“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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

“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.

“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.

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.

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.

“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.

The Times calls Booker Prize winning writer Anne Enright one of our greatest living novelists. Her latest, “The Wren, The Wren” is about a dead poet’s daughter and granddaughter coming to terms with his troubling legacy. Enright’s novel about language and connection explores the inheritance of trauma, wonder, and love across three generations of women.

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.”

Esmeralda Santiago is the award-winning, best-selling author of “When I Was Puerto Rican.” Her latest, “Las Madres,” is a powerful novel of family, race, faith, sex, and disaster that moves between Puerto Rico and the Bronx, revealing the lives and loves of five women and the secret that binds them together.

National Book Award Winner James McBride’s new novel is “The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.” It is rooted in small-town secrets as the residents of rundown Chicken Hill in Pottstown, Pennsylvania live with compassion on the margins of society.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

In Elisa Albert’s highly-anticipated new novel, “Human Blues,” musician Aviva Rosner’s course cracks and crumbles the harder she pounds the pavement. Aviva wants to have a child. But, she wants to conceive on her own terms – though those terms become increasingly irrelevant with each missed opportunity.

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.

[et_pb_section admin_label="section"] [et_pb_row admin_label="row"] [et_pb_column type="4_4"][et_pb_text admin_label="Text"] Colm Tóibín's "The Magician" is an intimate portrait of one of the 20th century's most intriguing literary figures, Thomas Mann. [/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column] [/et_pb_row] [/et_pb_section]

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.

Anne Tyler discusses her novel “Redhead by the Side of the Road,” about misperception, second chances, and the sometimes elusive power of human connection. 

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).

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.

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.

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.

Comics and cultural superstar Alison Bechdel is back and once again her new graphic memoir is “The Secret to Superhuman Strength.”

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.

“Cloud Cuckoo Land” is the highly anticipated new novel from Anthony Doerr, who won the Pulitzer Prize for “All the Light We Cannot See.” In his latest novel, Doerr uses one of humanity’s oldest technologies, a book, to illuminate our abiding opportunities for connection and empathy.

Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award–winning author Louise Erdrich’s new book is a ghost story, a tale of passion, of a complex marriage, and of a woman’s relentless errors. “The Sentence” asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book.

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 new book is “Travels with George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy.” Photo courtesy of Viking.

Lauren Groff is a two-time National Book Award finalist and a New York Times bestselling author. Her latest “Matrix,” her first since the groundbreaking “Fates and Furies,” brings us to a 12th-century nunnery where she tells an engrossing tale of female desire, passion, creativity, and power. Photo courtesy of Riverhead Books.

Author Richard Powers won the Pulitzer Prize for the #1 New York Times bestseller, “The Overstory.” His latest novel, “Bewilderment,” has already been shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize and longlisted for the 2021 National Book Award for Fiction. Photo courtesy of W.W. Norton.

This week on The Book Show: Thirty years ago, Anita Hill faced down an all-male, all-white Senate Judiciary Committee, led by then-Senator Joe Biden, to testify that her boss, Supreme Court Justice nominee Clarence Thomas, had sexually harassed her. Her new book is: “Believing: Our Thirty-Year Journey to End Gender Violence.” Photo courtesy of Viking.

This week, author Amitava Kumar’s new novel, “A Time Outside This Time,” is set at a writer’s retreat and reflects on the issues of fake news, memory, and the ways in which truth gives over to fiction. Kumar has crafted his fiction so seamlessly from real life that the reader is forced to reckon with what is “real.” Photo courtesy of Knopf.

Pushcart Prizewinning poet Maggie Smith gained star status with her breakout bestseller “Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change.” Now with “Goldenrod,” Smith returns to her original craft with a powerful collection of poems that explore parenthood, solitude, love, and memory. Photo courtesy of Atria/One Signal Publishers.

This week, Peter Heller’s new 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 week, with one of the longest-running bestselling adult hardcovers in publishing history, “The Girl on the Train,” Paula Hawkins became an international publishing phenomenon. She now unfurls a gripping, twisting story of deceit, murder, and revenge in her latest novel, “A Slow Fire Burning.” Photo courtesy of Riverhead Books.

