New Books in Literature

In her latest young adult novel, Holloway (Clarion Books, 2026), award-winning author Elana K. Arnold returns with a boldly visionary, deeply felt story that crosses space and time to examine loss and love in a world on the brink. It is the late summer of 2021, and a girl named Nora is on the Paris Metro. Nora, whose mother loved her, even though Nora was broken. Nora, who couldn't help her mother when her mother needed her most. Nora, from whom the pandemic has taken nearly everything, save the object she clings to: a cylinder containing her mother's ashes. With no family left, no friends to speak of, and no way to turn back time, Nora has come to France to keep a promise she never got to make: to spread the ashes in a place her mother never got to see. But instead, Nora finds herself on the run through a forest in the night, taking refuge in a dark holloway. And when she wakes, and tries to make her way back to something she recognizes, she realizes that is impossible. Because it is no longer 2021. Questioning everything--including her own sanity--Nora sets out on a journey through a time and place completely foreign to her, and yet one that, much like the time and place she came from, is defined by death, loss, fear, and uncertainty. A journey in which she must find a way to honor her mother--and heal herself--in a world that feels irrevocably broken. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with JoAnn McCaig about her new novel, Beneficiary (U Calgary Press, 2026).  A novel about what it means to face the world as a woman on her own terms from the award-winning author of The Textbook of the Rose and An Honest Woman. Seren was doomed to a country club cage and a leash of pearls until out of the blue on a Tuesday night in 1969, she found herself suddenly saying “no.” More than fifty years later, she looks back on her life and each choice that followed, beautiful, tragic and completely her own. Leaving her family for the freedom of the 1970s, Seren began a quest to discover how to live in this world as her true self—a quest that would take her from the heady countercultural milieu of communal houses on Vancouver Island through marriage and motherhood, divorce, and an unexpected inheritance that changed everything. Suddenly wealthy, Seren must wrestle with money, with class, and what it means to have more than most. What does it mean to live truly, through tragedy and heartbreak? How do we create ourselves in a world that keeps changing? What does it mean to have money when so many people don't? A richly written, fiercely feminist novel imbued with real bravery, Beneficiary weaves the past and the present in a rich tapestry of life. JoAnn McCaig is the author of The Textbook of The Rose and An Honest Woman. She is the proud owner of Shelf Life Books, an independent bookstore in her hometown of Calgary, AB. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

A. J. Bermudez speaks to Emily Everett about her story “The Sixteenth Brother,” which appears in The Common's fall issue. With a fable-like feel, the story explores the dynamics of family and gender roles in Morocco, as fifteen brothers scheme to convince their youngest sibling to allow the sale of the family's ancient and opulent riyad. A. J. discusses the story's framing device—a storyteller relaying it, almost like gossip—and how it creates both intimacy and distance. She also talks about her work in film, and the interplay between writing for the page and for the screen. A. J. Bermudez is an award-winning writer and director who divides her time between Los Angeles and New York. She is the author of Stories No One Hopes Are About Them, winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Award and a Lambda Literary Award finalist. She is a recipient of the PAGE Award, the Diverse Voices Award, the Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize, the Pushcart Prize, and the Steinbeck Fellowship. In addition to writing and filmmaking, she is also a former boxer and EMT, and her work gravitates toward contemporary intersections of power, privilege, and place. ­­Read the story in The Common here. Learn more about A. J. and her work here. The Common is a print and online literary magazine publishing stories, essays, and poems that deepen our collective sense of place. On our podcast and in our pages, The Common features established and emerging writers from around the world. Read more and subscribe to the magazine here, and follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and Facebook. Emily Everett is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. In 2025 her debut novel All That Life Can Afford was a Reese's Book Club pick, and her work appeared in The New York Times Modern Love column. Previous publications include the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House, and Mississippi Review. She was a 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Fiction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery interviews Peter Darbyshire about the fourth book in his Cross series, The Wonder Lands War (Wolsak & Wynn, 2025).  The Book of Cross 4 I would take the whole world apart to find her. The immortal Cross is back in a wild new adventure – a desperate hunt to find the enigmatic Alice from the Wonderland tales. Alice has helped Cross save the world countless times over since she stepped out of the pages of her book, but now she is the one that needs rescue after vanishing during an apocalyptic battle. Aided by the faerie queen Morgana and her court, Cross journeys to mystical islands populated with murderous immortals and into famous libraries with powerful librarians and magical texts until they reach the chaotic and terrifying Wonder Lands, the dangerous inspiration for the original Alice tales. But they are not the only ones looking for Alice – a rogue group of angels are also hunting her for mysterious reasons of their own. The very fate of the world may rest upon who finds Alice first. Peter Darbyshire is the author of six books and more stories than he can remember. He lives near Vancouver, British Columbia, where he spends his time writing, raising children and playing D&D with other writers. It's a good life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Sara Maurer's debut, A Good Animal (St. Martin's Press, 2026). Staying is his dream. Leaving is hers. One secret threatens them both. In the farm country outside Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan—a border town where life moves slow and dreams run fast—most kids want out. Not Everett Lindt. He's set on staying put, rebuilding his family's sheep farm, and carving a future from the land he loves. Then he meets Mary, a new girl in town with restless energy and bigger plans. When their relationship reaches a crossroads, Everett sees a life together. Mary, however, is desperate to find a way out. Together, they make an impulsive choice—one that could change everything. Tense, lyrical, and deeply felt, Sara Maurer's unforgettable debut breathtakingly captures the ache of first love, the beauty and brutality of rural life, and how one decision can echo through generations and shape who we become. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

A wealthy, old art collector always wants more, a successful gallery owner finds herself alone, and a famous painter at the top of his game might have been involved with the mysterious death of an art gallery employee. The world of buying and selling art is portrayed as hazy and ridiculous, but the astronomical numbers are serious. While some of the characters are a bit unlikable, everyone has a story and perceptions about who they are and what they need to be happy. The Violet Hour (Pegasus Books, 2026) is a well-written novel about the business of art, the power of wealth, and the transitional aspect of relationships. JAMES CAHILL was born and grew up in London. He has worked in the art world and academia for the past fifteen years, having originally studied Classics and English at Magdalen College, Oxford, followed by a master's degree in contemporary art at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. In 2018, he was awarded a PhD in Classics at the University of Cambridge. His debut novel, Tiepolo Blue (2022) was shortlisted for the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award and selected for H.M. The Queen's Reading Room. To quote Her Majesty Queen Camilla: “Surprising, unsettling and gracefully told; ‘Tiepolo Blue' is a story about art and academia, which reads like a thriller.” He writes for publications including Artforum, the Financial Times, the Times Literary Supplement and the Spectator. Cahill has curated several exhibitions spanning contemporary art and classical antiquity. He divides his time between London and Los Angeles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Byline for the Dead: A Novel of Labor, Conspiracy, a Bloody Uprising and Two Ambitious Journalists (Sager Group, 2025) is a historical mystery-thriller that interweaves stories from different eras as two journalists, five decades apart, work to unravel the truths about one of the most violent labor strikes in American history. In 1984, Gray Wheeler is a disillusioned young reporter working for The Toledo Sword. Assigned to cover the 50th anniversary of the Auto-Lite strike-known as the "Battle of Toledo," a bloody, five-day labor uprising involving 10,000 union workers and 1,300 Ohio National Guard troops-Gray stumbles across a mystery left unpublished a half-century earlier by another young reporter that connects the 1934 massacre to present-day political machinations. Putting together the pieces, past and present, the two reporters work in tandem across the decades, unravelling the corruption that led to the deadly strike. As the story proceeds, we learn of desperate workers, soulless political agitators, ruthless National Guard troops, suppressed government reports, buried testimonies, and suspicious deaths. As Gray and newspaper librarian Kirby Peters dig deeper into the story, they discover the chilling truths behind the spark that ignited the bloodshed. And they find their lives at risk. The deeper they dig, the greater the danger. Threats culminate in a deadly confrontation in the ruins of the old Auto-Lite factory. Byline for the Dead explores themes of journalistic integrity, institutional memory, and the power of the past to shape the present. As Gray confronts Toledo's forgotten history and the ghost of his own unfulfilled ambitions, he must decide whether exposing the truth is worth the cost-especially when the truth fights back. Ray Welling, PhD, grew up in Toledo, Ohio and earned a journalism degree at Northwestern University in Chicago. Later, he migrated to Australia, where he has worked as a journalist, editor, publisher, content director, writer, marketing manager, lecturer and podcaster. He lives in Sydney with his wife. Byline for the Dead is his first novel and was a finalist for the 2025 American Writing Awards for Best New Debut Fiction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Under a Carnivore Sky (Page Street YA, 2026) is Brianna Jett's debut young adult novel in verse. Sixteen-year-old Lili is a hunter, which means she has one goal: Find the monster lurking in the carnivorous, labyrinthian swamp that borders their hometown—and slay it. Her father failed to kill the beast, and like all townsfolk over eighteen, bits of his flesh and bone are being stolen away by its curse. With all roads out of town leading back in, they're trapped with the curse unless Lili stops it; yet the ease with which she wanders the swamp leaves her more feared than favored. When a boy, Caleb, offers to map the swamp in exchange for her help in finding a way through it, Lili agrees, hoping to track down the monster. But the more they explore, the more she resents the town and questions the curse itself. Confronted with the truth, Lili must decide if duty or her own freedom is a worthier pursuit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Jinwoo Park about his novel, Oxford Soju Club (Dundurn Press, 2025).  A SHELF AWARENESS BEST BOOK OF 2025 • A CBC BOOKS BEST CANADIAN FICTION BOOK OF 2025 • A CRIMEREADS BEST BOOK OF 2025  The natural enemy of a Korean is another Korean. When North Korean spymaster Doha Kim is mysteriously killed in Oxford, his protégé, Yohan Kim, chases the only breadcrumb given to him in Doha's last breath: “Soju Club, Dr. Ryu.” In the meantime, a Korean American CIA agent , Yunah Choi, races to salvage her investigation of the North Korean spy cell in the aftermath of the assassination. At the centre of it all is the Soju Club, the only Korean restaurant in Oxford, owned by Jihoon Lim, an immigrant from Seoul in search of a new life after suffering a tragedy. As different factions move in with their own agendas, their fates become entangled, resulting in a bitter struggle that will determine whose truth will triumph. Oxford Soju Club weaves a tale of how immigrants in the Korean diaspora are forced to create identities to survive, and how in the end, they must shed those masks and seek their true selves. Jinwoo Park is a Korean Canadian writer based in Montreal. He completed a master's degree in creative writing at the University of Oxford, and currently works as a marketer in the tech industry. In 2021, he won the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award. Oxford Soju Club is his first novel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks wit Griffin Prize winner Kaie Kellough about his new long poem, Interposition (McClelland & Steward, 2026). Featured in the Publishers Weekly Spring 2026 PreviewFrom Kaie Kellough, poet, sound performer, and Griffin prize winner, comes a linguistic incursion into desire, technology, and the absurd.Kaie Kellough (Magnetic Equator, Griffin Poetry Prize winner, 2020) returns with a long poem that repurposes the language of the present. Interposition borrows its vocabulary from the news, entertainment, war, advertising, technology, and the everyday tragedies of popular culture. It reveals the morbid humour of our inability to distinguish between the urgencies of personal achievement and climate crisis. It compresses sound and rhythm into paradox, and it conflates absurdity and emergency.Mapping the continued encroachment of capital and virtual culture upon our psychic space, Interposition examines how, with each click, we are reconstituted online and sold back to ourselves, and asks: How do we uncouple our selves from our avatars? KAIE KELLOUGH is a poet, fiction writer, and sound performer living in Montreal. His previous collection, Magnetic Equator, won the 2020 Griffin Poetry Prize. He is a writer and vocalist for the group FYEAR and is pursuing graduate work in English at Queen's University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Dawn MacDonald about her Griffin Prize winning collection, Northerny (University of Alberta Press, 2024). Northerny: winner of the 2025 Canadian First Book Prize, awarded by the Griffin Poetry Prize. Fresh, funny, and imbued with infectious energy, Northerny tells a much-needed and compelling story of growing up and living in the North. Here are no tidy tales of aurora borealis and adventures in snow. For Dawn Macdonald, the North is not an escape, a pathway to enlightenment, or a lifestyle choice. It's a messy, beautiful, and painful point of origin. People from the North see the North differently and want to tell their own stories in their own way, including about their experiences growing up on the land, getting an education, and struggling to find jobs and opportunities. Expertly balancing lyric reflection and ferocious realism, Macdonald busts up the cultural myths of self-interest and superiority that have long dominated conversations about both Northern spaces and working-class identities. Dawn Macdonald lives in Whitehorse, Yukon where she grew up without electricity or running water. Her poetry collection Northerny (University of Alberta Press) won the 2025 Canadian First Book Prize and was longlisted for the Nelson Ball Prize. Her latest publication is the chapbook Weeds of Canada (above/ground press) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Starting in the late 1970s, three women navigate post Cultural Revolution China: Lulu, who's forced to become a prostitute in Shanghai to save her mother and sister from starving, Lei who is sold in marriage for cigarettes and a few eggs, and Yan, Lei's smart, beautiful daughter, whose kindness to the farmer master's neurodivergent son allows her to get an education. Both Lei and Lulu must put aside their dreams and suffer indignity after indignity, Lei from her husband, and Lulu from her pimp, while Yan ultimately sacrifices her career to help her family. With a cast of unforgettable characters struggling through China's transition to modernity, and grappling with the impact of mental illness, prostitution, and Aids, And the Ancestors Sing is a stunning gripping historical novel. Radha Lin Chaddah was born in London to an East Indian father and a Malaysian Chinese mother, and grew up in Kenya, the UK and the US, graduating from New Trier High School in Winnetka, IL. She majored in Biology at the University of Chicago, earned medical and law degrees at the University of Illinois, and a Master of Public Health at Harvard University. She completed Internal Medicine residency training, and later practiced, at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School in Boston. Radha and her family moved, over the course of twenty years, from Boston to NYC to Taipei to Shanghai to Beijing to Princeton, and finally to Philadelphia. Radha worked as a primary care physician in Boston, NYC and Beijing; worked with the China CDC to co-write the book, HIV/ AIDS: Beyond the Numbers; and provided mental healthcare to patients in several states as a telemedicine doctor upon settling in Philadelphia. When not reading and writing, Radha enjoys learning new Mandarin characters, tackling novice knitting projects, painting with watercolors and acrylics, catching a live, stand-up comedy show with her husband, Avery, trying out new recipes with their young adult daughters, Yani and Ayo, and, of course, jotting down story notes for her next writing project. You can visit Radha online at radhalinchaddah.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Aphrodite in Pieces gathers diverse myths featuring the goddess and unites them to create a comprehensive portrait. Beginning with her innocent days on the island of Cyprus, progressing to her disappointing welcome in the pantheon of Olympus, and culminating in her shattering experiences of the Trojan war, Aphrodite is depicted in all her aspects—calculating and vengeful, kind and forgiving, passionate and abandoned. A woman does not live her life independent of society. As it is above, so it is below. Sometimes Aphrodite is praised for her beauty, and other times, her pulchritude condemns her to be judged as a whore. As Aphrodite grows in wisdom, she finds compassion for women such as Helen of Troy who suffer a similar fate. The stories of Aphrodite remain pertinent today. In them, Lauren J.A. Bear finds reflections and connections between art, love, and beauty. Gabrielle Mathieu writes historically inspired fantasy with a dash of romance and a dollop of adventure. You can find out more about her books and upcoming interviews on authorgabrielle.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In their anthology, In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union (Stanford University Press, 2026), Sasha Senderovitch and Harriet Murav provide an underappreciated perspective on the Holocaust, as it was experienced and remembered in the former Soviet Union. In these works, Jewish authors from Ukraine, Lithuania, Russia, and Belarus, writing in Yiddish and Russian, tell the stories of ordinary people living on after the devastation of the Holocaust. Filled with memories, love, and loss, these narratives describe not only how people died, but also how they continued to live. Despite the official view in the Soviet Union that Jewish deaths should be subsumed under the larger tragedy of Nazi Germany's invasion, Jews in the USSR profoundly engaged with thinking about and memorializing the Holocaust, addressing it in a wide range of literary works. Interviewees: Sasha Senderovich is Associate Professor of Slavic Languages & Literatures and of International Studies at the University of Washington. Harriet Murav is Center for Advanced Study Professor Emerita at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Host: Schneur Zalman Newfield is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Jewish Studies at Hunter College, City University of New York, and the author of Brooklyn Odyssey: My Journey out of Hasidism and Degrees of Separation: Identity Formation While Leaving Ultra-Orthodox Judaism. Visit him online at ZalmanNewfield.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Sayantani DasGupta's latest middle grades novel, Theft of the Ruby Lotus (Scholastic, 2026) is an adventure heist. Ria Bailey finds herself in quite a fix, and it's all because of a strange treasure that turns up in the mail one fateful day. It might be a ruby, and it just might hold the key to some troubling developments in her life. Most importantly, if she and her besties Miracle Owusu and Annie Hernandez can trace the significance and stay one step ahead of the mysterious strangers tracking their moves through the Metropolitan Museum of Art and out into the city streets of New York, then just maybe Ria can turn things around for herself. Sayantani DasGupta returns in rare form with a brand new story that's part love letter to the Metropolitan Museum and New York City immigrant families, part twisting and turning heist, and completely an examination of where art belongs, who gets to keep it, and what it means to be on display. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

This episode of the Books on Asia podcast introduces new fiction and non-fiction on Japan to be published this year, 2026, along with two upcoming books on Taiwan. Books are presented in the order they appear on the podcast. Listen to the episode for more information on each title: Phantom Paradise: Escape from Manchuria, by Kay Enokido (Bold Story Press, January 13, 2026) Kokun: The Girl from the West, by Nahoko Uehashi (transl. Cathy Hirano) (Europa Editions, January 13, 2026) When the Museum Is Closed, by Emi Yagi (transl. Yuki Tejima) (Soft Skull Press, January 27, 2026) Hooked: A Novel of Obsession, by Asako Yuzuki (transl. Polly Barton) (HarperVia, March 17, 2026) Sisters in Yellow, by Mieko Kawakami (transl. Laurel Taylor and Hitomi Yoshio) (Knopf, March 31, 2026) Hollow Inside, by Asako Otani (transl. Ginny Tapley Takemori) (Pushkin Press, May 5, 2026) Japan's Anime Revolution!: Twenty Animated Films That Changed the World, by Jonathan Clements (Tuttle Publishing, May 12, 2026) Troubled Waters, by Ichiyō Higuchi (transl. Bryan Karetnyk) (Pushkin Press Classics, May 26, 2026) Taiwan 22: Travels in Paradox, by Tyrel Eskelson (Plum Rain Press, TBA) Hidden Formosa: Life and Travels in Rural Taiwan, an anthology edited by John Ross(Plum Rain Press, TBA) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Doha, a North Korean spymaster, is found stabbed in an alley in Oxford. Doha tells his mentee–another North Korean spy named Yohan—to go to the Oxford Soju Club, a restaurant in the British college town. That starts a dance between three different Koreans: Yohan; Jihoon, the South Korean owner of the Soju Club; and Yunah, a Korean-American recruited to weed out Yonah. Oxford Soju Club (Dundurn Press, 2025), the debut novel from Jinwoo Park, uses this spy thriller setting to explore ideas of history, migration and identity. Jinwoo Park is a Korean Canadian writer based in Montreal. He completed a master's degree in creative writing at the University of Oxford, and currently works as a marketer in the tech industry. In 2021, he won the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Oxford Soju Club. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1980s, Jane Kim and her brother, Kevin, dutifully embodied the model minority myth as their parents demanded: both stellar tennis players and academically gifted, they worked hard to make their parents proud. Jane went on to law school. Kevin came close to becoming a professional tennis player. But where they started is nowhere near where they have ended up: Jane has stopped going to her law school classes, and Kevin, now a policeman, has become increasingly distant. Their parents, each on their own path toward the elusive American Dream (their mother hell-bent on having the perfect house and the perfect family, their father obsessed with working his way up from one successful business to the next), don't want to see the family unraveling. When Kevin goes missing, no one recognizes his absence as the warning sign it is until it erupts, forcing them all to come to terms with their past and present selves in a country that isn't all it promised it would be. Both deeply serious and wickedly funny, American Han (Algonquin Books, 2026) is a profound story about striving and assimilation, difficult love, and family fidelity. A searing portrait that challenges assumptions about the immigrant experience, Lisa Lee's debut introduces a powerful new voice on the literary landscape. Lee is the recipient of the Marianne Russo Emerging Writer Award from the Key West Literary Seminar, an Emerging Writer Fellowship from the Center for Fiction, and a Pushcart Prize. She has received additional fellowships and awards from Kundiman, Millay Arts, Hedgebrook, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, Tin House, Jentel Artist Residency, the Korea Foundation, and others. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, North American Review, Sycamore Review, Gulf Coast, Tusculum Review, Reed Magazine, New World Writing, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the University of Houston and a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Southern California. She lives in Los Angeles and grew up in Napa, California. Recommended Books: Giada Scodellaro, Ruins, Child Morgan Day, The Oldest Bitch Alive Elaine H. Kim, “Home is Where the Han Is” Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

There must be a shift in the Zeitgeist of the publishing world, because after a long drought in Gothic novels, this is the second one I've encountered in little more than a month. The Fourth Wife (Kensington, 2026) takes place near Salt Lake City, Utah, during the years when the Mormon community there still practiced polygamy but was coming under increasing pressure from the US government to abandon the practice, pressure that included a law making multiple, simultaneous marriages a criminal offense. It's 1882. Twenty-year-old Hazel Russon, a talented pianist, has grown up in a polygamous family, but she has a secret agreement with her childhood friend Elijah Crowther that they will become each other's only spouse once they are permitted to marry. When Elijah's father, a powerful figure in Salt Lake City society, summons Hazel and informs her that Elijah has rejected her in favor of a return to the fundamental principles of Mormon life—the most fundamental of which is polygamy, known only as the Principle—she is shattered by her love's betrayal. As a result, she allows Elder Crowther to talk her into becoming the fourth wife of Brother Jacob Manwaring, a wealthy older man who promises Hazel a home of her own, including a piano. Hazel has long struggled with what most of us in the twenty-first century would categorize as an anxiety disorder, in part caused by the difficulty she has in meeting the extreme demands of her religion for female submissiveness. And although initially attracted to Jacob, she soon discovers that not everything Elder Crowder told her about her husband-to-be was the truth….  It's all delightfully creepy and fast-paced, and the interactions among Jacob's wives are even more interesting than those between them and Jacob.  Linda Hamilton studies and writes about nineteenth-century Mormon life as both a historian and a novelist—including, most recently, The Fourth Wife. C. P. Lesley is the author of two historical fiction series set during the childhood of Ivan the Terrible and four other novels. Her next book, Song of the Silk Weaver, will appear in the summer of 2026. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

The print adaptation of Jason Reynolds acclaimed, award-winning audiobook Soundtrack (Crown Books, 2026)—a stirring story of music, friendship, and finding your voice in 2000s New York City. Stuy Grey plays the drums, just like his mom, a founding member of the all-black punk band the Bed-Stuy Magic Dusters. He teaches himself by watching videos of tap dancers. Now he's left home, estranged from his mom and her abusive boyfriend. He's camping out with his uncle on the Lower East Side. His landlord, Dunks, has chops: He shreds on only five strings. Add Alexis on bass guitar and Keith on horn: These teens are a band, busking in New York City subway stations to scrape enough money to record an album. As their popularity grows, so do the pressures, from complicated family dynamics to the glare of unexpected public attention. And when the police start looking for their bassist, Stuy faces his toughest decision yet. Adapted from the acclaimed Listening Library original audiobook and written with Jason Reynolds's signature rhythm, heart, and honesty, Soundtrack: A Novel is a raw, resonant story about friendship, creativity, and what it truly means to find, and fight for, your voice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In Pinky Swear (Simon and Schuster, 2026) Lexi thought she knew everything about Mara Vannatta. Best friends since middle school, they drifted apart after a tragedy derailed their senior year. But when Mara shows up on Lexi's doorstep sixteen years later fleeing an abusive husband, Lexi takes her in without question. Lexi's own marriage has been strained by her desire to have a baby, and when Mara offers to become her surrogate, their friendship feels stronger than ever.But four days before the due date, Mara disappears.Lexi is shocked but certain there must be something wrong—Mara would never willingly leave with her unborn child. Or would she? As she embarks on a perilous cross-country hunt for the truth, Lexi is forced to reconsider a friendship she thought she knew—and what really happened that terrible night their senior year. How many secrets lie in their shared past, waiting to be uncovered? And just how far will Lexi go to bring her child safely home? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Casey Walker speaks to Emily Everett about his story “Islands,” which appears in The Common's fall issue. Set at an old lake house rife with unresolved family tensions, the story explores the dynamics between three orphaned brothers, and between the narrator and his pregnant wife. Casey discusses how the piece evolved over more than a decade, and how he always hopes a story will take on a life of its own during the writing process. Also discussed is his forthcoming novel Mexicali, set in the US-Mexico borderlands during the first half of the 20th century. Casey Walker's new novel Mexicali is forthcoming from Knopf in 2027. He is also the author of the novel Last Days in Shanghai and has published fiction and essays in The Common, Ninth Letter, The Believer, The New York Times, and El País, among others. He holds a PhD in English Literature from Princeton University and an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. ­­Read Casey's story in The Common here. The Common is a print and online literary magazine publishing stories, essays, and poems that deepen our collective sense of place. On our podcast and in our pages, The Common features established and emerging writers from around the world. Read more and subscribe to the magazine at thecommononline.org, and follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and Facebook. Emily Everett is managing editor of the magazine and host of the podcast. Her new debut novel All That Life Can Afford was a Reese's Book Club pick. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Modern Love column, the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, Tin House, and Mississippi Review. She was a 2022 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow in Fiction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Rising authoritarianism. Covid. Inflation. Wealth disparity. War. Climate change. While every time period is marked by apocalyptic fears, it certainly seems like our current anxieties aren't ill placed. And yet, art and literature persist.In captivating and culturally savvy prose, Ed Simon grapples with the notion that writers and their work ought to distract readers from the dire situation we face in these fetid days of the Anthropocene. In Writing During the Apocalypse: Reflections on the Great Unraveling (Bloomsbury, 2026) he also addresses the wider question of what it's like to write during what could be the last decades of human civilization, arguing that to craft imaginative spaces through the magic of words isn't superfluous. Instead it exists at the core of human experience – as it always has and always will. Ed Simon is the Public Humanities Lecturer in the English Department of Carnegie Mellon University and the founding editor of The Pittsburgh Review of Books. He is a contributing editor to The Montreal Review, and a monthly columnist for both 3 Quarks Daily and LitHub. Simon has authored over a dozen books, including An Alternative History of Pittsburgh from Belt Publishing, Pandemonium: A Visual History of Demonology from Abrams, and Devil's Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain from Melville House. Carrie Lynn Evans is a PhD candidate at Université Laval in Quebec City. Email here @carrielynnland.bsky.social Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Chicago is the main character, the setting, the obsession, and the historical grist for the mill of Peter Orner's most recent novel, The Gossip Columnist's Daughter (Little Brown and Company, 2025). In conversation about his hometown with Novel Dialogue host Sarah Wasserman, Peter brings us into a lost pocket of time. It is the early 1960s, when Chicagoans partied in a kind of “Midwestern Weimar” and the gossip columnist Irv Kupcinet, holding forth as many as six times a week for 60 years, wrote a garrulous, glamorous story of the city. While the increasingly unhinged narrator of his novel investigates the mysterious death of Kupcinet's daughter in 1963, Peter delves into his own family's history, anxiously asking “we can't hurt our dead, can we?” The novel swerves between fact and fiction, including photographs that are both real artifacts from the historical record and staged photos that participate in the fictional world of the novel. Peter laughs off this contradiction, remarking “the closer I get to real things, the more fictional it becomes.” How to describe such a complicated novel? Sarah offers this gem: “It's as if Philip Roth were less cancellable and wrote a murder mystery,” a line that results in a poignant conversation about what it means to be Jewish and socially striving in Chicago in middle of the 20th century and what it means to be a cultural outsider, “just slightly outside of the circle.” Peter brings the conversation to a close with a memory of going to the University of Tish.Mentions: Reverend Hightower appears in William Faulkner's Light in August Irv “Kup” and Essie Kupcinet were Karyn “Cookie” Kupcinet's parents An Edna O'Brien story appears in Andre Dubus's Dancing After Hours Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano Phyllis Diller at the Palmer House Bette Howland's line about Chicago being “the raw materials for a city” appears in Blue in Chicago Alberto Paniagua Philip Roth Tish O'Dowd Ezekiel's Floaters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Toni Morrison, Nobel Laureate and one of our most beloved writers, has inspired generations of readers. But her artistic genius is often overshadowed by her monumental public persona, perhaps because, as Namwali Serpell puts it, “she is our only truly canonical black female writer—and her work is highly complex.” In On Morrison (Hogarth, 2026), Serpell brings her unique experience as both an award-winning writer and a professor who teaches a course on Morrison to illuminate her masterful experiments with literary form. This is Morrison as you've never encountered her before, a journey through her oeuvre—her fiction and criticism, as well as her lesser-known dramatic works and poetry—with contextual guidance and original close readings. At once accessible and uncompromisingly rigorous, On Morrison is a primer not only on how to read one of the most significant American authors of all time but also on how to read great works of literature in general. This dialogue on the page between two black women artist-readers is stylish, edifying, and thrilling in its scope and intelligence. Namwali Serpell was born in Lusaka and lives in New York. Her debut novel, The Old Drift, won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Science Fiction, and the Los Angeles Times's Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Her second novel, The Furrows, was a finalist for National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and was selected as one of The New York Times Ten Best Books of the Year. Her book of essays, Stranger Faces, was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. She is a recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction, the Caine Prize for African Writing, and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Award. She is a professor of English at Harvard University. Derek Adams is Associate Professor of African American literature at Ithaca College and is currently teaching an upper-level seminar on Toni Morrison titled Across the Decades that challenges the origins of an assumed mythic status generally applied to her. Recommended Books: Maya Binyam, Hangmen Akwaeke Emezi, Freshwater Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Dana Mele talks about their latest book, The Beast You Let In (Sourcebooks, 2026). Everyone in the rural town of Ashling knows the tale of Veronica Green, a teen who was murdered in the woods. But did a party trick bring her back to claim her revenge? A fast-paced, suspenseful YA horror from the author of Summer's Edge and People Like Us. There is no one Hazel trusts less than her self-centered twin, Beth. Like when Beth storms out of a party, abandoning Hazel when she didn't want to attend in the first place. Rather than chasing after her, Hazel throws herself into flirting and telling ghost stories over a Ouija board. She might not be the popular twin, but she can be fun too. Except Beth doesn't come home that night, and Hazel's anger morphs into anxiety. It only sharpens when Beth reappears a day later, disoriented and claiming to be Veronica Green, a teen who was murdered in their small town years before. If it isn't a possession, Beth is really good at faking it. Did they accidentally release a vengeful horror during the party? Hazel must uncover what happened to Veronica all those years ago if she's going to save Beth. But the truth may destroy them both--if they don't destroy each other first. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

"Honoured Investors, As Zhongfu Group enters its eighth decade, we are pleased to announce the acquisition of two famous coal mines. These assets further demonstrate our steadfast commitment to promoting the interests of local government and the people of Jingzhou. While the recent death of a Discipline Inspection Committee member has been regrettable, rest assured that any accusations of accounting irregularities or missing wages are unfounded, used by rumourmongers to incite valued employees to down tools. To assuage any possibility of misconduct, Qi Ben'an along with his siblings Shi Hongxing and Lin Manjing will be promoted to oversee these new assets with immediate effect. They will ensure the operations are run according to company values without deviation. Nothing can stop this bright era of unprecedented prosperity. We thank you for your continued support - The Board of Directors, Zhongfu Group.” Find out more in Property of the People (Sinoist, 2025) by Zhou Meisen, translated by James Trapp. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Cameron Sullivan's novel The Red Winter (Tor Books, 2026) follows Sebastian Grave, a centuries old monster hunter, recounting events that occurred in largely the woods of Gévaudan during the years leading up to the French Revolution. The story centers around a terrible beast that hunts the local people and has not been stopped by even the resources of the French crown itself. Sebastian is drawn in not just by the promise of slaying the creature, with whom he has something of a history, but also by his attraction to a young aristocrat, Antione, who Sebastian, for all his experience and better judgement, cannot quite seem to get over. In this interview, Sullivan describes building a magic that feels deep and rooted to our world, the shadow of the French Revolution, and the challenges and excitement of turning historical legend into fantasy. He discusses the research process, queer relationships over time, and what we can and can't know about the past. We also chat about the joys of footnotes and the importance of humor in the face of the horrific. The Red Winter is a lush and complex novel full of longing and regret and it was so much fun discussing it with the author. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

When a young reporter comes to interview Margaret Kenyon, the oldest practicing nurse in the Texas panhandle, she tells him that he'll have to listen to her story before she answers any questions. It's 2000, but her story begins in 1925, with Frankie, a beautiful 15-year-old who has never known anything other than violence, hunger, and fear. Frankie grabs the opportunity to escape her home with a charismatic gambler who shows her the world of bootlegging and uses her beauty for his own ends. After being violently abused, Frankie finds solace in a quite hospital laundry room and begins to rebuild her shattered life. Today we're discussing Far From Uncertain: One Woman's Life of Crime and Other Righteous Deeds (Stoney Creek, 2026). Since completing a graduate degree in creative writing in 2012, Teddy Jones has made creating fiction her full-time occupation. She's had six novels—including A Family of Good Women, which first introduced readers to Frankie—and a collection of short stories published and collected some prizes along the way. Jackson's Pond, Texas was finalist in the Women Writing the West Willa Award for contemporary fiction in 2014, and one of her short stories won the Faulkner-Wisdom Creative Writing Competition first prize medal in 2015. Marva Cope, another novel, was named finalist for the Sarton Award in 2024. Jones earned a degree in nursing and a doctorate in education, worked as a family nurse practitioner and was founding dean of the School of Nursing at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. She focused on rural health promotion and was a monthly columnist for The Farmer Stockman for thirteen years. When she and her husband decided in 2001 to leave their “real jobs” and begin farming, opportunity presented itself. “If you're going to write fiction, now's the time,” she told herself. She's been at it ever since. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

n this NBN episode, NBN host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Alison Gadsby about her collection of short fiction, Breathing is How Some People Stay Alive (Guernica Editions, 2026). Breathing Is How Some People Stay Alive blurs the lines between horror, catastrophic speculative fiction, and psychological realism in a collection that might best be described as weird fiction. These connected stories offer dark reconstructions of lives brimming with desperate loneliness. They allow us to bear witness to the life-altering love of sisters, brothers, mothers... the life-altering love that buoys them as they struggle to stay afloat in the wake of childhoods they merely survived. Alison Gadsby writes in Tkaronto/Toronto where she lives in a multigenerational home that includes several dogs. Her writing has appeared in various literary journals, including Blank Spaces, The Temz Review, The Ex-Puritan, Blue Lake Review and more. She is the founder/host of Junction Reads, a prose reading series. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Why did Langston Hughes's translations of Mexican and Cuban stories go unpublished for nearly a century? A landmark book—the first complete publication of Langston Hughes's translations of thirty-three stories by eighteen Mexican and Cuban writers In late 1934, Langston Hughes, already established as a leading voice of literary Black America, traveled to Mexico City, where he stayed for more than five months and began translating short fiction by prominent Mexican and Cuban writers. These stories, as he wrote to a friend, explore “the revolutions and uprisings, sugar cane, Negroes, Indians, corrupt generals, [and] American imperialists,” and are “mostly all left stories, because practically all the writers down here are left these days.” But when Hughes proposed publishing the stories as a book, to be titled Troubled Lands: Stories of Mexico and Cuba as Translated by Langston Hughes (Princeton University Press, 2026), his agent discouraged him from further pursuing the project and it remained unpublished, until now, with only a handful of the translations making their way into contemporary magazines. This volume presents Hughes's translations of these stories together for the first time as he originally envisioned. Edited by Ricardo Wilson, the book also features an introduction and brief biographies of the included writers. Troubled Lands features thirty-three stories by eighteen writers, including Rafael Felipe Muñoz, Nellie Campobello, Lino Novás Calvo, Luis Felipe Rodríguez, Germán List Arzubide, Pablo de la Torriente-Brau, and Juan de la Cabada. The collection depicts Mexico in the wake of its revolution and Cuba in the years between the brutal regimes of Machado and Batista. Hughes was a noted translator of poetry, but his commitment to translating fiction is less well known. Troubled Lands provides a window into this important dimension of his work and illuminates his deep interest in Mexico and Cuba. Ricardo A. Wilson II is a creative writer and scholar. He is associate professor of English at Williams College and founder and executive director of The Outpost Foundation. Caleb Zakarin is CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Can a novel with a singular voice also be a chorus? Can it reject the conventions of the novel and still