The Book Show #1701 - Kristin Hannah

Robert Jones, Jr., creator of the Son of Baldwin online community, has written a debut novel, "The Prophets," about the forbidden union between two enslaved young men on a Deep South plantation, the refuge they find in each other, and a betrayal that threatens their existence. 

Simon Winchester - author of "The Professor and the Madman" and "The Perfectionists" - examines what we human beings are doing - and have done - with the billions of acres that together make up the solid surface of our planet. His new book is "Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World."

National Book Award–winning and bestselling author Colum McCann’s latest, "Apeirogon," is an epic novel rooted in the unlikely real-life friendship between two fathers who recognize the loss that connects them and their attempt to use their grief as a weapon for peace.

For the last twenty years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story at Syracuse University. In "A Swim in a Pond in the Rain," he shares a version of that class with us where he pairs iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, with essays intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it’s more relevant than ever in these turbulent times.