This week, we discuss the new book “Susan, Linda, Nina & Cokie: The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR” by journalist Lisa Napoli. The book is a group biography of four beloved women who fought sexism; covered decades of American news; and whose voices defined NPR. Photo courtesy of Abrams Press.

This week, in her new novel “Infinite Country,” acclaimed author Patricia Engel gives voice to five family members as they navigate the particular challenges of family life in two countries. In the book, Engel shows immigration as an ongoing process and a constant flow of people across borders. Photo courtesy of Avid Reader Press/ Simon & Schuster.

This week, Editor, journalist and writer Christopher Cox explores his experiences with looming deadlines and how he became determined to learn the secret of managing them in his new book, “The Deadline Effect: How to Work Like it’s the Last Minute Before the Last Minute.” Photo courtesy of Simon & Schuster/ Avid Reader Press.

This week on The Book Show, Fannie Flagg discusses her sequel to the New York Times bestseller “Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café.” The novel, “The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop,” traces what happened to the beloved characters in Fried Green Tomatoes. This episode originally aired in Dec. 2020. Photo courtesy of Random House.

This week, bestselling author Francine Prose discusses her latest, “The Vixen.” Set in the glamorous world of 1950s New York publishing, the novel is the story of a young man tasked with editing a steamy bodice-ripper based on the recent trial and execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. Photo courtesy of Harper.

This week, Jim Shepard discusses his latest book “Phase Six.” The novel is about the next pandemic that reads like a fictional sequel to our current crisis. Shepard is also the author of seven previous novels including, “The Book of Aron.” Photo courtesy of Random House.

This week, from the modern master of noir James Ellroy, comes the new novel “Widespread Panic;” about the malevolent monarch of the 1950s Hollywood Underground. The novel is a tale of pervasive paranoia teeming with communist conspiracies, FBI finks, celebrity smut films, and strange bedfellows. Photo courtesy of Knopf.

This week, Former flight attendant T. J. Newman wrote much of her new novel, “Falling,” on cross-country red-eye flights while her passengers were asleep. “Falling” follows pilot Bill Hoffman after he’s been given an impossible choice: crash the plane he’s currently flying, or let his kidnapped family die. Photo courtesy of Avid Reader Press.

This week, Elizabeth Brundage discusses her new book “The Vanishing Point,” which takes a close look at relationships; the mistakes we make early on that inform our destinies and the troubling things we sometimes do in the name of love. Photo courtesy of Little, Brown, and Company.

This week, Megha Majumdar discusses her book, “A Burning.” The novel centers around three characters following a terrorist attack in India. This episode originally aired in June 2020. Photo courtesy of Knopf.

This week, host Joe Donahue speaks with New York Times bestselling author and former host of MSNBC’s Hardball, Chris Matthews. The pair discuss Matthews’ new book; “This Country: My Life in Politics and History,” which offers a panoramic portrait of post–World War II America through the story of his life and career. Photo courtesy of Simon & Schuster.

This week, Maggie Shipstead discusses her new book “Great Circle.” The novel tracks the lives of Marian Graves and her twin brother; as she chases her dream of becoming the first pilot to circumnavigate the globe north-south. (more…)

This week, CNN anchor and chief Washington correspondent and New York Times best-selling author Jake Tapper discusses his new thriller, “The Devil May Dance.” (more…)

This week, bestselling author Michael Lewis discusses his new book, “The Premonition: A Pandemic Story.” The non-fiction thriller pits a band of medical visionaries against the wall of ignorance that was the official response of the Trump administration to the COVID-19 outbreak. (more…)

This week, Andrew McCarthy’s movie roles in “Pretty in Pink,” “St. Elmo’s Fire,” “Weekend at Bernie’s,” and “Less Than Zero” made him a star.  He’s considered one of the so-called “Brat Pack” – which has come to represent both a genre of film and an era of pop culture. He writes about that decade of his life in “Brat: An ’80s Story.” (more…)

This week, Viet Thanh Nguyen discusses his new novel, “The Committed.” The book is the long-awaited follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Sympathizer.” It tells the story of a communist double agent and his blood brother, Bon, as they try to overcome their pasts and ensure their futures. (more…)

