Episodes
“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.
Published 11/28/23
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.
Published 11/21/23
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.
Published 11/14/23
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.
Published 11/07/23
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.
Published 10/31/23
“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.
Published 10/24/23
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 nine years ago. This is an encore airing. "Liberation Day" is now out in paperback.
Published 10/17/23
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.
Published 10/10/23
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.”
Published 10/03/23
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.
Published 09/26/23
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.
Published 09/19/23
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.
Published 09/12/23
“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.
Published 09/05/23
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.
Published 08/29/23
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.
Published 08/22/23
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.” 
Published 08/15/23
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.
Published 08/08/23
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.
Published 08/01/23
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.
Published 07/25/23
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.
Published 07/11/23
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.
Published 07/04/23
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.
Published 06/27/23
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.
Published 06/20/23
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.
Published 06/13/23