The Book Show

Thomas Mallon's new novel, "Up with The Sun," mixes murder mystery and showbiz history to tell the fictionalized account of the life and untimely death of Dick Kallman.

Scott Turow, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of "Presumed Innocent" and "The Last Trial," returns with "Suspect" a riveting legal thriller in which a reckless private detective is embroiled in a fraught police scandal where the Police Chief is accused by three male police officers of soliciting sex in exchange for promotions to higher ranks.  

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Paul Harding's new novel “This Other Eden” is inspired by the true story of Malaga Island, an isolated island off the coast of Maine that became one of the first racially integrated towns in the Northeast. Harding is the author of “Tinkers” and “Enon.”

Lydia Millet's previous novel, “A Children's Bible,” was a National Book Award Finalist. Her follow-up is “Dinosaurs” is deadpan funny and yet deals with the important themes of extinction and climate change.  

Tracy Kidders new book, “Rough Sleepers: Dr. Jim O'Connell's Urgent Mission to Bring Healing to Homeless People” shines a spotlight on Jim O'Connell, a Harvard-trained doctor who has spent 40 years caring for unhoused individuals in Boston, the “Rough Sleepers.” We talk with both Tracy Kidder and Dr. Jim O'Connell on this week's Book Show.

Tracy Kidders new book, “Rough Sleepers: Dr. Jim O'Connell's Urgent Mission to Bring Healing to Homeless People,” tells the story of Dr. Jim O'Connell – a man who invented ways to create a community of care for a city's unhoused population – the “rough sleepers.”

Jane Smiley is the author of numerous novels including “A Thousand Acres,” which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and the “Last Hundred Years Trilogy.” Her latest, “A Dangerous Business,” tells the remarkable story of the California gold rush and a pair of sex-worker sleuths who track down the culprit behind a series of disappearances.

In bestselling author Emma Donoghue's novel “Haven,” three men vow to leave the world behind them as they set out in a small boat for an island their leader has seen in a dream.

In the follow-up to the best-selling and Pulitzer Prize-winning "Less: A Novel," the awkward and lovable Arthur Less returns in an unforgettable road trip in Andrew Sean Greer's new novel, "Less is Lost," where he accepts a series of literary gigs that sends him on a zigzagging adventure across the U.S.

Former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins has taken up the unique poetic style of the “small poem” and has gathered more than 125 of his own into a beautiful new collection entitled “Musical Tables.”

A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history. In her new novel, "Horse," Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Geraldine Brooks braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history.

Emily St. John Mandel is the award-winning, best-selling author of “Station Eleven” and “The Glass Hotel” She returns with a novel of art, time, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon 500-years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space. Her new book is “Sea of Tranquility.”

Bestselling author Nick Hornby is an icon in American pop culture and his latest brings his signature wit and appeal to his first nonfiction book in many years, "Dickens and Prince: A Particular Kind of Genius" where he studies the cosmic link between these two unlikely creative geniuses.

Booker Prize-winning author John Banville's new novel "The Singularities" is a playful, multilayered novel of nostalgia, life and death, and quantum theory, which opens with the return of one of his most celebrated characters as he is released from prison.

Sheila Heti is a philosopher of modern experience, and she has reimagined what a book can hold. In her latest, “Pure Colour,” she presents a contemporary bible, an atlas of feeling, and an absurdly funny guide to the great (and terrible) things about being alive.

#1 New York Times bestselling author John Grisham returns to Mississippi for his latest legal thriller “The Boys from Biloxi,” The story of two sons of immigrant families who grow up as friends but ultimately find themselves on opposite sides of the law.

John Irving has written some of the most acclaimed books of our time, among them: “The World According to Garp,” “A Widow for One Year,” “A Prayer for Owen Meany” and “The Cider House Rules.” He now returns with his first novel in seven years “The Last Chairlift.”

Pulitzer Prize-finalist and best-selling author Barbara Kingsolver's new novel, “Demon Copperhead” re-imagines Charles Dicken's “David Copperfield” set in West Virginian Appalachia at the beginning of the opioid epidemic.

George Saunders is an American great, a writer who continues to astound, evolve and get deeper. His new book, “Liberation Day,” is his first collection of stories since his National Book Award finalist “Tenth of December” was published eight years ago. 

Andrea Barrett, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, is the author of the new book Natural History: Stories - a collection of interconnected stories that complete and connect the lives of the family of scientists, teachers and innovators that she has woven into her books.

During this month – and for a quartet of programs – we will be celebrating the form of the short story and those who write them. This week - T.C. Boyle, one of our country's most beloved practitioners of the short story, joins us to discuss his new collection, "I Walk Between the Raindrops" - characterized by Boyle's trademark biting satire and resonant wit.

Best-selling, award-winning author Julian Barnes' new novel, “Elizabeth Finch,” is a magnetic tale that centers on the presence of a vivid and particular woman, whose loss becomes the occasion for a man's deeper examination of love, friendship, and biography.

Legendary author Joyce Carol Oates' latest book, "Babysitter" is an engrossing thriller, with a bit of true crime, set against a backdrop of child murders in the affluent suburbs of 1970s Detroit. Oates rooted the novel in the real, unsolved case of the “Babysitter Killer,” who struck in Oakland County, Michigan.

Dan Brown is the author of numerous #1 bestselling novels including “The Da Vinci Code” which has become one of the best-selling novels of all time as well as the subject of intellectual debate among readers and scholars. “The Da Vinci Code” is one of five novels featuring his symbology professor protagonist, Robert Langdon.

Abdulrazak Gurnah attained a new level of global prominence last year when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Gurnah's new novel “Afterlives” spotlights the devastating German colonial rule of early 20th century East Africa and its aftermath.

New Yorker staff writer Susan Orlean gathers a lifetime of musings, meditations, and in-depth profiles about animals in her new collection, “On Animals.” Orlean has been hailed as “a national treasure” by The Washington Post and is the author of the New York Times bestseller “The Library Book.”

Acclaimed TV writer and the executive producer of award-winning shows such as “Modern Family” and “How I Met Your Mother,” Stephen Lloyd's new novel debut, “Friend of the Devil,” is a horror/noir mash-up set at an elite boarding school harboring secrets.

With the publication of “The Sanatorium” last year, Sarah Pearse had one of the most stunning crime-fiction debuts in recent memory. It was an instant New York Times and international bestseller as well as a Reese's Book Club selection. Now, detective Elin Warner is back in Pearse's second novel, “The Retreat.”

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

Writer Séamas O'Reilly's mother died when he was five, leaving him, his ten brothers and sisters, and their beloved father in their sprawling bungalow in rural Derry. It was the 1990s; the Troubles were a background rumble. He tells the story in his memoir: “Did Ye Hear Mammy Died?” 

Ottessa Moshfegh's new novel “Lapvona” brings us to a village in a medieval fiefdom buffeted by natural disasters where a motherless shepherd boy finds himself the unlikely pivot of a power struggle that puts all manner of faith to a savage test.

What if you could take a vacation to your past? With her humor, insight, and heart, beloved New York Times bestselling author Emma Straub offers her own twist on traditional time travel tropes and a different kind of love story in her new novel “This Time Tomorrow.”

Tracy Flick, the iconic protagonist of Tom Perrotta's novel “Election,” is back and determined to, once again, take high school politics by storm. Tom Perrotta's new sequel is “Tracy Flick Can't Win.”

A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history. In her new novel, "Horse," Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Geraldine Brooks braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history.

Dan Chaon’s latest thriller, “Sleepwalk,” is a high speed and darkly comic road trip through a near future America with a big-hearted mercenary. The novel examines where we’ve been and where we’re going and the connections that bind us, no matter how far we travel to dodge them or how cleverly we hide.

Dan Chaon's latest thriller, “Sleepwalk,” is a high speed and darkly comic road trip through a near future America with a big-hearted mercenary. The novel examines where we've been and where we're going and the connections that bind us, no matter how far we travel to dodge them or how cleverly we hide.

Author and Environmentalist Bill McKibben is the author of more than a dozen books, including The End of Nature, which was the first book to warn the general public about the climate crisis. Bill McKibben’s latest is “The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened.”

Author and Environmentalist Bill McKibben is the author of more than a dozen books, including The End of Nature, which was the first book to warn the general public about the climate crisis. Bill McKibben's latest is “The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at His Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened.”

Does George Washington still matter? Bestselling author Nathaniel Philbrick argues for Washington's unique contribution to the forging of America by retracing his journey as a new president through all thirteen former colonies. His book is "Travels with George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy."

Does George Washington still matter? Bestselling author Nathaniel Philbrick argues for Washington's unique contribution to the forging of America by retracing his journey as a new president through all thirteen former colonies. His book is "Travels with George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy."

Emily St. John Mandel is the award-winning, best-selling author of “Station Eleven” and “The Glass Hotel.” She returns with a novel of art, time, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon 500-years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space. Her new book is “Sea of Tranquility.”

Emily St. John Mandel is the award-winning, best-selling author of “Station Eleven” and “The Glass Hotel.” She returns with a novel of art, time, love, and plague that takes the reader from Vancouver Island in 1912 to a dark colony on the moon 500-years later, unfurling a story of humanity across centuries and space. Her new book is “Sea of Tranquility.”

Emmy, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild award winner, Julianna Margulies has achieved success in television, theater, and film and starred in two classic series: “ER” and “The Good Wife.” As a bubbly child, Julianna was bestowed with the family nickname “Sunshine Girl,” also the title of her new memoir.

Emmy, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild award winner, Julianna Margulies has achieved success in television, theater, and film and starred in two classic series: “ER” and “The Good Wife.” As a bubbly child, Julianna was bestowed with the family nickname “Sunshine Girl,” also the title of her new memoir.

The fragile, 1952 postwar tranquility of a young boy’s world explodes one summer day when a leopard escapes from the Oklahoma City Zoo, throwing all the local residents into dangerous excitement, in Stephen Harrigan’s story of a child’s confrontation with his deepest fears. His new novel is “The Leopard is Loose.”

The fragile, 1952 postwar tranquility of a young boy's world explodes one summer day when a leopard escapes from the Oklahoma City Zoo, throwing all the local residents into dangerous excitement, in Stephen Harrigan's story of a child's confrontation with his deepest fears. His new novel is “The Leopard is Loose.”