This week, comics and cultural superstar Alison Bechdel is back with a new graphic novel. Once again she has reinvented memoir, as she did with “Fun Home”, this time by telling her life story decade by decade through the lens of her lifelong obsession with exercise. Her new graphic memoir is “The Secret to Superhuman Strength.” (more…)

This week, we speak with Edgar Award-winning author Flynn Berry. Berry discusses her latest, Northern Spy, a thriller about the contemporary IRA, and two sisters who find themselves caught in the middle of the re-escalating sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland. (more…)

This week on The Book Show, Amity Gaige discusses her book, Sea Wife. A transporting novel about marriage, family, and love in a time of turmoil. (more…)

This week, in Susan Conley’s new novel Landslide, a mother is caring for her two teenage sons while everything else, her marriage and the fishing industry her New England community relies on, threatens to crumble around her. (more…)

This week, Russell Banks discusses his new book, Foregone. In the book, we meet leftist documentary filmmaker Leonard Fife. Fife is one of sixty thousand draft evaders and deserters who fled to Canada to avoid serving in Vietnam. Now, in his late seventies, he is dying of cancer and has agreed to a final interview in which he is determined to bear all his secrets at last. (more…)

This week, Donna Leon discusses her latest installment of the Guido Brunetti mystery novels, “Transient Desires.” The series explores myriad social issues facing the city of Venice, Italy. (more…)

This week, New York Times best-selling novelist Imbolo Mbue discusses his new novel, How Beautiful We Were. The book is a sweeping, wrenching story about the collision of a small African village and an American oil company. (more…)

This week, in Dusk, Night, Dawn, best-selling author Anne Lamott explores the tough questions that many of us grapple with. How can we recapture the confidence we once had as we stumble through the dark times that seem increasingly bleak? We begin, Lamott says, by accepting our flaws and embracing our humanity. (more…)

This week, author Chang-rae Lee discusses his new book: My Year Abroad. The novel follows a young American whose life is transformed by an unusual Asian adventure. Lee examines the human capacity for pleasure, pain, and connection.  (more…)

This week, Elizabeth Kolbert is the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction. In her new book, Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future, Kolbert again writes about humanity’s transformative impact on the environment, now asking: After doing so much damage, can we change nature, this time to save it? (more…)

This week, best-selling author Russell Shorto never thought to write about his own past. He grew up knowing his grandfather and namesake was a small-town mob boss but maintained an unspoken family vow of silence. Then an elderly relative prodded: “You’re a writer―what are you gonna do about the story?” The result is Smalltime: A Story of My Family and the Mob. (more…)

This week, Kristin Hannah discusses her latest book, The Four Winds. The novel is an American epic about love and heroism and hope, set during the Great Depression. Hannah is the number-one bestselling author of The Nightingale and The Great Alone. (more…)

This week, we speak with the creator of the Son of Baldwin online community, Robert Jones, Jr. He discusses his debut novel The Prophets, which showcases the forbidden union between two enslaved young men on a Deep South plantation; the refuge they find in each other, and a betrayal that threatens their existence. (more…)

This week on The Book Show, Author Simon Winchester examines what we human beings are doing – and have done – with the billions of acres that together make up the solid surface of our planet. His new book is Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World. (more…)

This week on The Book Show, National Book Award-winning author Colum McCann discusses his latest book, Apeirogon. The novel highlights the unlikely real-life friendship between two fathers, united by the loss of their daughters. (more…)

This week, George Saunders discusses his new work, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. He pairs iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, with essays intended for anyone interested in how fiction works. He also discusses why the Russian short story is more relevant than ever in these turbulent times. (more…)

This week, Jill McCorkle discusses her latest novel; Hieroglyphics, which reveals the difficulty of ever really knowing the intentions, dreams, and secrets of the people who raised you. In her deeply layered novel, McCorkle deconstructs and reconstructs what it means to be a father or a mother, and what it means to be a child piecing together the world around us. (more…)

This week, Glennon Doyle is the author of the number one New York Times bestseller Love Warrior, an Oprah’s Book Club selection and another New York Times bestseller Carry On, Warrior. Doyle is an activist, speaker, and thought leader. She is also the founder and president of Together Rising, which has raised over $20 million […]

This week on The Book Show, Anne Tyler discusses her book Redhead by the Side of the Road. The novel focuses on routine-obsessed Micah Mortimer; a story about misperception, second chances, and the elusive power of human connection. This episode of The Book Show originally aired in April 2020. Photo Courtesy of Knopf.  

This week on The Book Show, we present an off-the-shelf conversation with James Patterson.  Patterson is a bestselling author and joins us to discuss his three latest books: The Last Days of John Lennon, Deadly Cross, and NYPD Red 6. This off-the-shelf conversation was recorded via zoom and was presented by Northshire Bookstore.

This week on The Book Show, Jo Nesbo’s discusses his dark, gripping new standalone thriller, The Kingdom. Nesbo tells the story of two brothers, and a homecoming that turns deadly bringing long-buried family secrets to the surface.  

This week on The Book Show, Fannie Flagg discusses her sequel to the New York Times bestseller Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café. The new novel, The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop; traces what happened to the beloved characters in Fried Green Tomatoes.    

This week on The Book Show, we speak with Lydia Davis about her new work Essays One. Davis is a writer whose originality, influence, and wit are beyond compare. Best known for her masterful short stories and translations, Davis’s gifts extend equally to her nonfiction. In Essays One, Davis has for the first time gathered […]

In Roddy Doyle’s latest novel Love, Joe and Davy are two old friends who meet at a Dublin pub for a night of reconnecting and hard-drinking. Joe has a burning secret; Davy has a concealed sorrow. Doyle is the Booker Prize-winning author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and The Commitments.

On this week’s Book Show, we dive into the life and legacy of Janis Joplin. Holly George-Warren discusses her book, Janis: Her Life and Music. This episode originally aired in November 2019.

This week on The Book Show, Tana French discusses her book The Searcher. This is her first novel to feature an American protagonist and brings all of French’s atmospherics and characterization to a story that plays with the traditions of suspense fiction and does not fail to keep readers guessing. The New York Times has […]

This week on The Book Show, New York Times bestselling author Sue Miller’s insightful new novel focuses on marriage, love, family, happiness, and sorrow. Monogamy is the story of Annie and Graham, happily married for 30 years. But after Graham dies suddenly, Annie discovers he was having an affair.  

This week on The Book Show, novelist and playwright Ayad Akhtar. Akhtar is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. His latest work is Homeland Elegies, a deeply personal work about identity and belonging in a nation coming apart at the seams. It blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of longing […]

On this week’s Book Show, Journalist Jonathan Alter discusses his new book His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, A Life. This is the first full-length biography of Jimmy Carter, the thirty-ninth president of the United States and Nobel Prize-winning humanitarian.  

This week on The Book Show, Ken Follett. Follett has sold more than 170 million books, including the acclaimed novel The Pillars of Earth. Now, Follett is out with a prequel titled The Evening and the Morning, a historical epic about the world emerging from the Dark Ages.

This week on The Book Show, Sigrid Nunez, looks back to a precarious, pre-pandemic world. In her new book What You Are Going Through, she tells the story of death and companionship, loneliness, and obligation, and as she writes: “Messy life. Unfair life. Life that must be dealt with.”

This week on The Book Show, Vanessa Veselka’s new novel, The Great Offshore Grounds, tells the story of sisters Livy and Cheyenne as they set out to claim an unusual inheritance from their estranged father. The book explores how individuals begin to navigate ethics and emotions until they find where in the world they belong.

This week on The Book Show, author Carl Hiaasen  discusses his latest novel Squeeze Me. Hiaasen takes on The Palm Beach social scene – complete with Presidential shenanigans, a missing woman named Kiki Pew, and enormous pythons. Hiaasen writes an award-winning column for The Miami Herald.

This week on The Book Show, Kurt Anderson discusses his new book Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History. Andersen asks the question: When did America give up on fairness?

This week on The Book Show, Jhumpa Lahiri discusses her recently edited and published work. Lahiri fell in love with the Italian language and literature in 2012. Her new work The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories, features short works of fiction. Some works are appearing in English for the first time.

This week on The Book Show, bestselling author Caroline Leavitt’s latest, With or Without You. With Or Without You, tells the story of Stella. When she wakes from a coma she develops an uncanny ability to draw and identify everyone’s innermost feelings. Her husband and best friend, who bonded during her illness, may have formed […]

This week on The Book Show, Emma Donoghue, author of the novel The Pull of the Stars. The Pull Of The Stars transports readers to 1918 Dublin, in a maternity ward at the height of the Great Flu. Over three days, three women change each other’s lives in unexpected ways. They lose patients to the […]

This week on The Book Show, Veteran Journalist and Fox News Sunday Anchor Chris Wallace, discusses his new book, Countdown 1945: The Extraordinary Story of the 116 Days That Changed the World. Wallaces’ book is a behind-the-scenes account leading up to the world’s first use of the atomic bomb during wartime. Countdown 1945, takes readers […]

On this week’s Book Show, critically acclaimed author Scott Spencer discusses his new novel An Ocean Without a Shore. A story of frustrated longing, and the lengths we will go for those we love—even if they don’t love us in return. Spencer is known for Endless Love and Man in the Woods.

This week on The Book Show, Kelly Braffet discusses her latest novel – The Unwilling, which is a high stakes coming-of-age tale full of enchantment and political turmoil. Additionally, Braffet has written: Save Yourself, Last Seen Leaving and Josie & Jack.

This week on The Book Show, Adam Goodman discusses his new book The Deportation Machine. Goodman traces the long and troubling history of the US government’s systematic efforts to terrorize and expel immigrants over the past 140 years. Adam Goodman is a Professor of History and Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of […]

This week on The Book Show, Amity Gaige discusses her book, Sea Wife. A transporting novel about marriage, family and love in a time of turmoil. Sea Wife is about a young family who takes a yearlong sailing trip, which alters their lives. Gaige writes with dual perspectives: Juliet’s first-person narration, and Michael’s captain’s log, […]

On this week’s Book Show, John Dickerson discusses his new book The Hardest Job in the World: The American Presidency. He takes a deep dive into the history, evolution and current state of the American presidency. Dickerson is a veteran political journalist, and a correspondent for 60 Minutes. He is the author of Whistlestop: My […]

On this week’s Book Show, Joe Donahue speaks with author Megha Majumdar. Her debut novel, A Burning, centers around three characters whose lives become intertwined after a terrorist attack in India. Majumdar’s novel discusses themes of class, fate, corruption, justice, and what it feels like to face profound obstacles and yet nurture big dreams throughout […]

On this week’s Book Show, Lydia Millet discusses her new book A Children’s Bible. Her novel follows a group of children on a forced vacation with their families. Contemptuous of their parents, who pass their days in a stupor of liquor, drugs, and sex. The children feel neglected, and suffocated at the same time. When […]

On this week’s Book Show, Ibram X. Kendi discusses his book How To Be An Antiracist. Kendi is the founding director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University. He is also a columnist at The Atlantic, and author of Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, which […]

This week on The Book Show, from the New York Times bestselling author of American Wife and Eligible, a novel that imagines a deeply compelling what-might-have-been: What if Hillary Rodham hadn’t married Bill Clinton? In real life, Bill Clinton proposed to Hillary Rodham twice and she said no, until the third time. In author Curtis Sittenfeld’s new novel, Rodham, she says no the […]

On this week’s Book Show, Lawrence Wright discusses his new thriller: The End of October. Wright is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, screenwriter, staff writer for The New Yorker magazine. He is also a fellow at the Center for Law and Security at the New York University School of Law. The End Of October follows Dr. […]

Glennon Doyle is the author of the number one New York Times bestseller “Love Warrior,” an Oprah’s Book Club selection and another New York Times bestseller “Carry On, Warrior.” Doyle is an activist, speaker, and thought leader. She is also the founder and president of Together Rising, which has raised over $20 million for women, […]

Emily St. John Mandel is the award winning author of “Station 11.” Her new novel “The Glass Hotel” is set at the glittering intersection of two seemingly disparate events; a massive Ponzi scheme collapse and the mysterious disappearance of a woman from a ship at sea. In the story Mandel highlights crisis and survival. Readers […]