be a novel? Poet, essayist, and novelist Billy-Ray Belcourt tells critic Matt Hooley how his desire to write a novel that “would sound like something else,” led him to produce A Minor Chorus, his experimental debut novel. Together they consider how Billy-Ray's vulnerable, first-person narrator makes room for other voices, or more precisely, how it becomes “a voice that could focalize the desires of a community.” Billy-Ray discusses how his influences— queer theory, indigenous novelists, and contemporary autofiction—harmonize in his search for a new form. While author and critic trace the circuits of grief and melancholy that run from Roland Barthes to Billy-Ray, their conversation is joyful, reminding listeners that romance and intimacy sustain us and that beautiful sentences matter. His answer to this season's signature question attests to the way that even the classroom can be refashioned, like the novel, into a chorus. Mentioned in this episode By Billy-Ray Belcourt: A Minor Chorus A History of My Brief Body This Wound is a World Also mentioned: The Summer Day “Arundhati Roy Sees Delhi as a Novel” Rachel Cusk, The Shakespeare and Company Interview “The State of the Political Novel: An Interview with Édouard Louis” “100 Things About Writing a Novel” Mourning Diary Ann Cvetkovich Joshua Whitehead Mourning and Melancholia Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Much of history has revolved around the journeys, challenges, and relationships, of men, but Serrah, daughter of Asher describes the teachings of her mother, grandmother, and all the women who shared their skills, compassion, hopes, and dreams. She's mentioned once in passing in Genesis and again in the Book of Chronicles, but in Song of the Bluebird (Row House 2026), she's known as Blue, who lives for generations, always a hard-working presence as the ancient Twelve Tribes of Israel grow in numbers, follow Joseph into Egypt, suffer as slaves, follow Moses across the sea, wander in the desert for forty years, and finally exult in freedom in the Land of Israel. Song of the Bluebird is a sweet and filling journey through the eyes of a wise and ageless woman. Esther Goldenberg was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, where both her parents told her stories and she spent a lot of time daydreaming. As the daughter of an elementary school teacher, Esther spent more time in the classroom than the average child. She studied child development in college and went on to become a teacher. Esther spent a lot of time reading books to students and, over time, began writing books of her own. She has helped many children write stories and many adults write stories for children. She was the editor of a New York Times bestselling children's book (A Day With No Words). Esther considers herself an educator first, even though she is also an editor and writer. Two of Goldenberg's non-fiction books, Resistant to Reading: Tricks and Tips for Parents of Reluctant Readers and A Story Every Week: Torah Wisdom for Today's World were Amazon bestsellers in their categories, and her debut adult fiction novel The Scrolls of Deborah won the 2024 Foreword Indies gold medal for Religious Adult Fiction. That book is the first installment in The Desert Songs Trilogy of novels that retell the story of the Bible. These books highlight the everyday lives of the women, the relationships between family members, and the (sometimes surprising) similarities between life in modern times and life in ancient times. When not reading, writing, or leading workshops, Esther enjoys the process of making art -- regardless of the end-product. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Daniel Poppick is a poet and novelist. He is the author of the poetry collections Fear of Description, selected for the National Poetry Series, and The Police. His work appears in The New Yorker, The Paris Review Daily, The Drift, Harper's, BOMB, The New Republic, Chicago Review, and other journals. The recipient of awards from MacDowell and Yaddo and a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he has taught at the University of Iowa, Victoria University (New Zealand), Coe College, and the Parsons School of Design. He currently lives in Brooklyn, where he works as a copywriter and coedits the Catenary Press. Recommended Books: Joy Williams, Pelican Child Leah Flax Barber, The Mirror of Simple Souls Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Janice Hadlow about her fascinating novel, Rules of the Heart (Henry Holt & Company, 2026). A beautifully evocative historical novel about the perils of all-consuming love, inspired by a real-life eighteenth-century love affair, from the bestselling author of The Other Bennet Sister“When I love at all, it is with my whole soul—my heart must be torn to pieces before it can forget or resign the objects of its affections.”England, 1794. Now in her thirties, Lady Harriet Bessborough, already the veteran of several liaisons, finds herself pursued by a much younger man. This isn't unusual in her circle, where married women often take younger lovers. No one minds much, provided they follow the rules of the game: Don't embarrass your husband, maintain complete discretion at all times, and never ever make the mistake of falling in love.So when Harriet meets Lord Granville—brilliantly handsome, insistently ardent, and twelve years younger than her—she's confident she can manage their affair. Until she finds herself falling uncontrollably under his spell.As she's plunged into an all-consuming passion, Harriet's worldliness and sophistication desert her. With each besotted step, she finds herself edging ever closer to exposure and ruin. She knows she should leave Granville but can't bring herself to do it—she loves him far too deeply now to escape the scandal that threatens to engulf her. Janice Hadlow worked as a television producer and commissioner for most of her career. She graduated with a first-class degree in history from King's College London and has always been fascinated by the eighteenth century. She is the author of A Royal Experiment, a family biography of George III, Queen Charlotte, and their children. The Other Bennet Sister, her fiction debut, was named a best book of 2020 by Library Journal, NPR, and The Christian Science Monitor. It is currently in production as a drama for BBC television. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with author and retired paramedic and fire captain, Sean Paul Bedell, about his novel, Shoebox (NoN Publishing, 2025).In this gritty and emotional exploration of the human condition, Steve Lewis, a dedicated paramedic, faces the devastating aftermath of a fatal accident that casts a dark shadow over his once-passionate commitment to saving lives. Plagued by guilt and grief, he finds his career, family, and very existence hanging in the balance as he navigates the complexities of trauma both personal and professional. As Steve grapples with the high stakes of his job amidst the scrutiny of a community that admires yet questions him, each life he saves rekindles his passion for his work, reminding him of the profound connections he can forge through compassion and care. A compelling and visceral journey of personal redemption and triumph over adversity, Shoebox explores the human spirit's capacity for healing. Author of the novel Somewhere There's Music, Sean Paul Bedell has been writing and publishing for more than 30 years. A longtime paramedic and captain with the fire service, he lives with his wife Lisa in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

It starts with an itch.In homes across the country, women ages eighteen to thirty-five begin to slow down.Tired. Blank. Restless.Drawn to the Pacific Ocean like it's calling them home. They abandon their lives—jobs, families, their very selves. And once they reach the West, they vanish forever.At the center of the story are three young women caught in the pull of something unstoppable.Aimee follows the trail of her missing best friend to a man called the Piper—known for leading infected women West.Teenie, afflicted and unraveling, clings to a single memory as she looks out the window of the Piper's van.And Eve, a former journalist, is chasing the story that might just consume her. Alice Martin holds a PhD in Literature from Rutgers University. She is an Assistant Professor of English Studies at Western Carolina University, where she teaches fiction writing and American literature. She lives outside of Asheville, North Carolina with her husband, her son, and too many typewriters. She is the author of Westward Women (St. Martins Press, 2026) Recommend Books: Butcher's Crossing, John Williams I Who Have Never Known Men, Jacqueline Harpman Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

On Sep. 6, 2018, India's Supreme Court ruled that Section 377, a law that criminalized consensual homosexual activity, was unconstitutional, reversing an earlier decision from 2013. Both news headlines and LGBT activists hailed the decision as a major step forward for same-sex rights in India. But in Mahesh Rao's new novel Half Light (Penguin Random House India, 2025), the court's deliberations sit in the background behind the budding relationship between Pavan, a hotel worker in Darjeeling, and Neville, a young, confident student. They meet first in Pavan's hotel in Darjeeling in 2014; after a tragic incident, they meet again four years later, in Mumbai in 2018. We're joined again by Prarthana Prakash as a guest host. Mahesh Rao grew up in Nairobi, Kenya. He has worked as a lawyer, academic researcher and bookseller in the UK. His debut novel The Smoke is Rising won the Tata First Book Award for fiction. His short fiction has been shortlisted for numerous awards. One Point Two Billion, his collection of short stories set across 13 Indian states, and Polite Society, a Delhi-set reimagining of Jane Austen's Emma, have both been published to critical acclaim. Mahesh has written for the New York Times, The Baffler, Prospect and Elle. You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Half Light. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia. Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at@nickrigordon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Medieval Brittany, with all its contradictions and complexities, comes alive in Meg Wahlberg's Chivalry in the Shadows (Parkwood Manor Press, 2024). The author has studied and taught medieval literature, and it shows in her richly imagined descriptions of a world long lost, ruled by assumptions and obligations very different from our own. But however evocative of the time and place in which it is set, Chivalry in the Shadows (Parkwood Manor Press, 2024) goes far beyond standard descriptions of the Middle Ages. Its heroine, Rowen, and her twin brother, Roland, would have to have been born in each other's bodies to fit neatly into their society. Rowen will gladly fight for the woman she loves, whereas Roland would rather abandon chivalry altogether for music—to the great disgust of their father, determined to see both his children honor the traditions that have defined his life. How the twins negotiate the gap between their individual strengths and the expectations placed upon them, you will have to read the novel to find out. Meg Wahlberg specializes in medieval literature, which she teaches at Rowan University. Excavating the lives of marginalized and forgotten individuals, she writes fiction that reconstructs the stories that history has underrepresented. Chivalry in the Shadows is her debut novel. C. P. Lesley is the author of two historical fiction series set during the childhood of Ivan the Terrible and four other novels, including The Merchant's Tale, co-written with P. K. Adams. Her next book, Song of the Silk Weaver, will appear in the summer of 2026. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Christine Estima about her novel, Letters to Kafka (House of Anansi, 2025).  A sweeping, tragic romance and feminist adventure about translator and resistance fighter Milena Jesenská's torrid love affair with Franz Kafka. In 1919, Milena Jesenská, a clever and spirited twenty-three-year-old, is trapped in an unhappy marriage to literary critic Ernst Pollak. Since Pollak is unable to support the pair in Vienna's post-war economy, Jesenská must supplement their income by working as a translator. Having previously met her compatriot Franz Kafka in the literary salons of Prague, she writes to him to ask for permission to translate his story “The Stoker” from German to Czech, becoming Kafka's first translator. The letter launches an intense and increasingly passionate correspondence. Jesenská is captivated by Kafka's energy, intensity, and burning ambition to write. Kafka is fascinated by Jesenská's wit, rebellious spirit, and intelligence. Jesenská and Kafka meet twice for lovers' trysts, but can such an intense connection endure beyond a fleeting affair? In her remarkable debut novel, Christine Estima weaves little-known facts and fiction into a rich tapestry, powerfully portraying the struggles of a woman forced to choose between the roles of wife, lover, and intellectual. CHRISTINE ESTIMA is an Arab woman of mixed ethnicity (Lebanese, Syrian, and Portuguese) and the author of the short story collection The Syrian Ladies Benevolent Society. She has written for the New York Times, The Walrus, VICE, the Globe and Mail, Chatelaine, Maisonneuve, the Toronto Star, and the CBC. Her story “Your Hands Are Blessed” was included in Best Canadian Stories 2023. She was shortlisted for the 2018 Allan Slaight Prize for Journalism and a finalist for the 2023 Lee Smith Novel Prize. Christine has a master's degree from York University and lives in Toronto. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Flaxman Low, literature's first professional, full-time “occult detective”—that is, an intrepid investigator who deploys the scientific method when tackling paranormal phenomena—appeared in a dozen stories first published from 1898–1899. Flaxman Low: Occult Detective (MIT Press, 2026), the latest edition to the Radium Age series from MIT Press, is introduced and discussed by Dr. Alexander B. Joy. Flaxman Low's creators, the mother-and-son team Kate O'Brien Ryall Prichard and Hesketh “Hex” Prichard (who published as “E. and H. Heron”), endowed the Oxford-trained psychologist with the bravery and acumen to tackle every sort of adversary from ghosts, mummies, and vampires to a mushroom mannequin. Both less credulous and less cynical than earlier fictional investigators of the spirit world, Low always triumphs in the end . . . but not before scientifically demonstrating that even the most outré incidents and situations can't hold a candle to the bizarre capacities of the human mind. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda's interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

The YIVO Institute was pleased to present a special evening with acclaimed novelist Philip Roth. Roth read excerpts from his new novel, Nemesis (2010), which tells the story of a terrifying polio epidemic raging in Newark, New Jersey in the summer of 1944 and its devastating effect on the closely knit, family-oriented community and its children. Through this story, Roth addresses profound questions of human existence: What types of choices fatally shape a life? How does the individual withstand circumstance? Preceding the reading was a panel discussion with YIVO Executive Director Jonathan Brent, Bernard Avishai (Hebrew University), Igor Webb (Adelphi University) and Steven Zipperstein (Stanford University). This reading and discussion originally took place on May 18, 2011. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature