New Books in Literature

Angelica Cheng's YA rom-com, The Fast Track (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2026) brings readers into the world of F1 racing. Justine Kwong has always dreamed of becoming a Formula 1 champion. There's just one problem: no female driver has ever done it before. So when she's offered a coveted chance to race in Formula 3, she leaps at the opportunity. Sure, half the fans think she's just there to fill a diversity quota, and her teammate—the infuriatingly cute Cameron Evans—mistakes her for an intern, but Justine knows her talent will leave them all in the dust.But driving well isn't the only prerequisite to getting noticed, and Justine's forced to fend for herself in a sea of prejudice, paparazzi, and petty backstabbing. There's a lot riding on her ability to navigate the complicated trackside hierarchy—like the open F2 seat that could be her ticket to the big leagues.Except…when Justine and Cameron's bickering gives way to unexpected chemistry, the boy she's falling for may be the one person standing in the way of her dreams—because while they may be teammates, they are also each other's biggest competitor. And with her only shot at glory on the line, this race could break more than just hearts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Beloved author and winner of The Story Prize, Paul Yoon, is back with the unforgettable story of a working dog, Etna, who, after a devastating war, embarks on an odyssey in the hopes of returning home.Set in a fictional country in the present day, this is a story told through the eyes of an ex-military dog, Etna. After surviving years of a devastating war, Etna decides one night to leave the men he has fought alongside for years and return home—to the place where he was taken from when he was young, in the thin but persistent hope that if a home exists for him, it might be there.Thus begins an exhilarating odyssey told through the eyes of a dog as he traverses across ruined landscapes and fights to survive in a world that, even in peacetime, proves to be just as precarious. Along the way, he encounters other animals and humans who are attempting to figure out how to start again. What makes a life when there is no home to go back to? How do we begin to trust each other again after such profound loss?Etna (Scribner, 2026) is a novel about the power of an idea, about never giving up, and ultimately a novel about finding hope in the most dire of times. Paul Yoon is the author of five previous works of fiction: Once the Shore, a New York Times notable book; Snow Hunters, winner of the Young Lions Fiction Award; The Mountain, an NPR Best Book of the Year; Run to Earth, a Time Must-Read Book of 2020 also longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction; and The Hive and the Honey, winner of the 20th annual Story Prize and longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. Recommended Books: Maria Stepanova, The Disappearing Act Johnathan Buckley, One Boat 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 All We Hide (Soho Crime 2026), after Lauren Kelly transitions to female in a small-town District Attorney's Office, her bosses do whatever they can to push her into retirement. Now stuck in the Homicide Cold Case unit, she investigates the 20-year-old murder of a trans sex-worker whom she knew in high school. Already grappling with a teenage daughter, an ex-wife she still loves, and her father, a former cop struggling with Alzheimer's, Lauren discovers evidence of a cover up. She's stunned to find troubling connections to her family, calls her famous film star brother for support, and assembles a team. Someone is definitely trying to stop her. Robyn Gigl is an attorney and the author of the critically acclaimed Erin McCabe Legal Thrillers, which include: Survivor's Guilt, named one of the 100 best Mystery/Thriller Books of All Time by TIME Magazine, and winner of the Joseph Hansen Award for LGBTQ+ Crime Writing; By Way of Sorrow, selected by CrimeReads as one of the best crime novels of the year; Remain Silent, a Joseph Hansen Award nominee; and Nothing but the Truth, named one of the best crime novels of 2024 by the New York Times. When she's not writing, practicing law or hanging out with her granddaughters, she loves to go for a jog along the boardwalk at the Jersey Shore. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

After Caroline Bicks was named the University of Maineʼs inaugural Stephen E. King Chair in Literature, she became the first scholar to be granted extended access by King to his private archives, a treasure trove of manuscripts that document the legendary writerʼs creative process—most of them never before studied or published. The year she spent exploring King's early drafts and hand-written revisions was guided by one question millions of Kingʼs enthralled and terrified readers (including her) have asked themselves: What makes Stephen King's writing stick in our heads and haunt us long after we've closed the book?Bicks focuses on five of his most iconic early works—The Shining, Carrie, Pet Sematary, ʼSalemʼs Lot, and Night Shift—to reveal how he crafted his language, story lines, and characters to cast his enduring literary spells. While tracking King's margin notes and editorial changes, she discovered scenes and alternative endings that never made it to print but that King is allowing her to publish now. The book also includes interviews Bicks had with King along the way that reveal new insights into his writing process and personal history.Part literary master class, part biography, part memoir and investigation into our deepest anxieties, Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King (Hogarth, 2026)—authorized by Stephen King himself—is unlike anything ever published about the master of horror. It chronicles what Bicks found when she set out to unearth how King crafted some of his scariest, most iconic moments. But it's also a story about a grown-up English professor facing her childhood fears and getting to know the man whose monsters helped unleash them. Caroline Bicks is the Stephen E. King Chair in Literature at the University of Maine. Her academic books include Cognition and Girlhood in Shakespeare's World and Midwiving Subjects in Shakespeare's England; her popular writing has appeared in the Modern Love column of the New York Times and McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and includes a humorous Bard-themed cocktail book, Shakespeare Not Stirred. She is the co-host of the Everyday Shakespeare podcast. Recommended Books: Ben Lerner, Transcription Libby Edwardson, We Sent Them Down Singing Daniel Mason, Country People 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

Lauren Delapenha speaks to Emily Everett about her poems “Supermarketing” and “If You Are Learning English,” which appear in The Common's spring issue. Lauren also discusses her process and revision methods, her time at the Disquiet Literary Program in Lisbon, and how balancing both teaching and writing challenges her. Lauren is a Jamaican poet and English teacher. She earned her master's in creative writing from the University of Oxford, and her work has received an Oxbelly Fellowship, a Helen Zell and Jamaica Poet Laureate's Young Writers Prize for Poetry, a Grindstone International Poetry Prize, and two Pushcart nominations. She currently lives and teaches in Connecticut. ­­Read Lauren's poems in The Common here. Learn more about 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 at thecommononline.org, 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

I love Rhys Bowen's historical mystery series, especially Her Royal Spyness books, which feature Lady Georgiana Rannoch. The Castle in the Glen (Lake Union Publishing, 2026) appears to be a standalone, although there's room for it to develop into a series if the author so decides The novel opens with an excerpt from The Wild Girl, a work-in-progress by an acclaimed mystery writer, Iris Blackburn (to quote from the Cast of Characters, “Think Agatha Christie”). Set on the Isle of Skye, off Scotland's western coast, The Wild Girl purports to be the first case of Iris Blackburn's pet detective, Inspector Melrose. But Iris, who's approaching eighty and suffering from early-stage dementia, hires a young Australian named Emma Callander, whose first book recently appeared in London to great acclaim, to finish the novel. To secure Emma's agreement, Iris offers an all-expenses-paid trip to Skye, where Emma can absorb the atmosphere, appreciate the setting, and connect with the character of Inspector Melrose before sitting down to write. Only after Emma reaches the island does she begin to suspect that the fictional mystery may not be fiction after all. Bowen juggles the three historical timelines—1904, the time of the original deaths; 1932, when Iris visited Skye; and Emma/Iris in 1965—with her usual aplomb. She also leaps nimbly between the novel and the novel-within-the-novel, which Emma reads so that she can get a sense of what the book needs and how she can contribute to finishing Iris's story. The result is a delightful tale that never takes itself too seriously yet kept me turning pages to the end. And if you've never visited Skye yourself, it really is exactly as described. That I have such vivid and fond memories of my short time there just added to my appreciation of the novel. Rhys Bowen's work has sold close to 10 million copies in over 30 languages. She has been nominated for every major mystery award and has won multiple Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity Awards. Her books include the Royal Spyness and Molly Murphy historical mysteries, as well as several international bestselling stand-alone novels. The Castle in the Glen is her latest book. Find out more at here.  C. P. Lesley is the author of two historical fiction series set during the childhood of Ivan the Terrible and four other novels, including one co-written with P.K. Adams. Her next book, Song of the Silk Weaver, will appear in September 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 episode of the New Books Network, we talk with Jeremy Tiang about his English translation of The Formosa Exchange (Honford Star, 2026)—which will be released on September 18, 2026 (but is available for preorder).Tiang is a novelist, playwright, and translator based in New York. He has translated more than thirty books from Chinese to English—including Zou Jingzhi's Ninth Building, longlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize—and has served as a judge for the National Book Award for translated literature. Beyond translation, his novel State of Emergency won the Singapore Literature Prize in 2018, and his play Salesman之死 won a Obie Award for Outstanding New Play in 2023. Originally published in Mandarin in 2021 as 新寶島 and winner of that year's Taiwan Literature Award, The Formosa Exchange is a work of speculative fiction by Taiwanese novelist Huang Chongkai (黃崇凱). The novel kicks off with a fantastical occurrence: one night, the entire populations of Taiwan and Cuba swap places, with Taiwanese people ending up on the island of Cuba and Cuban people on the island of Taiwan. This “Great Exchange” becomes a lens for examining national identity, indigeneity, and colonialism, especially with reference to Taiwan's and Cuba's shared position in the shadow of their much larger neighbors of China and the United States. Scholars and learners across history, political science, anthropology, literature, and beyond will find much food for thought in The Formosa Exchange. The novel is dense with allusions—it nods to Western thinkers like John Mearsheimer and Claude Lévi-Strauss, while also weaving in references to Taiwanese and Cuban literature, art, and film. Anthony Kao is a writer who intersects international affairs and cultural criticism. He founded/edits Cinema Escapist—a publication exploring the sociopolitical context behind global film and television—and also writes for outlets like The Guardian, Al Jazeera, The Diplomat, and Eater. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

A dazzling novel about a community where an upcoming film production brings their past into sharp focus--and nobody's version is the same. In Derry, the locals are already in a twist about the arrival of Hollywood actress Monica Logue to research her role for a show about the Troubles--and then she goes missing. Everyone has a story to tell--about Monica's possible whereabouts, and about the historic events that brought her here in the first place: the show's screenwriter, desperate for this last shot at success; the grieving mother whose story he's adapting; the ex-IRA member who knows the price of survival; the local psychic who's seen too much ... Prestige Drama (Cardinal, 2026) brings to life a chorus of characters as they locate themselves in Monica's disappearance, and in the truth about their own history. From the author of the acclaimed memoir Did Ye Hear Mammy Died?, Prestige Drama is heartbreaking, hilarious, and profound, an indelible portrait of a community both obsessed with its past, and desperate to forget it. SÉAMAS O'REILLY is a writer and author who has worked as a columnist for the Observer, the Irish Times and the Irish Examiner. He is Features Editor of London satirical magazine, The Fence and his writing has appeared in The Guardian, the New Statesman and the New York Times. His memoir Did Ye Hear Mammy Died topped the Irish Times Bestseller List for seven weeks, and won Best Biography at the 2021 Irish Book Awards. Séamas currently lives in Walthamstow, London with his family. Recommended Books: Patrick Radden Keefe, London Falling Susannah Dickey, Into the Wreck Jonathan Wilson, The Power and The Glory: A History of the World Cup 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

A Song of Legends Lost (Saga Press, 2025) is the first, highly praised instalment in the Invoker Series. Set in a world offering an unique combination of an African inspired culture and a fallen tech-based empire at war, the novel feels at once epic and deeply personal. M. H. Ayinde deftly creates an entire, well-imagined society with a minimum of distracting exposition. Her clear prose and astute characterization leave the reader intrigued but never confused. Onto the story itself—it begins with two protagonists from very different backgrounds who find themselves involved in momentous events. Both are overwhelmed by the unexpected powers they now wield. Jinao, a noble who has failed repeatedly to magically bond with an ancestor, suddenly succeeds, but continues to be plagued by indecision. Temi, a baker from the slums of Nine Lords, hosts a mysterious presence after she is cursed by a witch. From the initial setup, the book widens in scope, introducing a traumatized captain — Elari, a ruthless monk — Boleo, and a penniless girl — Runt. The world of the Nine Lands, ruled over by the royal Ahiki Clan, who have fought the tech creatures they call grey bloods for generations, has enough war for all of them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Moving between word and image, the call-and-response collaboration between writer Christopher R. Rogers and photographer karim brown improvises a contemporary portrait of present-day Black Philadelphia, replete with the unfinished activism present since the transnational upsurge of the George Floyd Uprising.Arriving five years after the crucible of that period, this experimental essay-as-LP challenges us to prioritize the urgency of reckoning with our own hang-ups and half-steps and to reground ourselves within the daily, prefigurative life-work of rehearsing Black liberation. This is a hyperlocal, future-forward recommitment to ongoing principled struggle and a hopeful model of contemporary self-criticism.Taking its title from a song by the late, beloved Uptown Philadelphia rapper PnB Rock, My City Need Something (Common Notions, 2026) challenges readers to strive for clarity in a time of Black suffering, in a city resplendent with Black joy. Christopher R. Rogers, PhD is a Philadelphia-based cultural organizer and educator hailing from Chester, PA with more than a decade of experience in supporting radical arts, culture, and community-building. He is a Facilitator with the W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School for Abolition & Reconstruction and co-coordinates the Friends of The Tanner House, incubating a revitalized National Historic Landmark rowhome that Dr. Carter G. Woodson once dubbed the “center of Black intellectual life in Philadelphia.” He previously published with Common Notions as Lead Editor for How We Stay Free: Notes on a Black Uprising (2022) alongside novelist Fajr Muhammad. You can find Chris on Instagram @justmaybechris. After listening to this episode, head over to the Additions to the Archive Substack, where Chris and Sullivan talk further about community education and activism. Subscribe, like, follow, and rate Additions to the Archive with Sullivan Summer on Instagram, Substack, and 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 Red Wind Howls (Columbia UP, 2025) is an unsettling, gripping, and darkly funny novel by Tsering Döndrup, one of modern Tibet's most celebrated writers. First self-published in 2006 after no publisher was willing to take the political risk, the novel traces Tibetan experiences under Mao Zedong's rule, from the 1958 Amdo uprising and the Great Leap Forward to the Cultural Revolution. Through a nonsequential narrative that moves back and forth between characters and events, The Red Wind Howls weaves together experiences of labor camps, unrelenting hunger, environmental devastation, and the destruction of language into a powerful exploration of twentieth-century Tibetan history. In this episode, I speak with the novel's translator, Christopher Peacock, about the challenges of translating a work that weaves together oral storytelling and history. We discuss the recurring character Alak Drong, the novel's striking use of dark humor, the ways its characters navigate famine, labor camps, political campaigns, and shifting systems of survival, and above all the importance of reading literature by Tibetan authors. Listeners should also seek out Chris's translation of Tsering Döndrup's short story collection, The Handsome Monk and Other Stories, and his article on the use of language in Tsering Döndrup's fiction, here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Today, we're welcoming novelist Tom Lin back to the show, whose new novel Babylon, South Dakota (Little, Brown and Company: 2026) moves his fascination with the American West into stranger and more uncanny territory. A Chinese family moves to a new farm in South Dakota; after the government takes an interest in a plot near their home for some Cold War-era experiments, the family's life gets much odder, and much stranger. Babylon, South Dakota's Cold War setting gives the novel a chance to explore nuclear dread, government conspiracies, and even an interest in the paranormal that's reminiscent of the viral internet phenomenon, the SCP Foundation. Tom Lin was born in China and immigrated to the United States when he was four. A graduate of Pomona College, he also holds a PhD from the University of California, Davis. His first novel, The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu, won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. He teaches English and creative writing at the University of Iowa. Listen to our interview with Tom Lin on The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu here! You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Babylon, South Dakota. 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

In Amy B. Scher's The Unexpected Afterlife of Salon Rose (Tiny Ghost Press, 2026) college hopeful Salon Rose arrives to the Nowhere in Between, a way-station between life and death, only to learn she's been murdered. Returning to the life she had before is not an option, but before Salon can move on, she is determined to discover who was responsible for her death. With the help of her new friends––all recently deceased-–and maybe even a fresh crush, Salon must learn to let go if she has any hope of getting out of there. Even if it means confronting some hard to swallow truths. ​A darkly funny, touching, suspenseful, and relatable story about moving on, forgiving ourselves, and finding hope in the future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

There is a changeling in this story—but who?Madeleine is young for motherhood, a promising grad student in Victorian and Modernist literature, twenty-three and not long married. Even her mother worries about the timing. But Madeleine's ambivalence is pushed aside by Tom's elation and her own joy at bringing new life to the world.Then comes Maud, perfect and fresh and worth every moment of difficult labor. But after just a few nights, something seems amiss, changed. The child never stops crying. Her hunger is insatiable. Her eyes glint with some kind of ancient mischief. Could Maud be a fairy child, swapped when Madeleine wasn't paying attention? Is the real Maud dancing in the half-light with the fairies and the foxes? Did the gray cat hide her behind the hedge?Meanwhile, the world around them continues in its humdrum ease. Tom works toward a promotion, urging Madeleine to connect with other moms and keep in touch with her colleagues. Her parents travel from abroad to meet the baby, but Madeleine is unnerved by her father's new obsession with genealogy and DNA tests. Interrupted by visions, panicked at her lack of maternal feelings, shut out from her old life, she frantically searches for answers. But the old stories end in sorrow and bloodshed. And fairies do more than kidnap babies.A riveting portrait of madness, motherhood, the myths that haunt us, and the families who keep us tethered, Emily McBride's Queen Mab (FSG, 2026) asks us to reconsider what is real and how we might see a truer picture of ourselves through the darkness. Emily McBride is a Canadian-born editor, writer, and translator living in Barcelona. Her work has been published in The Nation, The Rumpus, and The Stinging Fly. Queen Mab is her debut novel. Recommended Books:  Roberto Bolaño, Distant Star  Helen Garner, The Children's Bach Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

When nobleman Thomas Boleyn, lord of Hever Castle, is called to London in 1509 to present himself to a newly anointed King Henry VIII, he sets in train events that ensure the Boleyn name will never be forgotten. His daughters Mary and Anne were young then, and though he was ambitious for his family to prosper, he could not imagine what would transpire in the two decades to come. Blending the history she knows so well with the creativity of her imagination, Tracy Borman brings the Boleyn family's three-decade rise and precipitous fall to vivid life in The House of Boleyn (Hachette, 2026). Borman surrounds the main dramatic events of the Boleyn saga with a colorful tableau in which familial and inter-familial rivalries threaten and true love often loses out to keen ambition. Anne's ever-loyal attendant Esther Frideswide and Thomas Boleyn's perfidious steward Robert Cranwell are as memorable as Cardinal Wolsey, Thomas Cromwell, or anyone in the increasingly dangerous orbit of the royal court. Henry VIII pursues Anne relentlessly, showering her with gifts as the Boleyns are catapulted to political prominence. But when she can't give him the son and heir he desperately seeks, the family faces a terrible and bloody fate. With lavish and compelling historical detail, Tracy Borman displays her keen gift for storytelling in this resonant novel of family, fate, and intrigue. Tracy Borman is chief historian of Historic Royal Palaces, chief executive of the Heritage Education Trust, and chancellor and professor of Tudor History at Lincoln Bishop University. Dr. Kristen Vitale Engel is an Associate Fellow at the Royal Historical Society. She is in the Department of History at Southern New Hampshire University, Global, the Editor-in-Chief of "The Court Observer" for The Society for Court Studies, the Submissions Editor for the Royal Studies Journal and the International Ambassador for HistoryLab+ in partnership with the Institute of Historical Research. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

J.J. Crayhill's Raleigh and the Pirates (Raconteur Press, 2026) is the launch of The Adventures of Midshipman Raleigh — a science fiction adventure series built on the bones of the great naval tales, transplanted to the lawless frontier of space. Anthony is small, undertrained, and deeply motivated, which turns out to be a dangerous combination — for everyone involved. Midshipman Anthony Raleigh wasn't supposed to be the hero. He was barely supposed to be on the bridge. When a pirate warship drops out of hiding to ambush the cargo freighter Pegasus, Captain Smith has one mission for his youngest crew member: take the shuttle, run, and bring help. Simple enough — except the pirates got there first. With the shuttle sabotaged and the crew captured at gunpoint, Anthony is alone, unarmed, and hunted through corridors, air ducts, and — when things get truly desperate — across the outside of the ship in a malfunctioning spacesuit. He has three things going for him: an AI named Fuse who enforces regulations with terrifying consistency; a security key the pirates will do anything to obtain; and a grudge against pirates that burns considerably hotter than fear. That is going to have to be enough. When he gets his hands on a classified space fighter hidden inside the Pegasus' sealed cargo pod, the pirates are going to find out exactly what a midshipman with something to prove looks like when he decides he has had enough. And when the pirate captain makes one final play — a shocking claim about Anthony's supposedly dead father — the stakes shift from saving a ship to something far more personal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Tune in to this interview with Meryl Branch-McTiernan about her new book What You Should Worry About (Akashic Books, 2026). It's January of 2020 and thirty-seven-year-old Layla Moody is trying to worm her way into a party at the Sundance Film Festival. When she's not picking up other people's abandoned drinks or skinny-dipping in the hot tub, she's trying to gain access to someone who can jump-start her stymied career as a Hollywood television writer. After a run-in with one of her creative heroines, she lands an opportunity to get her show produced. The only catch is, she has to return to New York, which she's been avoiding since her father's death. But soon all is thwarted when COVID-19 shuts down the entertainment industry and any opportunity to propel her life forward. While quarantining alone in her parents' apartment in Queens, Layla wrestles with the ghost of an ex-boyfriend who disappeared unexpectedly, the grief of processing the loss of her father, and the notion that she just might be the one responsible for her current state of solitude. Finally, in spite of warnings and stay-at-home orders, Layla throws caution to the wind and joins a share house on Fire Island where she spent summers in her twenties. By returning to the house and its eclectic denizens, she is reintroduced to the comfort and annoying tendencies of other people, and begins to grasp how to find family on her own terms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Abdelwahab Meddeb's Returns to Marrakesh, co-translated by Claudia Esposito and Laura Reeck and published by Syracuse University Press in 2026, chronicles Meddeb's successive visits to the Red City from 1968 through the 1990s, tracing both his personal journey and Marrakesh's transformation across three pivotal decades. Through his distinctive blend of poetic prose and attentive observation, Meddeb portrays the city as a historical crossroads shaped by Jewish and Muslim communities, different social classes, Sufi mystics, merchants, and travelers—a richly layered urban space in which cultures, histories, and spiritual traditions continually intersect. Presented in a bilingual edition featuring the original French alongside the English translation, the book introduces a wider readership to the work of one of North Africa's most significant literary and intellectual voices. In this episode, Ibrahim Fawzy sat down with Esposito and Reeck to discuss Meddeb's distinctive literary and intellectual presence, his movement across languages, cultures, and spiritual traditions, and his intimate portrayal of Marrakesh. They also explore the collaborative process of translating his multilingual, layered prose and consider how translation can extend—and even renew—a writer's literary afterlife. Claudia Esposito is associate professor of French at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She is author of The Narrative Mediterranean: Beyond France and the Maghreb.Laura Reeck is an independent translator and scholar. She is the author of Writerly Identities in Beur Fiction and Beyond and coeditor of Post-Migratory Cultures in Postcolonial France. Ibrahim Fawzy is an Egyptian literary translator and writer. He is the translator of Hassan Akram's A Plan to Save the World (Sandorf Passage, 2026). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

John chats with writer and journalist Simon Elegant about his third novel, a crime thriller set during the Hong Kong protests of 2019. City on Fire is published by Pegasus Crime, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. The novel follows Inspector Killian Tong's investigation of a brutal murder against a backdrop of political chaos, police tensions, and also personal conflict – Killian's half-sister is a radical protester. John and Simon also discuss the background to the 2019 protests, including the National Security Law and the earlier 2014 Umbrella Movement. Among the books mentioned were: Manchu (1980) by Robert Elegant (a swashbuckling novel by Simon's father). Gorky Park (1981) by Martin Cruz Smith Among the Braves: Hope, Struggle, and Exile in the Battle for Hong Kong and the Future of Global Democracy (2023) by Shibani Mahtani & Timothy McLaughlin Simon's book recommendations The Immobile Empire (French 1989, English 1992) by Alain Peyrefitte. This is on the 1973 Macartney mission to Peking. Apple in China (2025) by Patrick McGee, which explores Apple's deep entanglement with China's manufacturing system. Ginkgo Season (2025) by Naomi Xu Elegant, a coming-of-age novel set in Philadelphia. To learn more about Simon Elegant and his novel, visit the publisher's website here  The Books on Asia Podcast is co-produced with Plum Rain Press . Subscribe to the BOA podcast from your favorite podcast service. podcast service. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Black Point (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2026) is an insular small town steeped in Norse traditions, a teen's developing romance with a newcomer becomes fraught as dark secrets from the past rise to the surface in this gorgeously atmospheric mystery by New York Times bestselling author Jacqueline West. Lucia Sorenson holds on hard to the things she loves. Her tiny Wisconsin hometown clings to the bluffs above the Mississippi River, threatened by weather, time, and the creep of climate change. Her mother is pushing her to go away to college and see the world beyond their small town, but Lucia is determined to stay and to keep her grandfather's Viking museum going. When the Black Point Hotel, a 150-year-old landmark that's been empty for decades, is bought by an outsider, tongues start wagging. Lucia meets the new owner's teenage nephew, Max, and as they grow closer, she discovers there's something thrilling about getting to know someone who hasn't known her all her life—and maybe something more. Then Max discovers some ominous things about Black Point hidden away in the hotel—stories of ghosts and mysterious disappearances. Lucia refuses to believe that her town is hiding a sinister past. But the river is rising, and more secrets are washing to the surface. Soon, Lucia will have to choose between the home she thought she knew and uncovering the dark truths hidden underneath. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

It's the 19th century, and a village in northern Michigan is the setting for Adam Bolton's strange, decrepit house, called Haggard House by the community. He's eleven, and his strictly religious mother only allows him to attend the village school after he promises not to be friendly with the other children. They're heathens, she tells him. Adam builds an imaginary house in his mind, so when he meets a little girl who likes him, he can imagine her there. His father is a respected carpenter who leads a sad life because of Adam's over-pious, angry and bitter mother. As a young man Adam escapes for a few years and doesn't learn of his father's murder until he returns. And when he goes against his mother's wishes to marry the woman he loves, everyone pays a price in this well-written tale of madness and piety. Elisabeth Rhoads is the Vice-President of the second largest branch of the California Writers Club—Orange County. Since 2021, she has been a volunteer juror for the Scholastic Writing Awards. She holds her BA in Theatre and has recently been accepted into Chapman University's Creative Writing MFA program, starting in Fall of 2026. Originally from Michigan, she spent two summers working on Mackinac Island, which only allows transport by horse and carriage, foot, or bicycle. Her time on this history-soaked island deeply influenced her, and has inspired many stories, including, in part, Haggard House (Bodger Books, 2025)—and is featured briefly in the novel. She is the author of one novel and has begun a short story series on her Substack, in which she writes a new story each month, based on subscriber prompts. Now living in California with her husband, she enjoys learning Japanese, fermenting foods of all types—although mainly kombucha—and pretends to enjoy exercise-related activities, such as kayaking and running. As someone who grew up within a strict, religious home, her writing reflects the Victorian influences that made up a large part of her family's reading habits, such as Charles Dickens, the Brontë sisters, and Edgar Allen Poe. She hopes that modern readers will find much to connect with, as these old-world literary influences combine with her now much broader view of the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

A Conversation with author Charles Akl about his debut novel Red Like Orange (Hoopoe, 2026) An offbeat tale of creativity, friendship, and finding your voice in this uproarious journey through Cairo's music scene in the early 2000s, where everything from American rock to Egyptian popular songs cultivates big dreams Winner of the Sawiris Cultural Award Following a breakup with his long-term girlfriend, “Local,” as he is known to his friends, moves from Alexandria to Cairo. In his new apartment, he discovers an old accordion, while his roommate unexpectedly decides to take up the saxophone, despite never having touched one before. And so, in the blistering summer heat, the two of them, without any formal training, dive into their first musical experiment: they put his mother's cookbook to music. Along with an eccentric assortment of acquaintances and occasional bandmates, Local crashes through his twenties and in and out of Cairo hangouts, heated debates on different music scenes, and various impromptu jam sessions and attempts at musical production. This is a raucous journey through offbeat downtown Cairo in the early 2000s and the music of the era, from Mohamed Mounir to Pink Floyd. Suffused with a sardonic humor and full of hilarious observations, Red Like Orange vividly chronicles life lived just outside the mainstream. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In his novel China Running Dog (Plum Rain Press, 2025), a young man in his early twenties lives in Shanghai in the year 2000, in a greed-crazed free-for-all moral and lawless vacuum created by the Chinese Communist Party. Johnny Trent, small-time entrepreneur from Basildon in the UK, ends up in China, where he meets Felix Fawcett-Smith, fresh off the boat and from the other side of the tracks. An unlikely friendship begins. Johnny impresses the well-bred Felix with his street smarts until Felix takes Johnny's advice too literally – and too far – and slips into Shanghai's murky underbelly. He enters a world where the Party, power, and connections to them, are all that matter, where criminals are given sainthoods and saints sent to hell. Johnny tries to stop Felix's spiral, not least because Felix is taking a sweet, angelic girl, Anita, down with him and Johnny has feelings for Anita that he has never dared to put into words. But Felix thinks he knows best. Like Johnny, all he wants is respect. It's up to Johnny to save whoever he can, besides himself. Books mentioned in this podcast: Shanghai Baby by Wei Hui, Shanghai by Richie Yokomitsu (transl. Dennis Washburn), Candy by Mian Mian Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

 As I Dream of You (First Second, 2026) illustrated by LeUyen Pham and written by Jennifer Lee. Falling in love is supposed to hurt. That's what Franny and Sam, two cynical teenagers raised on tales of heartbreak and loss, have come to understand. Yet when they fall for each other, they find the reality of love is something else entirely: it's electrifying, all-encompassing, and easy. Theirs is a love that can conquer anything...perhaps even death. But Franny and Sam's quest to stay together—no matter the cost—soon blurs the line between reality and fantasy, and their shared dream threatens to turn into a nightmare. In this episode, Pham talks about illustrating graphic novels and picture books as well as working as an artist.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

A psychological Arabic novel in English translation, The War by Mohamed Alyahyai follows a man who begins to question whether he is truly the one who returned from war. On a winter night, Issa Saleh prepares a small gathering at his home. By the end of the evening, they are gone—and he is no longer certain they were ever there. As memory fractures, the war resurfaces not as event but as instability, where identity itself begins to slip and the narratives that sustain survival unravel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Will Miles is trapped. Trapped in tiny Greening, Michigan, where a toxic high school rumor has turned her into a social exile. Trapped in the predictable routines of her mother, and under the unrelenting gaze of her mother's increasingly sinister boyfriend. But when Will stumbles across the early poems of Nathaniel Fellow, a famous writer forty years her senior who also grew up in Greening, she feels she's found a kindred spirit. A passing comment from her mother only adds to Will's fascination: Is Nathaniel the father she's never known?Will orchestrates a plan to track Nathaniel down, following in his footsteps to New York City, where she learns he's not the answer to her past, not the way she imagined. But their meeting sparks a complicated, consuming relationship that gives Will sidelong access to a world she's only ever imagined: of writers and intellectuals, a financial safety net, and, most intoxicatingly, a glimpse into her own potential. But who is Nathaniel Fellow, off the page? And what will shaping her life to suit his cost her? When a torrent of information about his past threatens not just her life with Nathaniel, but the story she tells herself about him, Will is faced with a choice that will change everything.A gripping novel about ambition, parents and children, and all the ways women still pay for men's mistakes, Famous Men (Random House, 2026) traces one woman's journey to the truth of where she comes from, what she's capable of, and how she might start again. Julie Buntin‘s debut novel, Marlena, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize, released in ten territories worldwide, and named a best book of the year by over a dozen outlets, including The Washington Post, NPR, and Kirkus Reviews. She is the co-editor of Notes to New Mothers, a collection of dispatches from postpartum life by sixty writers and artists. Previously, Buntin was an editor and director of writing programs at Catapult. Now, she writes and teaches in Ann Arbor, where she is an assistant professor at the University of Michigan. Recommended Books: Dur E. Aziz Amna, A Splintering Chloe Benjamin, The Understory Louise Kennedy, Stations Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries  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

Camille's Lakou (Vanderbilt UP, 2025), a novel by Guadeloupean writer and educator Marie Léticée, tells the story of Camille, a young Caribbean girl living with her single‑parent mother in a 1960s urbanized zone at the edge of Pointe‑à‑Pitre, Guadeloupe, following her through her adult life as a Caribbean migrant in Florida. Léticée explores neocolonial culture clash and identity conflict themes that will be familiar to readers of the Francophone Caribbean coming‑of‑age novel and its revisions by women writers such as Capécia, Lacrosil, Manicom, Schwarz‑Bart, Condé, Pineau, and others. Léticée makes it her own by fleshing out a time and place not well‑represented in Guadeloupean literature. While previous bildungsromanefrom the writers mentioned here typically focus on rural peasant or urban bourgeois settings, Camille's Lakoushifts location to an impoverished urban environment. “Lakou” is translated as “courtyard” or, more colloquially, “yard.” The author explores the culture and politics of lakou society while raising the issue of how this social dynamic is transformed through the impact of globalization and dispersal into a diasporic experience outside the island milieu of Camille's childhood.In a collaborative translation effort between the author and Kevin Meehan, Camille's Lakou will bring the realities and joys of Léticée's Guadeloupe to an English audience for the first time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Lizzie Raju is back in Christy Wilhelmi's sequel Bolting to Seed (Garden Nerd Press, 2026) and she has "Six Reasons Not to Have Kids." Finding a corpse in her happy place wasn't on the list.It's been six months since Lizzie married the hunky guy she met at Vista Mar Community Garden and, unfortunately for him, she has six reasons for not wanting kids.But when a dead body turns up in the tool shed, she has to solve the mystery and save her marriage, or her urban oasis will wither to dust. In Bolting to Seed, Lizzie and the eclectic cast of characters return for another growing season, but in-fighting and the threat of death prevent them from finding peace in gardening.What's a gardener to do when plants aren't the only thing dying behind the locked gates at Vista Mar?Bolting to Seed is a cozy mystery that follows the lives of Lizzie and a diverse group of urban farmers at Vista Mar Gardens, an organic community garden in Los Angeles, CA. You'll find gardening lessons interwoven with clues as you guess whodunit in this engaging work of women's fiction.Lizzie tackles the very personal question: To breed or not to breed, as she grapples with the fact that her biological clock has no alarm. Jared struggles to find his way through Lizzie's indecision. Meanwhile, Ralph tumbles head-first into matters of the heart, while Ned and Mary deal with the challenges of aging and contentious members of their community garden. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In the midst of texting and cell phones, online websites and GPS, it can be difficult to remember an era when almost all communication took place by landline or snail mail, as it's now called, and driving depended on the ability to read a printed map. But April Howells's debut novel vividly recaptures that world. The Unforgettable Mailman (Alcove Press, 2026) opens in Chicago in October 1966. The post office, overwhelmed with unsolicited mail in the days before the ZIP code, has shut down temporarily, and an elderly resident named Henry Walton decides that someone must deliver the mail. People depend on letters, after all, and without them, connections with their nearest and dearest will fade. Henry himself suffers from a bad leg leftover from World War I and an increasingly dicey memory. But despite these obstacles, he succeeds in breaking into the post office and leaving with approximately 300 letters, destined for places as far apart as Canada and the Dakotas. Throughout the story we see Henry's interactions with the recipients of the letters as well as the letters themselves, and through the exchanges Henry's own past becomes ever clearer. After a while, his journey intersects with that of Roger, a high-school student in search of the father who left home, and the two of them pursue the delivery of the letters as we learn more about what makes each of them tick. This haunting novel, which came out a couple of months ago, captivated me from the very beginning. Henry is beautifully portrayed and sympathetic, and so are all the people with whom he interacts along the road—including, of course, Roger. April is a storyteller who finds heartwarming inspiration in little-known pieces of history. With a background in magazine publishing, she's spent the last decade leading Global Internal Communications and Employee Engagement for premium apparel brand lululemon. The Unforgettable Mailman 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 one co-written with P.K. Adams. Her next book, Song of the Silk Weaver, will appear in September 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 Molly Fader's latest novel, Lady X: A Novel (Random House, 2026), the search for a notorious vigilante exposes the secrets between three generations of women in this propulsive novel of female resistance and rage, sweeping from contemporary L.A. to gritty, 1970s New York. Los Angeles, 2024. After learning that her A-List actor husband sent explicit photos to multiple girls on social media, Margot Cooper runs away from the world—and the paparazzi—by fleeing to her childhood home with her teenage daughter in tow. But home isn't the sanctuary Margot was hoping for. In a cardboard box in the corner of the attic, she finds damning evidence of an infamous urban legend, the mysterious vigilante “Lady X”—including a blurry newspaper photo of a woman who looks an awful lot like Margot's mother. New York City, 1977. In the midst of an infamous summer, Ginger Daughtry and her two beloved roommates are able to shield each other from the chaos—until one of them is assaulted. Astounded by the lack of response from police, the young women decide to engage in some light payback, signing their handiwork as “Lady X.” Soon copycats appear, and a movement inspired by acts of vandalism against terrible men spirals out of control, with criminals running amok under the guise of the enigmatic “Lady X.” When a body is found fallen—or pushed—from five stories high, the hunt reaches a boiling point. But Lady X has vanished into thin air. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

It's 1980, a decade after he dropped out of grad school, and Paul Bishop is a lowly writing instructor at a college in Nevada. His former best friend, Tom Corbin is now the celebrated poet that Paul once dreamed of being, but shortly after visiting Paul in Reno, Tom is murdered. The story focuses on Paul's crippling guilt, Tom's wife's ongoing love for her cheating husband, and the difficult girlfriend both Paul and Tom betrayed a decade before. After Tom's death, all three are forced to confront their grief and painful memories. A Moment's Surrender (Press Americana, 2026) is a thoughtful and literary deep dive into guilt, marriage, and loyalty.  John Burt has taught English at Brandeis University since 1983. He is the author of three volumes of poetry: The Way Down (1988), Work without Hope (1996), and Victory (2007). His scholarly books include Lincoln's Tragic Pragmatism (2013) and Robert Penn Warren and American Idealism (1988). He is also the editor of The Collected Poems of Robert Penn Warren (1998), and Robert Penn Warren's Brother to Dragons: A Parallel Text Critical Edition of the 1953 and 1979 versions (forthcoming). Since 1984 he has sung in an ensemble devoted to the polyphonic folk songs and religious music of the Republic of Georgia, and he transcribes and engraves music from Georgia for other singers and ensembles to use. Learn more on his website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Juliet McShannon speaks to Emily Everett about her story “Rescue,” which appears in The Common's spring issue. The story follows a woman on her search for a lost dog through a neighborhood very different from her own, and explores ideas of loss, class, community, and healing. Juliet also discusses how her childhood in Apartheid South Africa, and young adulthood practicing law during the time of transition that followed, has shaped her writing. Juliet McShannon is an emerging fiction writer who was born in England, raised in South Africa where she practiced law, and now lives in the Colorado Desert in Southern California. She is a graduate of the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers and was selected as a Luso-American Fellow for Disquiet International. Her writing has appeared in Five Points Literary Journal, the New England Review, The Guardian, The Independent, The Star, and elsewhere. ­­Read the story in The Common at thecommononline.org/rescue. Follow Juliet on Instagram at @julietmcshannon. 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. 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

Andrew Martin is the author of the novel Early Work, a New York Times Notable book of 2018, and the story collection Cool for America, longlisted for the 2020 Story Prize. His essays and stories have appeared frequently in The Paris Review, The New York Review of Books, and Harper's, as well as in The Yale Review, The Atlantic, McSweeney's, The Times Book Review and elsewhere. He lives in New York City with his family. Recommended Books: William Demby, Love Story Black Morgan Meis, The Drunken Silenus 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 an ancient kingdom, a princess takes inspiration from a visiting young woman to challenge her father's views and reach for leadership-and then discovers her muse is a man. The goddess mother of Greek mythology's most famous warrior, Achilles, will do anything to prevent her son's fated early death. In a desperate move, she hides Achilles, against his will, on an island-disguised in a girl's body. Tormented by inner discord, the miscast "girl" befriends Mia, the eldest daughter of the island's king, launching a transformation of Mia's own. Armed with a new vision she believes comes from a girl, Mia contends with family secrets, a controlling father, her destiny to rule, and the wrath of a goddess. When fate reveals Achilles's identity, a divine mother's fury drives Mia and Achilles into marriage. Mia must navigate her love for a man with a divided heart and a dangerous measure of immortality. Balancing governance and motherhood, Mia will face an unbearable choice. Achilles's Wife: A Novel of Greek Myth Retelling (Bronze Age Books, 2026) is a stand-alone novel in the Trojan Threads Series. 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 Matthew D. Del Papa, one of the editors of SuperCanucks: An Anthology of Canadian Small-Town Superheroes (Latitude 46 Publishing, 2026). SuperCanucks features eleven stories that explore the usual superhero tropes while shining a spotlight on the unique corners of Canada. Not your typical big city superhero, but those who live in and around Canada's more often overlooked locales—isolated small towns and rural outposts. These heroes battle unique Canadian dangers, including government bureaucracy and the overreaching neighbours in the south. About the Editors:  Matthew D. Del Papa spent every Tuesday of his youth crisscrossing his hometown of Capreol in search of newly arrived comic books. He wore superhero-themed Underoos to a truly worrying age and still has his Batman (and Robin) lunchbox, backpack, and wristwatch. A graduate of Laurentian University, Matthew is a writer, editor, and self-publisher, and has released ten titles to some modest local acclaim. He joined the Sudbury Writers' Guild in 2009 and his writing has appeared in Spooky Sudbury, Nothing Without Us Too, Mighty, and the forthcoming Sudbury Superstack: A Changing Skyline. His first book, a collection of humorous essays titled Jerry Lewis Told Me I Was Going to Die, was released in 2023 through Latitude 46 Publishing. Andy W. Taylor grew up as a teen in the 1980s reading Alpha Flight comics and was excited to see Canadian superheroes represented for the first time. Andy was a reader and writer of speculative fiction from an early age thanks in no small part to his mother's frequent trips to the public library with her kids. He's a member of the Sudbury Writers' Guild, a graduate of the Viable Paradise writing workshop and Playwright's Junction workshop, and a member of CODEX writer's forum. Originally from Sault Ste. Marie, Andy currently lives in Sudbury with his family. His fiction has appeared in On Spec Magazine, FictionVale, Polar Borealis, Sudbury Ink Anthology, and on the streets of Sudbury. He has a new poem and non-fiction piece coming out in 2024 in the anthology Sudbury Superstack: A Changing Skyline. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Annakeara Stinson's Nerve Damage: A Novel (Knopf, 2026) is a riotous revenge novel about a woman's quest to escape her stalker ex-boyfriend—by stalking him herself. Clarice's breakup with P.T. began the usual way—she discovered he was cheating. Then came the constant texts, the nonstop emails from burner accounts, countless phone calls from dozens of different numbers. He showed up outside her apartment and her office. He sent her flowers and poems, and, perhaps most sinister of all, a link to the music video for Dido's “White Flag.” Relief arrived only when Clarice finally obtained a restraining order and one-way ticket from New York to L.A. Just as the restraining order expires—and three years to the day since she left him—Clarice spots a man who looks suspiciously like P.T. at a nightclub. Could it be him? Her best friend thinks she's imagining things. Her therapist wants her to focus on healing her inner child. Her mother is busy planning her wedding to her fourth husband. A psychic medium can reveal only that P.T.'s energy is too volatile to locate on the spiritual plane. As painful memories resurface, Clarice is convinced her ex has returned to ruin her life. But with scant evidence to prove it, she takes increasingly unhinged steps to uncover the truth, ultimately leading to a place where paranoia and reality begin to blur. A profane and poignant debut novel, Nerve Damage is a different kind of survivor narrative, about how far one woman will go to wrest back control of her life in a world determined to send her spiraling. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

L.L. Madrid's My Lips, Her Voice (Creature Publishing, 2025) takes place in Copper City, a town who's bloody history is steeped in ghost stories and whispers of serial killers, but three girls have caught the attention of something far more sinister. A grandmother tormented by visions tried to warn the town, but no one listened. Now, a haunted inheritance has passed to her granddaughters, Audrey and Mara. When Mara's body is discovered in the old mine, Audrey fears her grandmother's premonition is manifesting. The nightmare begins as Mara's spirit returns—lurking under Audrey's skin, hellbent on vengeance and desperate to rekindle things with her former girlfriend, Zadie. Willing to hijack Audrey's body to get what she wants, Mara drags them both into a deadly pursuit. When another girl in town goes missing, Audrey, Mara, and Zadie know the killer has struck again. In a fight to solve Mara's death and uncover the mystery of disappearances in Copper City, the girls soon find themselves at war with each other. How do you survive long enough to hunt a murderer on the loose if the person inside you might kill you first? 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 debut story collection Patchwork Dolls (Blair, 2026), Ysabelle Cheung weaves an eerie fabulism with tales that cross continents, technology, and time. Set in Hong Kong and America--between the present day and an uncannily altered future--this story collection warps the familiar rules of our world to ask: what does it mean to be Asian and a woman--living under the specter of state and technological surveillance--or trying to break free from it? In the title story, a young woman of color realizes she can make her fortune by surgically selling her facial features to whiter, wealthier clients. In "Please, Get Out and Dance," a group of rebels escapes a city that is literally disappearing around them--building by building, person by person--to migrate to a new home beneath the ocean, defying their government's mandate. "Herbs" follows an elderly widow who, when the clones of her dead husband start to appear uninvited in her home, must grapple with her memories. In each of these stories, Cheung tilts the world just slightly off its axis to bring together a haunting meditation on what it means to survive within our increasingly digitized and mechanized world. Ysabelle Cheung is a writer and art critic based in Hong Kong. Her Fiction has appeared in Granta, Slate, and The Rumpus. She was awarded the 2023 Aspen Words Fellowship and was in residence at the Jan Michalski Foundation in 2024. Her essays and criticism have appeared in The Atlantic, Artforum, and Lit Hub. She is the co-founder of a contemporary art gallery in Hong Kong called the PhD Group. Recommended Books: Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life Sayumi Kamakura, Applause for a Cloud 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

Kevin P. Reilly is President Emeritus and Regent Professor with the University of Wisconsin System, having served as President from 2004-13. Kevin grew up in Manhattan and the Bronx, and went on to earn his B.A. at the University of Notre Dame, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, all in English. He has published on higher education policy and accreditation, autobiography and biography, and in Irish Studies. In this interview he discusses his most recent book, Gregory Ghosts: Haunting Irishness (Peter Lang, 2026), a creative non-fiction intervention into Irish literary studies. This book is a kind of Irish ghost story. In it the ghosts of Lady Augusta Gregory (1852-1932) and eight of her family members and colleagues look back over their lives—and sometimes forward beyond them—to try to make sense of them, their times, and one another. Theirs were all turbulent lives played out on the western edge of Europe at a time of great change.Lady Gregory helped shape that change at a pivotal moment in Ireland's development into a modern nation state. The author's fresh approach questions and complicates the image of her as a prim Victorian workhorse. Setting her in the midst of the personal chatter of her departed family, lovers, friends, and collaborators brings home how the historical Irish moment found her just when it needed her. Gregory Ghosts: Haunting Irishness is published with Peter Lang, as part of their Re-imagining Ireland series Aidan Beatty is a lecturer in the history department at Carnegie Mellon University and the President of the American Conference for Irish Studies Transcript here 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 David Ly about his novel, Not All Dragons (Wolsak & Wynn, 2026).What is it that you are, Rhys? In a land of magic and myth, Rhys awakens on the shore of Lanilia with mysterious wounds on his back and no memory of his life before. Disoriented, he stumbles on the Mernese estuary protected by the mermaid Delia, who is quickly intrigued by this male who doesn't smell like any Lanilian she's ever met and who is unable to answer questions about himself. Determined to figure out his past, Rhys convinces Delia to help, and begins a dangerous journey to discover who he is, or was, and who he might become as they hunt for the truth beneath story and prophecy. David Ly brings readers a fascinating and fresh take on dragons and destiny in this captivating debut novel. David Ly is the author of Mythical Man (Anstruther Books, 2020) and Dream of Me as Water (Anstruther Books, 2022), both short-listed for ReLit Poetry Awards, and the fantasy novel Not All Dragons (Poplar Press, 2026). He co-edited, with Daniel Zomparelli, Queer Little Nightmares: An Anthology of Monstrous Fiction and Poetry (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022). David's poems have appeared in publications such as Arc Poetry Magazine, Best Canadian Poetry, PRISM International, and The Ex-Puritan, where he won the inaugural Austin Clarke Prize in Literary Excellence for Poetry, as well as in the Pan MacMillan anthologies He, She, They, Us: Queer Poems (2024) and You're Never Too Much: Poems for Every Emotion (2025). He is the Poetry Editor at This Magazine. More here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

Monday, June 22—William Kennedy is to Albany what Joyce is to Dublin and Faulkner to Mississippi, a fictional alchemist who transforms his native place into novels at once deeply evocative of their setting and movingly universal in their human resonances. In The Albany Trilogy, just out from Library of America, three of Kennedy's masterpieces—including his beloved novel Ironweed—take readers from the gutter to the statehouse in narratives of brokenness, resilience, and unexpected grace set against the backdrop of one of America's most storied underdog cities. Join Kennedy himself, one of only a handful of living authors in the LOA series, and his longtime friend Paul Grondahl, editor of the LOA edition, for a special, intimate, and wide-ranging conversation about craft, Albany as a protagonist, and what's next for this titan of American letters, at work on his next book at ninety-eight years old. 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 YA author Emily De Angelis about her acclaimed novel, The Stones of Burren Bay (Latitude 46 Publishing, 2024). In a tragic car accident, 15-year-old Norie loses her father while her distant mother is injured. Her prized possession, an antique artist's box that traveled from Ireland with her great-great-grandmother, is destroyed along with her deep connection to her art. As Norie grapples with her self-identity, obscured by grief and anger, she and her physically and emotionally fragile mother are forced to relocate. With no other relatives to rely on, they call on the kindness of her mother's oldest friend Dahlia and her daughter Wil, who run the Jolly Pot Tearoom and Burren Bay Lighthouse Museum on Manitoulin Island. Dahlia introduces Norie to ancient Irish Celtic spiritualism and opens the thin veil between the past and present where Norie encounters the echo of a century's old spirit, Oonagh. Through Oonagh's own story Norie comes to terms with her father's betrayal and death and rediscovers her passion for art. As her mother's emotional wounds reach a crisis, Norie realizes they must face their guilt and grief together in order to heal and become reunited as mother and daughter. Emily De Angelis comes from a long line of visual artists, musicians, and storytellers. She was born in Sudbury, Ontario where she lived and taught special needs students for 30 years. A graduate of the Humber School of Writing, her western and Japanese-style poems as well as short stories have been published in various anthologies. The Stones of Burren Bayis her first YA novel. Emily now lives in Woodstock, Ontario while spending summers on Manitoulin Island. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature