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 #1,154 - week of August 30 Bret Easton Ellis - Ellis’s debut, Less Than Zero, is one of the signal novels of the last thirty years, and he now follows those infamous teenagers into an even more desperate middle age in his new novel, Imperial Bedrooms. The very popular and often controversial, Bret Easton Ellis will join us on this week’s Book Show. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,153 - week of August 23 Robin Cook - Cook has made a career – with 28 NY Times Bestselling Novels – of taking controversial medical trends before they make headlines. His latest is CURE, which looks at the cutthroat world of legal patents and intellectual property in medical research. Robin Cook will join us on this week’s Book Show. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,152 - week of August 16 Elizabeth Brundage - Brundage has had great success with her first two novels, Somebody Else’s Daughter and The Doctor’s Wife. Her latest, A Stranger Like Us, allows her to incorporate her background in Screenwriting to pen a thriller about the lengths to which we’ll go to make our dreams come true. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,151 - week of August 9 Carl Hiaasen - Best-selling Florida author Carl Hiaasen will join us to discuss his latest, Star Island. The novel tells about the antics of a drug-addled former child star and it is pure Hiaasen: a weed-whacker prosthesis, a cattle prod, a bodyguard named Chemo and an appearance by Clinton Tyree, the former governor who now lives off roadkill. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,150 - week of August 2 Jon Clinch - Following up Finn, his much-heralded and prize-winning debut, novelist Jon Clinch returns with Kings of the Earth. In an upstate New York town, the three Proctor brothers live together until one of them dies in his sleep and the other two are suspected of murder. The book examines the bonds of family and blood, faith and suspicion that link not just the brothers but their entire community. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,149 - week of July 26 Oscar Hijuelos - Hijuelos was the first Hispanic to win the Pulitzer for Fiction for his amazing novel - Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. Now 20-years later, Hijuelos has written his companion to that classic - Beautiful Maria of My Soul which follows the muse of the first novel (Maria) from her beginnings in rural Cuba to glitzy Havana and eventually America. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,148 - week of July 19 Isabel Allende - Island Beneath the Sea is the first novel in four years from best-selling writer Isabel Allende. The book takes readers to Haiti during its turbulent colonial era and the bloody revolution at the turn of the 19th century that launched two centuries of upheaval. Through a portrait of one young woman’s extraordinary experiences, trapped in slavery and sexual service. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,147 - week of July 12 Howard Norman - Norman, widely regarded as one of this country's finest novelists, returns to the fictional terrain of his major books. In his new novel What is Left the Daughter, seventeen-year-old Wyatt Hillyer is suddenly orphaned when his parents, within hours of each other, jump off two different bridges. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,146 - week of July 5 Lauren Belfer - Belfer introduces us to Claire Shipley, a photojournalist for LIFE magazine, in her new novel: A FIERCE RADIANCE. The book revolves around a moment in American history when penicillin was new, miraculous, and in short supply. Claire is assigned to cover the testing of the drug. But little does she know that the assignment will involve blackmail, espionage, and murder. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,145 - week of June 27 Justin Cronin - Cronin's new 770-page thriller, The Passage, has garnered much attention for its $3.7 million book deal and subsequent bidding war between Hollywood studios for a film adaptation. Now, the write-ups are nearly unanimous in their praise for the post-apocalyptic epic. Janet Maslin of The New York Times calls The Passage a "genuinely jolting horror story" with its "share of original twists" that lend it the "air of an old-time western.” Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,144 - week of June 20 Karl Marlantes - It was a conflict that divided our nation more bitterly than any event since the Civil War. As protesters took to the streets, young Americans on the other side of the world found themselves embroiled in combat for unclear reasons. Karl Marlantes, author of MATTERHORN: A Novel of the Vietnam War, was one of them. We’ll talk with Marlantes about the novel that took him 30-years to write. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,143 - week of June 13 Roddy Doyle - Doyle's irrepressible Irish rebel Henry Smart is back in the conclusion to the trilogy that began with A Star Called Henry. And in the new book, The Dead Republic, Henry is not mellowing with age. Roddy Doyle is the author of eight novels. In 1993 he won the Booker Prize for his novel Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,142 - week of June 6 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. Repeat of November 30 Book Show. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,141 - week of May 30 Pearl Abraham - An avid, near-six-foot-tall surfer, John Jude Parish cuts a striking figure on the beaches of the Outer Banks in North Carolina. When he isn’t on water, John lives on wheels, a self-described skate rat—grinding and kickflipping with his friends, and encouraged by his progressive parents. Through online forums and chat rooms, John meets a young woman from Brooklyn who spurs his interest in Islam and Arab literature. Critically acclaimed novelist Pearl Abraham uses her gifts of psychological acuity and uncommon empathy to depict a typical upper-middle-class family snared by the forces of history, politics, and faith. In American Taliban, she imagines this young surfer/skater on a distinctly American spiritual journey that begins with Transcendentalism and countercultural impulses, enters into world mysticism, and finds its destination in Islam. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,140 - week of May 23 Anna Quindlen - Quindlen is a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and #1 New York Times bestselling author. Her latest novel is Every Last One. The book presents a powerful portrait of a mother, a father, and a family and the explosive, disastrous consequences of what seems like normal, everyday actions. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,139 - week of May 16 Simon Tolkien - Author Simon Tolkien received rave reviews for his first legal thriller, The Final Witness. Now, in The Inheritance, Tolkien sharpens his craft even more, deftly weaving psychological suspense and family drama to create a mystery steeped in memories, betrayal, and the long shadow of the past. This book is very different than the famed writings of his Grandfather, J.R.R. Tolkien. Part courtroom drama and part historical thriller, The Inheritance is a dark thriller that tests the strength of blood ties, loyalty, and revenge. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,138 - week of May 9 Alice Lichtenstein - Lichtenstein's new novel is Lost. It is a psychologically intense and deeply emotional story of three characters whose lives become entwined in the face of adversity. Lichtenstein examines how the bonds of relationships can be stretched and how decisions can tear people apart of bring them together. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,137 - week of May 2 Lisa Grunwald - In Grunwald’s new novel, The Irresistible Henry House, we meet Henry whose early years were spent as a “practice baby” at a university for mothers in training. The novel is the story of Henry and the many women who enter his life over the course of three of the most compelling decades in American History. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,136 - week of April 25 Anne Lamott - Lamott, the popular author of Grace (Eventually), Plan B, Traveling Mercies, and Operating Instructions, is just as acclaimed for her bestselling fiction. Now, in her 7th novel, Imperfect Birds, she brings back two of her most popular characters Elizabeth and Rosie, and explores the challenges they face when confronted by deceit, rebellion, and addiction. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,135 - week of April 18 Walter Mosley - Mosley is the author of the acclaimed Easy Rawlins series of mysteries, including bestsellers Cinnamon Kiss, Little Scarlet, and Bad Boy Brawly Brown; the Fearless Jones series, including Fearless Jones, Fear Itself, and Fear of the Dark; the novel Blue Light and RL’s Dream; and two collections of stories featuring Socrates Fortlow, Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned (for which he received the Anisfield-Wolf Award), and Walkin’ the Dog. Walter Mosley's latest is Known to Evil. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,134 - week of April 11 Sue Miller - Bestselling author Sue Miller is known for her candid and unconventional portrayals of the interior lives of people who are trying to understand their relationships, their limits, and themselves – in such novels as The Senator’s Wife and The Good Mother. The Lake Shore Limited is her latest, and it explores the intersection of love and fate among four characters. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,133 - week of April 4 Anne Perry - New York Times bestselling novelist Anne Perry is known as the Queen of Victorian mysteries. The author of an acclaimed series set during World War I, now broadens her canvas with her first major stand-alone book – an epic historical novel set in thirteenth-century Constantinople, where a woman must live a lie in her quest to uncover the truth. The new novel is The Sheen on the Silk, which tells the story of a young woman who risks everything to clear her brother’s name. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,132 - week of March 29 Chang-rae Lee - With his three critically acclaimed novels, Chang-rae Lee has established himself as one of the most talented writers of contemporary literary fiction. Now, with The Surrendered, Lee tells a heartbreaking story about how love and war unalterably change the lives of those they touch.Chang-rae Lee is the author of Native Speaker, winner of the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for first fiction, A Gesture Life, and Aloft. Selected by The New Yorker as one of the twenty best writers under forty, Chang-rae teaches writing at Princeton University. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,131 - week of March 22 Lionel Shriver - In her 10th novel, Lionel Shriver, the US born, London-based author of The Post-Birthday World, and We Need to Talk About Kevin, takes on the American medical system. The result is a scathing, unforgettable deeply affecting book that tackles the big questions that surround the US healthcare system and insurance industry. Her new novel, So Much for That, tells a timely and multi-layered story about the strain placed on a marriage when catastrophic illness intrudes and coming down to the impossible question – How much is one human life worth? Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,130 - week of March 15 Frank Delaney - Delaney has written extensively about his homeland in his novels such as Ireland, as well as Tipperary and Shannon. Born in Tipperary, Delaney has a new tale about Ireland now out – Venetia Kelly’s Traveling Show – a sweeping Irish saga that is vibrant, adventurous and dramatic. In it, we meet the mesmerizing Miss Kelly, the troupe’s headliner, and a man, Ben MacCarthy, who makes the fateful decision to leave his family for a life on the road. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,129 - week of March 8 Howard Frank Mosher - Mosher is one of the leading contributors to the literature of 20th century America. He is a prolific writer and his 10th novel is now out -- Walking to Gatlinburg. The book is a story of survival, wilderness adventure, mystery and love in a time of war. It is Civil War thriller and a departure for Mosher. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,128 - week of March 1 Jerome Charyn - Charyn has written about gangsters, homicide detectives, Broadway musicals, the American Revolution, and ping-pong. His latest subject is the one of the most difficult, elusive and shocking yet – one of the most mysterious…perhaps…in all of American letters: Emily Dickinson. The book is The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson: A Novel. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,127 - week of February 22 Joe Hill - Hill is the author of a novel, Heart-Shaped Box, a collection of short stories, 20th Century Ghosts, and an occasional comic book series, Locke and Key. His second novel, Horns, is just out. It is about Iggy Perrish – who wakes up after a bad bended the night before – to realize he has grown horns and possesses the powers of the devil. Support WAMC with your Amazon.com purchase of this book. Click image. Show #1,126 - week of February 15 Chris Bohjalian - Chris Bohjalian's novels focus on specific issues with his latest and 12th novel, Secrets of Eden, dealing with domestic violence. It is about a woman and her alcoholic husband who are found dead in an apparent murder-suicide the day after her baptism. The reverend who baptized her is one of the narrators. 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. Listen to Recent Book Shows