaned twins whose bond is tested as they navigate a world filled with outsiders, performers, and predators.
Fannie Flagg is probably best known as an actress, comedian and author of the classic novel, “Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café.” Her new book, “Something to Look Forward To: Fictions,” is an interconnected collection of stories. where we encounter voices that are funny, tender, mischievous, and wise.
Pulitzer Prize–winning author Elizabeth Strout’s latest, “Tell Me Everything,” returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, and to her beloved cast of characters as they deal with a shocking crime in their midst, forge new friendships, make difficult decisions about love, and grapple with the question, as Lucy Barton puts it, “What does anyone’s life mean?”
Author Ken Follett’s career has ranged from Cold War thrillers to sweeping historical sagas, making him one of the world’s most widely read novelists. His latest work, “Circle of Days,” takes us back thousands of years to when communities on the plains of England first attempted to shape the monumental stones we now call Stonehenge.
Sam Sussman’s debut novel, “Boy From the North Country,” is a moving story of love, loss, and identity. When twenty-six-year-old Evan returns home to care for his dying mother, June, he begins to uncover long-kept secrets. Chief among them: the possibility that his father is Bob Dylan.
John Boyne is one of Ireland’s most accomplished contemporary novelists, perhaps best known for “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.” His latest, “The Elements,” is structured around the four classical elements—Water, Earth, Fire, and Air—and presents four distinct yet thematically connected stories.
Stacey Abrams is a nationally recognized political leader, voting rights advocate, and bestselling author whose new novel, “Coded Justice,” delivers a mix of legal investigation, political intrigue, and the high-stakes AI technology shaping our medical future.
Acclaimed author Kate Russo's latest, “Until Alison,” introduces us to Rachel Nardelli as she investigates the mysterious death of her childhood rival, Alison. As buried secrets resurface, Rachel is forced to confront their complicated past and her own unsettling memories.
Bruce Holsinger’s new novel, “Culpability,” is an emotionally charged story that asks some of the most pressing questions of our time: Who bears responsibility when tragedy strikes? How do guilt and accountability ripple through lives?
Jason Mott, National Book Award-winning author of “Hell of a Book,” returns with “People Like Us;” a book that confronts the invisible forces shaping our identities and our relationships. Mott now turns his lens to lives where truth is slippery, memory is contested, and the past refuses to stay buried.
It's the perennial question: Are we a product of how we were raised or is our identity hard wired by our genetic inheritance? These questions are explored in Sue Halpern’s new novel “What We Leave Behind.” Halpern is the author of seven books of fiction and non-fiction and scholar in residence at Middlebury College.
Jess Walter, the New York Times bestselling author of “Beautiful Ruins” and “The Cold Millions,” returns with “So Far Gone.” The novel centers on Rhys Kinnick, a reclusive journalist forced back into the world to rescue his kidnapped grandchildren and find his missing daughter.
In his latest biography, “Mark Twain,” Ron Chernow brings to life the man known as the father of American literature, Mark Twain. Chernow peels back the layers of this complex figure, showing us the man behind classics like “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “The Innocents Abroad.”
Gary Shteyngart’s latest novel, “Vera, or Faith,” is set in a near-future America wrestling with authoritarian politics and cultural anxiety. The story is told through the eyes of 10-year-old Vera - a sharp, observant child navigating a fractured family and a society teetering on the edge.
Rick Atkinson has just published the second volume of his American Revolution trilogy, "The Fate of the Day," covering the middle years of the war. Benjamin Franklin was wooing the French while George Washington was pleading with Congress to deliver the money, men, and material he needed to continue the fight.
In his latest novel, “The River Is Waiting,” Wally Lamb gives us a story about one man’s fall and uncertain redemption. Corby Ledbetter, a married, father of twins, makes a tragic mistake that sends him to prison and shatters his family. Behind bars, he faces the consequences of addiction, grief, and guilt—while searching for a path to forgiveness.
Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Richard Russo is known for books like “Empire Falls,” “Nobody’s Fool,” and “Straight Man,” having long chronicled working-class America with wit, empathy, and a sharp eye for character. His latest, “Life & Art,” is a thoughtful and very funny collection of essays that explore the deeply personal side of a writer’s life.
Set during the final stretch of the Civil War, author Chris Bohjalian’s “The Jackal’s Mistress” tells the story of Libby, a woman stuck in the South with a missing husband and a whole lot of moral questions. When she finds a nearly dead Union officer in the woods, she decides to save him. With war raging around them, Libby has to choose between loyalty and compassion.
Helen Phillips is one of the most interesting and original writers working today. In her latest novel, “Hum,” she turns her eye to marriage, motherhood, and selfhood in a world compromised by global warming and artificial intelligence.
“All Fours,” a new novel by Miranda July, tells the story of a semi-famous artist who announces her plan to drive cross-country on a one woman quest for a new kind of freedom. The book is part absurd entertainment and part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist.
In 2004, Historian Russell Shorto published “The Island at the Center of the World,” a book about Manhattan and the role of the Dutch in making New York (and America) what it is today. His new book, “Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events That Created New York and Shaped America,” continues the story.
Celebrated cartoonist and “Fun Home” author Alison Bechdel returns with “Spent: A Comic Novel,” a sharp, funny, and self-aware look at art, aging, and the absurdity of success. Set on a goat farm in Vermont, Bechdel (both author and character) grapples with writer’s block, late-stage capitalism, and the unintended consequences of cultural fame.
Adrian McKinty’s latest novel, “Hang on St. Christopher,” brings readers to July 1992 when The Troubles in Northern Ireland are still grinding on after twenty-five years. McKinty’s character, Sean Duffy, is assigned to his most violent and dangerous case yet, and the future of the burgeoning “peace process” may depend on it.
Poet Joy Harjo’s poems are described as musical, intimate, political and wise, intertwining ancestral memory and tribal histories with resilience and love. Her latest book, “Washing My Mother’s Body: A Ceremony for Grief,” explores the complexity of a daughter’s grief as she reflects on the joys and sorrows of her mother’s life.
Chris Hayes is the Emmy Award-winning host of MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes.” In his new book, “The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource,” he writes about attention as a resource – one that is being drawn away from citizens in ways they don’t even realize. This episode of The Book Show was recorded at The Bardavon in Poughkeepsie, New York in an event presented by Oblong Books.
When Chloe Dalton, a city-dwelling professional with a high-pressure job, finds a newly born hare - endangered, alone and no bigger than her palm - she is compelled to give it a chance at survival. The new book, “Raising Hare,” is the story of their journey together.
Karen Russell's latest, “The Antidote,” is a dust bowl novel and a reckoning with a nation’s forgetting that enacts the settler amnesia and omissions passed down from generation to generation.
Colum McCann is the New York Times bestselling author of “Let the Great World Spin.” His new novel, “Twist,” tells a propulsive story of rupture and repair in the digital age, delving into a hidden world deep under the ocean.
Julia Alvarez, bestselling author of “In the Time of the Butterflies” and “How the García Girls Lost Their Accents,” returns with “The Cemetery of Untold Stories” - a novel about storytelling that reminds us that the events of our lives are never truly finished, even at the end.
Hailed by The Booker Prize judges as a “fierce and philosophical interrogation of human existence,” Charlotte Wood’s “Stone Yard Devotional” chronicles “one woman’s inward journey to make sense of the world and her life when conflicts and chaos are abundant in both realms.”
Private investigator Elvis Cole and his enigmatic partner, Joe Pike, race to find a terrifying, unidentified killer in "The Big Empty," the 20th Elvis Cole novel. Author Robert Crais delivers Cole and Pike's toughest case yet, testing their loyalty to their clients and themselves.
Scott Turow’s latest novel is “Presumed Guilty” - a sequel to “Presumed Innocent,” the #1 bestseller that redefined the legal thriller and is the basis for Apple TV+’s most-watched drama series ever. The book examines whether the system can ever provide true justice for those who are presumed guilty.
“Alphabetical Diaries” by Sheila Heti contains a decade’s worth of thoughts, arranged in alphabetical order. The book is a chronicle of the self, of the fundamentals and idiosyncrasies of human experience, that plays out thrillingly in the space that Heti has staked out between life and art, reality and fiction.
Poet Kaveh Akbar joins us to discuss his first novel “Martyr!” which follows Cyrus Shams on a journey of introspection and discovery. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet. His obsession with martyrs and dealing with the death of his mother drives him to examine the mysteries of his past.
Pico Iyer is the acclaimed and bestselling author of more than a dozen books translated into twenty-three languages, most recently “The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise” and “The Art of Stillness.” His latest, “Aflame,” is an exploration of the abiding clarity and calm to be found in quiet retreat.
For the past seven decades, Tim Matheson has been an on-screen favorite in Hollywood. In his new memoir, "Damn Glad to Meet You," Matheson looks at his illustrious career, and reveals what it was like to learn from and work alongside the greats, including Lucille Ball, Dick Van Dyke, Steven Spielberg, and Aaron Sorkin.
Alafair Burke is the Edgar-nominated, New York Times best-selling author of fourteen novels of suspense. Her latest page-turner is “The Note.” The book follows three longtime friends who, despite their best intentions, don’t always bring out the best in one another.
“James,” by Percival Everett, is a reimagining of Mark Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” told from the point of view of enslaved person, Jim. While many narrative set pieces of “Huckleberry Finn” remain in place, Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light.
“The Women,” a novel by Kristin Hannah, is set at a pivotal time in American history: the Vietnam era. It is an intimate portrait of a woman coming of age in a dangerous situation and an epic tale of a nation divided by war and broken by politics.
Booker Prize finalist Mark Haddon, author of the internationally bestselling novel, “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,” returns with “Dogs and Monsters: Stories.” The story collection features eight mesmerizing tales exploring what ultimately makes us human.
Billy Collins is a former Poet Laureate of the United States and is the author of twelve collections of poetry. His latest is Water, Water: Poems. It is a collection of sixty new poems where Collins explores the subtle beauties and ironies of daily life.
“Colored Television” by Danzy Senna is a take on love and ambition, failure and reinvention, and the racial-identity-industrial complex. The book follows Jane, a novelist, as she struggles to create a picture-perfect life with her husband and kids. Jane learns being a writer is hard and working in Hollywood is even harder.
In his new novel, “Lazarus Man,” Richard Price presents a rich tapestry of lives intertwining and a portrait of a neighborhood in the midst of change.
Ian Rankin is the multimillion-copy worldwide bestseller of over thirty novels and creator of John Rebus. His latest, “Midnight and Blue,” is his 25th novel in the Rebus series.
In her new novel, “The Mighty Red,” Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich tells a story of love, natural forces, spiritual yearnings, and the tragic impact of uncontrollable circumstances on ordinary people's lives.
Pulitzer Prize–winning author Elizabeth Strout’s latest, “Tell Me Everything,” returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, and to her beloved cast of characters as they deal with a shocking crime in their midst, forge new friendships, make difficult decisions about love, and grapple with the question, as Lucy Barton puts it, “What does anyone’s life mean?”
Amor Towles is the author of New York Times bestsellers “Rules of Civility,” “A Gentleman in Moscow,” and “The Lincoln Highway.” The three novels have collectively sold more than five million copies. His latest is a collection of stories: “Table for Two: Fictions.” He is also editor of this year’s “The Best Short Stories 2024: The O. Henry Prize Winners.”
Peter Heller is the best-selling author of "Burn," a novel about two men - friends since boyhood - who emerge from the woods of rural Maine to a dystopian country racked by bewildering violence.
In “Creation Lake” by Rachel Kushner, Sadie Smith, a 34 year old American undercover agent of ruthless tactics is sent by her mysterious but powerful employers to a remote corner of France. Her mission: to infiltrate a commune of radical eco-activists.
Helen Phillips is one of the most interesting and original writers working today. In her latest novel, “Hum,” she turns her eye to marriage, motherhood, and selfhood in a world compromised by global warming and artificial intelligence.
Known for her incredible research bestselling author Jodi Picoult brings to life the incomparable Emilia Bassano, the real-life and “too little considered” English poet believed to have authored many of Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets. Picoult’s new novel is “By Any Other Name.”
Simon Rich is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker. He has written for “Saturday Night Live,” Pixar, and “The Simpsons” and is the creator of the TV shows “Man Seeking Woman” and “Miracle Workers.” His latest story collection, “Glory Days,” mourns the death of youthful innocence and hails the beginning of something approximating wisdom.
In 1993, in his hometown of Corpus Christi, Texas, Bret Anthony Johnston watched on live TV as flames engulfed a number of buildings in Waco – full of men, women, and children – during the FBI’s siege of the Branch Davidian compound. This time led to his writing the novel, “We Burn Daylight.”
“The Heart in Winter” by Kevin Barry is a big-hearted, violent, hypnotic, and lovelorn epic set against the iconic genre of the American Western. If features an unforgettable female protagonist and tackling the dislocation and self-invention of the Irish immigrant experience.
A mystery set in a rural village in the West of Ireland, “The Hunter” is the second novel by best-selling author Tana French novel set in mythical Ardnakelty. It’s a blazing summer when two men arrive. One of them is coming home. Both of them are coming to get rich. One of them is coming to die.
Doris Kearns Goodwin is one of America’s most beloved historians. She joins us to discuss her new book “An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s,” where she artfully weaves together biography, memoir, and history.
Doris Kearns Goodwin is one of America’s most beloved historians. She joins us to discuss her new book “An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s,” where she artfully weaves together biography, memoir, and history.
American historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s latest book is “An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s.” The book shares the emotional journey she and her husband, Richard (Dick) Goodwin embarked on in the last years of his life, as the couple examined a tumultuous decade in American history through the lens of their own personal involvement in public service.
“The Friday Afternoon Club” by actor Griffin Dunne is a memoir of growing up among larger-than-life characters in Hollywood and Manhattan. The book finds wicked humor and glimmers of light in even the most painful of circumstances.
CNN anchor and chief Washington correspondent and New York Times best-selling author Jake Tapper’s third thriller, “All the Demons Are Here,” brings readers to the 1970s underground world of cults, celebrities, tabloid journalism, serial killers, disco, and UFOs.
Lorrie Moore is one of the most celebrated living writers in the United States. Her new novel, “I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home,” is her first in 14 years and is an exploration of love and death, passion and grief where a man takes a road trip with the corpse of his dead ex-lover. The book is now available in paperback.
Lorrie Moore is one of the most celebrated living writers in the United States. Her new novel, “I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home,” is her first in 14 years and is an exploration of love and death, passion and grief where a man takes a road trip with the corpse of his dead ex-lover. The book is now available in paperback.
Garrard Conley is the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir, “Boy Erased.” His debut novel, “All the World Beside,” is the story of two men in love caught between the demands of their families and societal pressures. Conley has coined it “The Queer Scarlet Letter.”
"Days of Wonder" by Caroline Leavitt centers a young mother who, incarcerated as a teenager, now forges a redemptive path forward. It features whirlwind romances old and new, and is a mother-daughter story, a striking testament to the resilience of their love.
New York Times bestselling author Colm Tóibín has written a novel of secrecy, misunderstanding, and love featuring Eilis Lacey, the complex and enigmatic heroine of his 2009 novel “Brooklyn,” Tóibín’s most popular work. The new novel is “Long Island.”
“All Fours,” a new novel by Miranda July, tells the story of a semi-famous artist who announces her plan to drive cross-country on a one woman quest for a new kind of freedom. The book is part absurd entertainment and part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist.
In "The Princess of Las Vegas," by best-selling author Chris Bohjalian, a Princess Diana impersonator and her estranged sister find themselves drawn into a dangerous game of money and murder in a twisting tale of organized crime, cryptocurrency, and family secrets on the Las Vegas strip.
Julia Alvarez, bestselling author of “In the Time of the Butterflies” and “How the García Girls Lost Their Accents,” returns with “The Cemetery of Untold Stories” - a novel about storytelling that reminds us that the events of our lives are never truly finished, even at the end.
Anne Lamott’s new book “Somehow: Thoughts on Love” is her 20th book and published on her 70th birthday. In each chapter, Lamott refracts all the colors of the spectrum. She explores love and the power it has in our lives. The lessons she underscores are that love enlightens as it educates, comforts as it energizes, sustains as it surprises.
“City on Fire” by Don Winslow launched an ambitious crime fiction trilogy that has transported readers from the gritty streets of Providence to the glittering screens of Hollywood to the golden casinos of Las Vegas as Danny Ryan, forges a dynasty. Winslow’s latest book is “City in Ruins.” It is also his last.
The new novel by Tommy Orange, “Wandering Stars,” traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through to the shattering aftermath of Orvil Redfeather’s shooting depicted in Orange’s best-selling debut, “There There.”
“My Beloved Life” by Amitava Kumar is a father-daughter story that widens into an Indian family saga. It tells the story of an ordinary life made exceptional by the fact that father has loved and has been loved in return. His daughter’s story recasts the past in a new light.
Poet Kaveh Akbar joins us to discuss his first novel “Martyr!” which follows Cyrus Shams on a journey of introspection and discovery. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet. His obsession with martyrs and dealing with the death of his mother drives him to examine the mysteries of his past.
Anna Quindlen puts her trademark wisdom on family, friendship, and the ties that bind us at the center her new novel, “After Annie.” When Annie Brown dies suddenly, her husband, her children, and her closest friend are left to find a way forward without the woman who has been the lynchpin of all of their lives.
Novelist Danielle Trussoni is the author of the bestsellers “Angelology” and “Angelopolis.” She gives readers a thrilling ride with her latest, “The Puzzle Master.” Reality and the supernatural collide when an expert puzzle maker is thrust into an ancient mystery - one with explosive consequences for the fate of humanity.
Ann Napolitano took the literary world by storm with her tear-jerker of a novel “Dear Edward.” Her latest, “Hello Beautiful,” is an homage to Louisa May Alcott’s classic, “Little Women.” “Hello Beautiful” is a portrait of what is possible when we choose to love someone not in spite of who they are, but because of it.
In his new novel, “Cold Victory,” New York Times bestselling author Karl Marlantes delivers a sweeping tale of Cold War intrigue set in post-war Finland in which loyalty, friendship, and love are put to the ultimate test. The book is layered with action, historical detail, and a keen eye for the way totalitarianism and loss of truth and privacy threatens love and friendship.
“The Women,” a new novel by Kristin Hannah, is set at a pivotal time in American history: the Vietnam era. It is an intimate portrait of a woman coming of age in a dangerous situation and an epic tale of a nation divided by war and broken by politics.
“Alphabetical Diaries” by Sheila Heti contains a decade’s worth of thoughts, arranged in alphabetical order. The book is a chronicle of the self, of the fundamentals and idiosyncrasies of human experience, that plays out thrillingly in the space that Heti has staked out between life and art, reality and fiction.
The winner of the Booker Prize 2023, “Prophet Song” by Paul Lynch, presents a terrifying and shocking vision of a country sliding into authoritarianism and a deeply human portrait of a mother’s fight to hold her family together.
“The Bee Sting,” a novel by Paul Murray, is about family, fortune, and the struggle to be a good person at the end of the world.
As a prolific novelist of books for adults and kids, Carl Hiaasen has a subject: Florida. It is his beat. In “Wrecker,” Hiaasen’s new novel for Young Readers, Valdez Jones VIII needs to deal with smugglers, grave robbers, and pooping iguanas -- just as soon as he finishes Zoom school.
Ann Patchett is the author of nine novels, including “Bel Canto,” “State of Wonder,” “Commonwealth” and “The Dutch House,” a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her latest, “Tom Lake,” is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born.
Bestselling author Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is the author of the debut novel, "Chain-Gang All-Stars," the story of two top women gladiators fighting for their freedom within a depraved private prison system.
“Day” is the first novel in a decade from Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Cunningham. It’s a family saga set in New York City before and during the COVID-19 pandemic and takes place on three separate days in April, one each in the years 2019-2021.
Best-selling author of “The Things They Carried,” Tim O’Brien, is on The Book Show this week to discuss his first new novel in two decades. “America Fantastica” is a propulsive caper chock full of O’Brien’s commentary on the state of American politics and culture.
CNN anchor and chief Washington correspondent and New York Times best-selling author Jake Tapper has written a third thriller. “All the Demons are Here,” brings readers to the 1970s underground world of cults, celebrities, tabloid journalism, serial killers, disco, and UFOs.
“Absolution,” by National Book Award-winning author Alice McDermott, is the riveting account of women’s lives on the margins of the Vietnam War. American women and wives have been mostly minor characters in the literature of the Vietnam War, but in “Absolution” they take center stage.
Jane Smiley is the author of numerous novels including “A Thousand Acres,” which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and the “Last Hundred Years Trilogy.” Her latest, “A Dangerous Business,” tells the remarkable story of the California gold rush and a pair of sex-worker sleuths who track down the culprit behind a series of disappearances.
Jonathan Lethem is the bestselling author of twelve novels, including “The Fortress of Solitude” and “Motherless Brooklyn,” and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. His newest is “Brooklyn Crime Novel,” a sweeping story of community, crime, and gentrification, tracing more than fifty years of life in one Brooklyn neighborhood.
“Elegy plus comedy is the only way to express how we live in the world today,” says a character in “The Vulnerables,” the ninth novel by National Book Award winner Sigrid Nunez. “The Vulnerables” offers a meditation on our contemporary era, asking how present reality affects the way a person looks back on their past.
Joe Nesbø is an internationally best-selling author best known for his mystery series featuring his protagonist, Harry Hole. His latest is a twisted, multi-layered, mind-bending spin on the classic horror novel, “The Night House.” By page 8 – a phone has eaten a guy and things get stranger along the way.
The new novel, “The Unsettled,” by Ayana Mathis is set in the 1980s and follows three generations of a family divided by a painful past. Ava lives in racially and politically turbulent Philadelphia, struggling to care for her son, Toussaint. Her mother, Dutchess, remains in her historically Black hometown of Bonaparte, Alabama, fighting to save her land.
“Wellness,” by Nathan Hill, is a poignant and witty novel about marriage, the often-baffling pursuit of health and happiness, and the stories that bind us together. The book brings us from the gritty '90s Chicago art scene to a suburbia of detox diets and home-renovation hysteria.
Lauren Groff is a three-time National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author. Her new novel, “The Vaster Wilds,” is at once an adventure story and a penetrating fable about trying to find a new way of living in a world succumbing to the churn of colonialism. It tells the story of America in miniature, through one girl at a hinge point in history.
“The House in the Pines” is a new psychological thriller from Ana Reyes. In it, we follow Maya, a young woman who only has hazy memories about the most traumatic moment in her life – witnessing the mysterious death of her best friend – and feels the desperation to hide from and eventually fight for long-buried answers.
Best-selling author and naturalist Peter Heller’s new novel, “The Last Ranger,” tells of an enforcement ranger in Yellowstone National Park who likes wolves better than most people. When a clandestine range war threatens his closest friend, he must shake off his own losses and act swiftly to discover the truth and stay alive.
Lorrie Moore is one of the most celebrated living writers in the United States. Her new novel, “I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home,” is her first in 14 years and is an exploration of love and death, passion and grief where a man takes a road trip with the corpse of his dead ex-lover.
Lorrie Moore is one of the most celebrated living writers in the United States. Her new novel, “I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home,” is her first in 14 years and is an exploration of love and death, passion and grief where a man takes a road trip with the corpse of his dead ex-lover.
Pulitzer-Prize winning author Richard Russo’s new novel, “Somebody's Fool,” returns to North Bath in upstate New York and to the characters that captured the hearts and imaginations of millions of readers in his beloved best sellers “Nobody’s Fool” and “Everybody’s Fool.”
Ann Patchett is the author of nine novels, including “Bel Canto,” “State of Wonder,” “Commonwealth” and “The Dutch House,” a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her latest, “Tom Lake,” is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born.
Award winning writer Simon Winchester’s latest book is “Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic.” It explores how humans acquire, retain, and pass on information and data, and how technology continues to change our lives and our minds.
Sadeqa Johnson is the award-winning author of four novels, including “Yellow Wife.” Her latest, “The House of Eve,” is a Reese’s Book Club Pick and an instant New York Times Bestseller. With their stories colliding in the most unexpected of ways, we meet Ruby and Eleanor who both make decisions that shape the trajectory of their lives.
Sadeqa Johnson is the award-winning author of four novels, including “Yellow Wife.” Her latest, “The House of Eve,” is a Reese’s Book Club Pick and an instant New York Times Bestseller. With their stories colliding in the most unexpected of ways, we meet Ruby and Eleanor who both make decisions that shape the trajectory of their lives.
Taking as inspiration his mother’s own Red Cross service, novelist Luis Alberto Urrea has delivered an overlooked story of women’s heroism in World War II. With its portrait of friendship and valor in harrowing circumstances, Good Night, Irene, explores the "Donut Dollies," an all-women volunteer group launched by the Red Cross during WWII.
Ottessa Moshfegh’s novel “Lapvona” brings us to a village in a medieval fiefdom buffeted by natural disasters where a motherless shepherd boy finds himself the unlikely pivot of a power struggle that puts all manner of faith to a savage test.
Set in an alternate version of America’s recent past, Elliot Ackerman’s latest, “Halcyon,” is a chilling novel about two self-made men confronting a world that seems to be moving on without them. It grapples with what history means, who is affected by it, and how the complexities of our shared future rest on the dual foundations of remembering and forgetting.
Steven Wright is one of the most significant and influential stand-up comedians in history. His first novel, “Harold,” documents the meandering, surreal, often hilarious, stream-of-consciousness ruminations of the title character during a single day in class.
Novelist Susanna Moore’s eighth novel, “The Lost Wife,” is an immersive story about a seminal and shameful moment in America’s conquest of the West. Drawing partly from a true story, it brings to life a devastating Native American revolt and the woman caught in the middle of the conflict.
Acclaimed New York Times bestselling author Dennis Lehane’s latest, “Small Mercies,” is a brutal depiction of criminality and power and an unflinching portrait of the dark heart of American racism. Mary Pat Fennessey, propelled by a desperate search for her missing daughter, begins turning over stones best left untouched.
Ann Napolitano took the literary world by storm with her tear-jerker of a novel “Dear Edward.” Her latest, “Hello Beautiful,” is an homage to Louisa May Alcott’s classic, “Little Women.” “Hello Beautiful” is a portrait of what is possible when we choose to love someone not in spite of who they are, but because of it.
Abraham Verghese is The New York Times-bestselling author of “Cutting for Stone.” His latest, “The Covenant of Water,” is a stunning epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala, South India, following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret known as “the condition.”
Susanna Hoffs co-founded the pop-rock band The Bangles in 1981 before embarking on a critically acclaimed solo career. Now, she has written a rock and roll rom-com novel entitled “This Bird Has Flown.”
Bestselling author Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is the author of the debut novel, "Chain-Gang All-Stars," the story of two top women gladiators fighting for their freedom within a depraved private prison system.
Oscar nominated filmmaker and author John Sayles’s new novel, “Jamie MacGillivray: The Renegade’s Journey,” spans 13 years, two continents, several wars, and many smoldering, blood-soaked battlefields.
Owen King’s “The Curator” is a fantasy of illusion and mystery set in an unnamed city in the midst of a revolution where nothing and nobody is as it seems. “The Curator” is an exploration of power, revolution, ghosts, cats, and more.
Thomas Mallon’s new novel, "Up with The Sun," mixes murder mystery and showbiz history to tell the fictionalized account of the life and untimely death of Dick Kallman.
Thomas Mallon’s new novel, "Up with The Sun," mixes murder mystery and showbiz history to tell the fictionalized account of the life and untimely death of Dick Kallman.
Scott Turow, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of "Presumed Innocent" and "The Last Trial," returns with "Suspect" a riveting legal thriller in which a reckless private detective is embroiled in a fraught police scandal where the Police Chief is accused by three male police officers of soliciting sex in exchange for promotions to higher ranks.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Paul Harding’s new novel “This Other Eden” is inspired by the true story of Malaga Island, an isolated island off the coast of Maine that became one of the first racially integrated towns in the Northeast. Harding is the author of “Tinkers” and “Enon.”
Lydia Millet’s previous novel, “A Children’s Bible,” was a National Book Award Finalist. Her follow-up is “Dinosaurs” is deadpan funny and yet deals with the important themes of extinction and climate change.
Tracy Kidders new book, “Rough Sleepers: Dr. Jim O'Connell's Urgent Mission to Bring Healing to Homeless People” shines a spotlight on Jim O’Connell, a Harvard-trained doctor who has spent 40 years caring for unhoused individuals in Boston, the “Rough Sleepers.”
We talk with both Tracy Kidder and Dr. Jim O’Connell on this week’s Book Show.
Tracy Kidders new book, “Rough Sleepers: Dr. Jim O'Connell's Urgent Mission to Bring Healing to Homeless People,” tells the story of Dr. Jim O’Connell – a man who invented ways to create a community of care for a city’s unhoused population – the “rough sleepers.”
Jane Smiley is the author of numerous novels including “A Thousand Acres,” which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and the “Last Hundred Years Trilogy.” Her latest, “A Dangerous Business,” tells the remarkable story of the California gold rush and a pair of sex-worker sleuths who track down the culprit behind a series of disappearances.
In bestselling author Emma Donoghue’s novel “Haven,” three men vow to leave the world behind them as they set out in a small boat for an island their leader has seen in a dream.
In the follow-up to the best-selling and Pulitzer Prize-winning "Less: A Novel," the awkward and lovable Arthur Less returns in an unforgettable road trip in Andrew Sean Greer’s new novel, "Less is Lost," where he accepts a series of literary gigs that sends him on a zigzagging adventure across the U.S.
Former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins has taken up the unique poetic style of the “small poem” and has gathered more than 125 of his own into a beautiful new collection entitled “Musical Tables.”
A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history. In her new novel, "Horse," Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Geraldine Brooks braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history.
Emily St. John Mandel is the award-winning, best-selling author of “Station Eleven” and “The Glass Hotel” She returns with a novel of art, time, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon 500-years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space. Her new book is “Sea of Tranquility.”
Bestselling author Nick Hornby is an icon in American pop culture and his latest brings his signature wit and appeal to his first nonfiction book in many years, "Dickens and Prince: A Particular Kind of Genius" where he studies the cosmic link between these two unlikely creative geniuses.
Booker Prize-winning author John Banville’s new novel "The Singularities" is a playful, multilayered novel of nostalgia, life and death, and quantum theory, which opens with the return of one of his most celebrated characters as he is released from prison.
Sheila Heti is a philosopher of modern experience, and she has reimagined what a book can hold. In her latest, “Pure Colour,” she presents a contemporary bible, an atlas of feeling, and an absurdly funny guide to the great (and terrible) things about being alive.
1 New York Times bestselling author John Grisham returns to Mississippi for his latest legal thriller “The Boys from Biloxi,” The story of two sons of immigrant families who grow up as friends but ultimately find themselves on opposite sides of the law.
Celeste Ng is the bestselling author of “Little Fires Everywhere.” Her new novel, “Our Missing Hearts,” is about a mother’s unbreakable love in a world consumed by fear. Bird’s mother was a Chinese American poet who disappeared. When Bird is 12, he embarks on a journey to put together the pieces, aided by an underground network of librarians.
John Irving has written some of the most acclaimed books of our time, among them: “The World According to Garp,” “A Widow for One Year,” “A Prayer for Owen Meany” and “The Cider House Rules.” He now returns with his first novel in seven years “The Last Chairlift.”
Pulitzer Prize-finalist and best-selling author Barbara Kingsolver’s new novel, “Demon Copperhead” re-imagines Charles Dicken’s “David Copperfield” set in West Virginian Appalachia at the beginning of the opioid epidemic.
George Saunders is an American great, a writer who continues to astound, evolve and get deeper. His new book, “Liberation Day,” is his first collection of stories since his National Book Award finalist “Tenth of December” was published eight years ago.
Andrea Barrett, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, is the author of the new book Natural History: Stories - a collection of interconnected stories that complete and connect the lives of the family of scientists, teachers and innovators that she has woven into her books.
During this month – and for a quartet of programs – we will be celebrating the form of the short story and those who write them. This week - T.C. Boyle, one of our country’s most beloved practitioners of the short story, joins us to discuss his new collection, "I Walk Between the Raindrops" - characterized by Boyle’s trademark biting satire and resonant wit.
Best-selling, award-winning author Julian Barnes’ new novel, “Elizabeth Finch,” is a magnetic tale that centers on the presence of a vivid and particular woman, whose loss becomes the occasion for a man’s deeper examination of love, friendship, and biography.
Legendary author Joyce Carol Oates’ latest book, "Babysitter" is an engrossing thriller, with a bit of true crime, set against a backdrop of child murders in the affluent suburbs of 1970s Detroit. Oates rooted the novel in the real, unsolved case of the “Babysitter Killer,” who struck in Oakland County, Michigan.
Dan Brown is the author of numerous #1 bestselling novels including “The Da Vinci Code” which has become one of the best-selling novels of all time as well as the subject of intellectual debate among readers and scholars. “The Da Vinci Code” is one of five novels featuring his symbology professor protagonist, Robert Langdon.
Abdulrazak Gurnah attained a new level of global prominence last year when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Gurnah’s new novel “Afterlives” spotlights the devastating German colonial rule of early 20th century East Africa and its aftermath.
New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean gathers a lifetime of musings, meditations, and in-depth profiles about animals in her new collection, “On Animals.” Orlean has been hailed as “a national treasure” by The Washington Post and is the author of the New York Times bestseller “The Library Book.”
Acclaimed TV writer and the executive producer of award-winning shows such as “Modern Family” and “How I Met Your Mother,” Stephen Lloyd’s new novel debut, “Friend of the Devil,” is a horror/noir mash-up set at an elite boarding school harboring secrets.
With the publication of “The Sanatorium” last year, Sarah Pearse had one of the most stunning crime-fiction debuts in recent memory. It was an instant New York Times and international bestseller as well as a Reese's Book Club selection. Now, detective Elin Warner is back in Pearse's second novel, “The Retreat.”
Writer Séamas O’Reilly’s mother died when he was five, leaving him, his ten brothers and sisters, and their beloved father in their sprawling bungalow in rural Derry. It was the 1990s; the Troubles were a background rumble. He tells the story in his memoir: “Did Ye Hear Mammy Died?”
Ottessa Moshfegh’s new novel “Lapvona” brings us to a village in a medieval fiefdom buffeted by natural disasters where a motherless shepherd boy finds himself the unlikely pivot of a power struggle that puts all manner of faith to a savage test.
What if you could take a vacation to your past? With her humor, insight, and heart, beloved New York Times bestselling author Emma Straub offers her own twist on traditional time travel tropes and a different kind of love story in her new novel “This Time Tomorrow.”
Tracy Flick, the iconic protagonist of Tom Perrotta’s novel “Election,” is back and determined to, once again, take high school politics by storm. Tom Perrotta’s new sequel is “Tracy Flick Can’t Win.”
A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history. In her new novel, "Horse," Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Geraldine Brooks braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history.
Dan Chaon’s latest thriller, “Sleepwalk,” is a high speed and darkly comic road trip through a near future America with a big-hearted mercenary. The novel examines where we’ve been and where we’re going and the connections that bind us, no matter how far we travel to dodge them or how cleverly we hide.
Author and Environmentalist Bill McKibben is the author of more than a dozen books, including The End of Nature, which was the first book to warn the general public about the climate crisis. Bill McKibben’s latest is “The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened.”
Does George Washington still matter? Bestselling author Nathaniel Philbrick argues for Washington's unique contribution to the forging of America by retracing his journey as a new president through all thirteen former colonies. His book is "Travels with George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy."
Emily St. John Mandel is the award-winning, best-selling author of “Station Eleven” and “The Glass Hotel.” She returns with a novel of art, time, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon 500-years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space. Her new book is “Sea of Tranquility.”
Emmy, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild award winner, Julianna Margulies has achieved success in television, theater, and film and starred in two classic series: “ER” and “The Good Wife.” As a bubbly child, Julianna was bestowed with the family nickname “Sunshine Girl,” also the title of her new memoir.
The fragile, 1952 postwar tranquility of a young boy’s world explodes one summer day when a leopard escapes from the Oklahoma City Zoo, throwing all the local residents into dangerous excitement, in Stephen Harrigan’s story of a child’s confrontation with his deepest fears. His new novel is “The Leopard is Loose.”
Douglas Stuart’s debut novel "Shuggie Bain" was awarded the 2020 Booker Prize and his new second novel, "Young Mungo" is a portrayal of working-class life and a moving and suspenseful story of the dangerous first love of two young men: Mungo and James - who should be sworn enemies if they’re to be seen as men at all.
Gregory Maguire, the imagination behind "Wicked," turns his trademark wit and wisdom to an animal adventure about growing up, moving on, and finding community. "Cress Watercress" is a lavishly illustrated woodland tale with a classic sensibility and modern flair.
Amy Bloom’s memoir, "In Love," asks: what are you willing to do for the one you love? And what is our own right to die? Bloom describes the events that took place from the time of her husband’s diagnosis with Alzheimer’s, until his death by “accompanied suicide” with Dignitas in Zurich.
Peter Heller’s novel, “The Guide,” takes place against the backdrop of his home state of Colorado. It follows a young man, Jack, who accepts a job as a fishing guide at an elite resort in the wilds of Colorado. What begins as an idyllic experience soon takes a dark turn.
Photo courtesy of Knopf. This episode originally aired as episode #1731.
Stewart O’Nan’s latest novel “Ocean State” is a compelling story about sisters, mothers, and daughters, and the terrible things love makes us do.
New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean gathers a lifetime of musings, meditations, and in-depth profiles about animals in her new collection, “On Animals.” Orlean has been hailed as “a national treasure” by The Washington Post and is the author of the New York Times bestseller “The Library Book.”
Booker Prize–winning author Roddy Doyle’s latest is "Life Without Children." The book is a warm and witty portrait of our pandemic lives told in ten heartrending short stories. Love and marriage. Children and family. Death and grief. Life touches everyone the same. But living under lockdown? That changes us alone.
Isabel Allende’s new novel “Violeta” is a sweeping epic that tells the story of a woman whose life spans one hundred years from 1920–2020 as she bears witness to the greatest upheavals of the twentieth century. Allende won worldwide acclaim in 1982 with the publication of her first novel, “The House of the Spirits.”
1 New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth George and Thomas Lynley, the protagonist in her Lynley mystery series, have a long history together. The publication of George’s new novel, "Something to Hide," marks the twenty-first novel in the series.
Brendan Slocumb’s debut thriller, “The Violin Conspiracy,” is a page-turner about a Black classical musician’s desperate quest to recover his lost family heirloom violin on the eve of the most prestigious musical competition in the world.
Noah Hawley is the award-winning creator of shows like “Fargo” and “Legion” and the bestselling author of “Before the Fall.” His new novel, “Anthem,” is a thriller set where America is right now in which a band of unlikely heroes set out on a quest to save one innocent life and might end up saving us all.
Jason Mott’s "Hell of a Book" won The National Book Award in 2021. It is an astounding work of fiction where a Black author sets out on a publicity tour to promote his bestselling novel. The book - always deeply honest, at times electrically funny -- goes to the heart of racism, police violence, and the hidden costs exacted upon Black Americans and America as a whole.
“Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie: The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR” by journalist Lisa Napoli is a group biography of four beloved women who fought sexism; covered decades of American news, and whose voices defined NPR.
Originally aired as episode #1729.
Photo courtesy of Abrams Press.
In her new novel of psychological suspense "The Collective," Alison Gaylin explores just how far a grieving mother will go to right a tragic wrong.
Eight friends, one country house, and six months in isolation. Gary Shteyngart's latest "Our Country Friends" is a novel about love, friendship, family, and betrayal hailed as a "virtuoso performance" (USA Today) and "an homage to Chekhov with four romances and a finale that will break your heart" (The Washington Post).
New York Times best-selling novelist Imbolo Mbue’s "How Beautiful We Were," is a sweeping, wrenching story about the collision of a small African village and an American oil company.
Maggie Shipstead’s new novel “Great Circle” tracks the lives of Marian Graves and her twin brother Jamie from Prohibition-era Missoula to wartime Britain, from the cold of Alaska to the cap of Antarctica as Marian chases her dream of becoming the first pilot to circumnavigate the globe north-south.
Ruth Ozeki is a filmmaker, Zen Buddhist priest and the author of several novels including “A Tale for the Time Being,” which was a finalist for the 2013 Booker Prize. Her latest, “The Book of Form and Emptiness,” is an inventive novel about loss, growing up, and our relationship with things.
Jodi Picoult is the author of twenty-five internationally bestselling novels. Her latest, "Wish You Were Here," begins in New York City in March 2020 as young art professional Diana O’Toole is about to embark on a trip to the Galapagos with her surgical resident boyfriend-soon-to-be-fiancé. But then a virus that felt worlds away appears in the city.
Comics and cultural superstar Alison Bechdel is back and once again her new graphic memoir is “The Secret to Superhuman Strength.”
Alan Cumming's new memoir, “Baggage: Tales from a Fully Packed Life,” chronicles the actor’s life in Hollywood and the ways in which work has repeatedly whisked him away from personal calamities to sets and stages around the world.
Bestselling author Francine Prose’s latest book “The Vixen,” is set in the glamorous world of New York publishing in the 1950s. It is the story of a young man tasked with editing a steamy bodice ripper. The novel is based on the recent trial and execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. The assignment reveals the true cost of entering such a world.