The Book Show Each week on The Book Show, host Joe Donahue interviews authors about their books, their lives and their craft. It is a celebration of both reading and writers. As the son of a librarian, Joe has been part of the book world since childhood. His first job was as a library assistant, during college he was a clerk at an independent book store and for the past 25 years he has been interviewing authors about their books on the radio. He currently is the host of The Roundtable on WAMC/Northeast Public Radio, a 3-hour general interest talk show. Notable authors he has interviewed include: Kurt Vonnegut, John Irving, John Updike, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Arthur Miller, Stephen King, Amy Tan, Anne Rice, Philip Roth, E.L Doctorow, Richard Russo, David Sedaris and Maya Angelou. He has won several awards for his interviews, including honors from the Associated Press, the Edward R. Murrow Awards, the New York State Association of Broadcasters, The Headliners, The National Press Club and the Scripps-Howard Foundation. E-mail The Book Show. Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina is on leave from the Book Show, teaching abroad. Recent and upcoming shows: Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,125 - week of February 8 Joshua Ferris - Ferris' debut novel Then We Came to the End was both heralded by critics and a New York Times bestseller, and marked the arrival of a very talented young writer. With his new novel - THE UNNAMED, Ferris imagines a life of privilege which comes to ruin as a result of a strange and mysterious illness. Joshua Ferris joins us on this week’s Book Show. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,124 - week of February 1 Stephen King - King is the author of more than fifty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers including such classics as The Stand, The Shining, Misery, Christine, The Dead Zone, Lisey’s Story and Bag of Bones. His latest is UNDER THE DOME where on an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester's Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. This is a "Best of the Book Show" rebroadcast of an earlier interview. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,123 - week of January 25 Elizabeth Kostova - Kostova’s debut novel, The Historian, explored the legend of Dracula. Her second novel, The Swan Thieves is now out and focuses on French Impressionism. In the novel - Psychiatrist Andrew Marlowe, devoted to his profession and the painting hobby he loves, has a solitary but ordered life. When renowned painter Robert Oliver attacks a canvas in the National Gallery of Art and becomes his patient, Marlow finds that order destroyed. Desperate to understand the secret that torments the genius, he embarks on a journey that leads him into the lives of the women closest to Oliver and a tragedy at the heart of French Impressionism. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,122 - week of January 18 Sadie Jones - Fresh off her debut novel The Outcast, award-winning author Sadie Jones has again delivered a raw and honest story in Small Wars. Set on the colonial, war-torn island of Cyprus in 1956, Jones tells the story of a young soldier, Hal Treherne, and the effects of this “small war” on him, his wife Clara, and their family. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,121 - week of January 11 Gail Godwin - Godwin is a three-time National Book Award finalist and acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Evensong and The Finishing School. Her latest is Unfinished Desires - a sweeping new novel of friendship, loyalty, rivalries, redemption, and memory. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,120 - week of January 4 Sue Grafton - Grafton was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America this year, earned some of the best reviews for her career her last book T is for Trespass. Grafton started with A (A Is for Alibi) and now she's up to U with her 21st alphabet mystery starring P.I. Kinsey Millhone, entitled U is for Undertow. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,119 - week of December 28 Archer Mayor - Author, law enforcement officer, and death investigator Archer Mayor has created a unique body of work with his novels about Joe Gunther – an officer with the Vermont Bureau of Investigation. Mayor’s 20th Gunther novel, The Price of Malice is now out, showing off the suspense and authentic detail that has drawn so many crime fiction readers to this lauded series. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,118 - week of December 21 Dan Chaon - Chaon’s mesmerizing novel, Await Your Reply, opens as a boy is rushed to the hospital, his severed hand stuffed in a Styrofoam cooler. The opening is impossible to stop thinking about, as is the novel upon completion. It is already topping 2009 “Best Of” lists. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,117 - week of December 14 Jeannette Walls - In 2005, The Glass Castle was released, Jeannette Walls’ heart-wrenching memoir that stunned readers and critics and went on to sell over 2 and a half million copies. Walls has now written a prequel to The Glass Castle. Half Broke Horses: A True Life Novel. It came out of wanting to tell a story about her mother and ended up being a story about her Grandmother Lily. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,116 - week of December 7 Barbara Kingsolver - The Lacuna, a new novel by Barbara Kingsolver, is a sweep of history and a mix of the real and the imaginary which spans two decades and two worlds, that grew out of Kingsolver’s interest in how the American psyche took its modern shape. Barbara Kingsolver, the Bestselling author of The Poisonwood Bible will join us. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,115 - week of November 30 John Irving - John Irving’s twelfth novel has just been published, entitled – Last Night in Twisted River - a novel that explores the profound love between fathers and Sons. Irving has been nominated for a National Book Award three times–winning once, in 1980, for the novel The World According to Garp. In 2001, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,114 - week of November 23 Edward Rutherfurd - He is called the Modern Michener. Edward Rutherfurd has written a series of epic historical novels such as London and The Princes of Ireland. His latest, New York: The Novel, celebrates the city in a rich saga that illuminates cultural, social, and political upheavals through the lives of a remarkably diverse set of families. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,113 - week of November 16 Ruth Rendell - Time Magazine has called Ruth Rendell “the best mystery writer in the English speaking world.” She has just written the 22nd novel in her very popular Inspector Wexford series - The Monster in the Box. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,112 - week of November 11 Stephen King - King is the author of more than fifty books, all of them worldwide bestsellers including such classics as The Stand, The Shining, Misery, Christine, The Dead Zone, Lisey’s Story and Bag of Bones. His latest is UNDER THE DOME where on an entirely normal, beautiful fall day in Chester's Mill, Maine, the town is inexplicably and suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world by an invisible force field. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,111 - week of November 4 Margaret Atwood - This week on the Book Show, Margaret Atwood tells Joe about her newest novel, The Year of the Flood. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,110 - week of October 26 Jonathan Lethem - Lethem is author of seven novels, including Fortress of Solitude, Motherless Brooklyn and a collection of stories, Men and Cartoons, and The Disappointment Artist. His new book is Chronic City, a return to his native New York City to explore the delusions, desires and lies of Manhattanites. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,109 - week of October 19 Nick Hornby - Hornby is best known for his books, Fever Pitch, High Fidelity and About a Boy. His latest is the novel, Juliet, Naked, which brings Hornby back to the familiar landscape of rock & roll and relationships. But, explores sophisticated questions about the nature of art and identity. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,108 - week of October 12 Pat Conroy - Conroy is the bestselling author of The Water Is Wide, The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline, The Prince of Tides, Beach Music, and My Losing Season. We’ll talk with him about his latest tale of saints, sinners and the lasting bonds of friendship entitled South of Broad. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,107 - week of October 5 Jonathan Tropper - Tropper has spent much of his writing career exploring family, friendship, love, and death. His latest is This is Where I Leave You. The novel tells the story of the screwed-up Foxman family who have assembled upon the death of their father. As the family sits Shiva for seven days, the entire clan becomes even more dysfunctional. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,106 - week of September 28 Francine Prose - Prose will join talk about her latest: Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife, which tells the extraordinary story of the book that became a force in the world. Along the way, Prose looks to establish that Anne Frank was not an accidental author or a casual teenaged chronicler, but a writer of prodigious talent and ambition. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,105 - week of September 21 E.L. Doctorow - Doctorow’s latest novel, Homer & Langley, is inspired by the notorious true story of the Collyer brothers, famous for their compulsive hoarding and their obsessive fear of throwing anything away. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,104 - week of September 14 Nicholson Baker - Baker is known for bestselling novels Vox and The Fermata, and the non-fiction hit Human Smoke. His latest, The Anthologist, is a book of prose about poetry. Paul Chowder is a bit of a failure as a poet – but, he has been asked to write an introduction to a poetry anthology, and his writer’s block causes his career and his relationship to falter. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,103 - week of September 7 Tracy Kidder - In Strength in What Remains, Pulitzer-winner Tracy Kidder tells the true story of a traumatized young African war refugee who lands in New York with no English and no place to live, and eventually graduates from Columbia, attends medical school, and founds a clinic in his native Burundi. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,102 - week of August 31 Ward Just - Just's 16th novel, Exiles in the Garden, features a Washington news photographer during the 1960s who chooses a life of art over a life in politics. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,101 - week of August 24 Lisa See - See's latest historical novel about China, Shanghai Girls, moves forward in time, and across the Pacific, from Shanghai to Los Angeles, in the 1930s through 1950s. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,100 - week of August 17 Valerie Martin - In Martin's new novel, The Confessions of Edward Day, a young actor saves the life of another, leading to years of indebtedness and guilt. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,099 - week of August 10 Blake Bailey - John Cheever, the Pulitzer Prize-winning short story writer, led a double life that few knew. Biographer Blake Bailey talks about his book Cheever. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,098 - week of August 3 Kate Christensen - In Christensen's latest novel, Trouble, a therapist in an unraveling marriage rushes to Mexico to help her old friend, a female rock singer whose star is waning. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,097 - week of July 27 Sarah Waters - Waters' new novel, The Little Stranger, is a new direction for her--it is a haunted house story taking place in England just after World War II. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,096 - week of July 20 Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo - In the art world, documentation and provenance are key to verifying authenticity. Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo's book Provenance shows how a con artist and a forger changed the world of modern art. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,095 - week of July 13 Elizabeth Garner - Garner's imaginative novel The Ingenious Edgar Jones, a young boy in Victorian Oxford runs afoul of his parents and the law, when no one can understand his technical. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,094 - week of July 6 Eva Hoffman - Hoffman's novel Appassionata follows a women pianist on a European concert tour, where she gets involved with a possibly dangerous Chechen political activist. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,093 - week of June 29 Anita Jain - When Anita Jain hit her thirties and couldn't find a mate, she opted to try for arranged marriage. Her book Marrying Anita chronicles her move to New Delhi in search of a new life. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,092 - week of June 22 Brad Gooch - The fiction of Flannery O'Connor is read even more today than when she was alive. Brad Gooch shows the woman behind stories like "A Good Man is Hard to Find," in his biography Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,091 - week of June 15 Kamila Shamsie - Shamsie's novel Burnt Shadows runs from the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima and ends in the early 21st century, seen through the lives of a multicultural family. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,090 - week of June 8 Colm Toibin - Toibin's sixth novel, Brooklyn is set in 1950s Ireland and Brooklyn, New York. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,089 - week of June 1 Arika Okrent - Okrent’s new book In the Land of Invented Languages tells the fascinating and highly entertaining history of man’s enduring quest to build a better language. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,088 - week of May 25 Gregory Maguire - Since Wicked was first published in 1995, millions of readers have discovered Maguire's fantastically encyclopedic Oz, a world filled with characters both familiar and new, darkly conceived and daringly reimagined. In A Lion Among Men, we return to Oz, seen now through the eyes of the Cowardly Lion. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,087 - week of May 18 Patricia T. O'Conner - Think you know the English language? Patricia T. O'Conner may surprise you when she talks about informative and witty book Origins of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language, co-authored with her husband Stewart Kellerman. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,086 - week of May 11 Elinor Lipman - Lipman's ninth novel, The Family Man, has just been published. Henry Archer is a gay man whose life changes when he receives a call from his ex-wife and reunites with the adopted daughter he lost 25 years earlier. Critics call it "a delightful Manhattan romp." Listen to Recent Book Shows