In Sue Monk Kidd’s, new novel, “The Book of Longing,” she imagines a young woman named Ana, who becomes the wife of Jesus. The novel explores many of the signature themes in Kidd’s fiction: feminism, the search for self, the quest for one’s voice and purpose, and the power of female community. In particular, this […]

Robert Reich is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, including Secretary of Labor from 1993 to 1997. He’s also the bestselling author of “Saving Capitalism” and “The Common Good.” His latest book “The System: Who Rigged It, […]

Anne Tyler is one of America’s very best living novelists and one of the worlds most loved. Her new novel “Redhead by the Side of the Road,” focuses on routine-obsessed Micah Mortimer, whose life is about to be thrown out of whack. The book touches on misperception, second chances, and the sometimes elusive power of […]

“Afterlife” is the first adult novel in almost 15 years by Julia Alvarez, the bestselling author of In the “Time of the Butterflies” and “How the García Girls Lost Their Accents.” “Afterlife” is a compact, yet deeply felt novel that speaks to grief, a broken society; and makes us question what we owe each other, […]

Rahm Emanuel is a former two-term mayor of Chicago and White House Chief of Staff for President Barack Obama. In his new book, “The Nation City: Why Mayors Are Now Running the World,” he offers a firsthand account of how cities, rather than the federal government, stand at the center of innovation and effective governance.

James McBride is the author of the National Book Award winning “The Good Lord Bird” and the modern classic “The Color of Water.” His new book is “Deacon King Kong,” a wise and witty tale about what happens to the witnesses of a shooting.

Jenny Offill’s new novel, “Weather,” is about a family, and a nation, in crisis. Lizzie Benson slid into her job as a librarian without a traditional degree, but this gives her a vantage point from which to practice her other calling. Benson is a fake shrink which sees her advice grow increasingly apocalyptic and unhinged.

Nobel Prize-winning economist, Paul Krugman, is one of the most recognizable and trusted voices on economics and policy today. In his new book “Arguing with Zombies: Economics, Politics and the Fight for a Better Future,” Krugman explains the complexities of health care, housing bubbles, tax reform and Social Security.

Patrick Radden Keefe, a staff writer for the New Yorker, is the author the best-selling: “Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland.” In the book, Keefe explores the disappearance of Jean McConville (a widowed young mother of ten children) and explores the broader context of the terrorism and counterterrorism campaigns […]

Renowned radio host Diane Rehm joins us this week to discuss her new book, “When My Time Comes,” which addresses the urgent, hotly contested cause of the Right-to-Die movement, of which she is one of the most inspiring champions.

In the new book, “The Founding Fortunes,” historian Tom Shachtman reveals the ways in which a dozen notable Revolutionaries deeply affected the finances and birth of the new country while making and losing their fortunes.

Erik Larson is known for expertly transporting readers to past worlds. Even stories we think we know come to life in a different way once in his hands. His latest, “The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz,” takes us into the heart of war-torn England for the […]

In Gish Jen’s latest “The Resisters,” we meet Gwen who has a Golden Arm and finds herself happily playing in an underground baseball league in her teens. It is also the story of one family struggling to maintain its humanity and normalcy in circumstances that threaten their every value as well as their very existence.

Lydia Davis is a writer whose originality, influence, and wit are beyond compare. Best known for her masterful short stories and translations, Davis’ gifts extend equally to her nonfiction. In “Essays One” Davis has, for the first time, gathered a selection of essays, commentaries, and lectures composed over the past five decades.

T.C. Boyle’s novel, “Outside Looking In,” takes readers back to the 1960s and to the early days of LSD. The book tells the story of Harvard Ph.D. students whose lives veer out of control after they are drawn into the orbit of renowned psychologist and LSD enthusiast Timothy Leary.

Archer Mayor is the author of the critically-acclaimed series of police novels feature Lt. Joe Gunther of the Brattleboro, Vermont, police department.  In Mayor’s latest Joe Gunther novel “Bomber’s Moon,” the murder of a small-time drug dealer snowballs into the most complex case ever faced by Joe Gunther and his Vermont Bureau of Investigation team.

In the pages of his new book, “Medallion Status,” John Hodgman explores the strangeness of his career. Speaking of fame, especially at the weird, marginal level, he enjoyed it. He says he was a “famous minor television personality.” His essays offer a thoughtful examination of status, fame and identity.

Renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson is the author of the New York Times best-selling book, “Astrophysics for People in a Hurry.” His new book, “Letters From An Astrophysicist,” shares his correspondence with people who have sought his perspective on questions about science, faith, philosophy and, of course, Pluto.

Terry Tempest Williams is renowned for her singular body of literature on the environment and our experiences of home.  Her new book “Erosion: Essays of Undoing,” explores this connection, particularly to her home state of Utah, as an evolutionary process and how our undoing of the self, self-centeredness, extractive capitalism, fear, tribalism can also be […]

Brilliant, heartbreaking, tender, and highly original – poet Ocean Vuong’s debut novel, “On Earth, We’re Briefly Gorgeous,” is a sweeping and shattering portrait of a family, and a testament to the redemptive power of storytelling written as a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read.

Sharon Olds is renowned for poetry that examines marriage, motherhood, intimacy, and the human condition. She is the author of 13 books of poetry and received both the Pulitzer Prize and England’s T. S. Eliot Prize. Her new collection, “Arias,” explores political conscience, race and class in poems delivered with operatic passion, anguish and solo […]

New York Times columnist Gail Collins has written a new book on a subject that is timelier than ever: women and aging in America. Author of the acclaimed New York Times bestsellers “When Everything Changed” and “America’s Women,” Collins was the first woman to serve as the editorial page editor of the New York Times. […]

Olive Kitteridge, the funny, wicked, remorseful and gruff woman who was the propelling force in Elizabeth Strout’s book of short stories “Olive Kitteridge” – which won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for fiction – is back in Strout’s new collection, “Olive, Again.” This episode was recorded at an event presented by Oblong Books and Music.

Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson, who wrote the best-selling “Liberation” trilogy about the American effort in Europe during the Second World War, has now written the first book in a new trilogy to tell the story of the war that made America. It’s called “The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, […]

Sean Penn won Academy Awards for Best Actor for his performances in “Mystic River” and “Milk.” He is also a novelist. His debut novel was “Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff” and he’s followed it up with the sequel “Bob Honey Sings Jimmy Crack Corn,” where he follows the exploits of Bob Honey, a septic […]

Alice Hoffman’s latest book is a bittersweet parable about the costs of survival and the behaviors that define humanity. “The World That We Knew” is set in Berlin in 1941. It follows the lives of three women who become intertwined in order to survive the dangers of the Nazi regime. This is an Off The Shelf edition of The […]

For seven years, journalist and New Yorker writer Eliza Griswold reported and wrote the story of how fracking in southwestern Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale forever altered the lives of Stacey Haney, her daughter, Paige and her son, Harley. Griswold’s book, “Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America,” just received the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction.

Jacqueline Woodson is the New York Times-bestselling and National Book Award-winning author of “Another Brooklyn” and “Brown Girl Dreaming.” Her latest novel, “Red at the Bone,” tells how an unexpected teenage pregnancy pulls together two families from different social classes, and exposes the private hopes, disappointments, and longings that can bind or divide us from […]

Terry Tempest Williams is renowned for her singular body of literature on the environment and our experiences of home.  Her new book “Erosion: Essays of Undoing,” explores this connection, particularly to her home state of Utah, as an evolutionary process and how our undoing of the self, self-centeredness, extractive capitalism, fear, tribalism can also be […]

Edwidge Danticat’s new book “Everything Inside” is a collection of stories about community, family, and love. Set in locales from Miami and Port-au-Prince to a small unnamed country in the Caribbean, “Everything Inside” is at once wide in scope and intimate as it explores the forces that pull us together and drive us apart.

Malcolm Gladwell’s books bestselling books include “The Tipping Point,” “Blink” and “Outliers.” In his first book in six years, “Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know,” Gladwell offers an examination of our interactions with strangers and why they often go so terribly wrong.

The majority of celestial space is inactive and will remain forever unruffled. But when cosmic violence does unfold, it changes the very fabric of the universe, with mega-explosions and ripple effects that reach the near limits of human comprehension. In his new book “Earth-Shattering,” astronomy writer Bob Berman investigates these instances of violence both mammoth […]