book show

Donna Leon’s Guido Brunetti mystery novels explore myriad social issues facing the city of Venice, with Venetian architecture, language and food taking pride of place as the characters grapple with crime solving.

Her latest is “Transient Desires,” the thirtieth novel in the Brunetti series.

New York Times best-selling novelist Imbolo Mbue’s new novel, "How Beautiful We Were," is a sweeping, wrenching story about the collision of a small African village and an American oil company.

In “Dusk, Night, Dawn,” best-selling author Anne Lamott explores the tough questions that many of us grapple with. How can we recapture the confidence we once had as we stumble through the dark times that seem increasingly bleak? We begin, Lamott says, by accepting our flaws and embracing our humanity.

Chang-rae Lee’s new novel “My Year Abroad” is the story about a young American life transformed by an unusual Asian adventure, and about the human capacity for pleasure, pain, and connection.  

  Elizabeth Kolbert is the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of "The Sixth Extinction." In her new book, "Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future," Kolbert again writes about humanity’s transformative impact on the environment, now asking: After doing so much damage, can we change nature, this time to save it?

Best-selling author Russell Shorto never thought to write about his own past. He grew up knowing his grandfather and namesake was a small-town mob boss but maintained an unspoken family vow of silence. Then an elderly relative prodded: "You’re a writer―what are you gonna do about the story?" The result is "Smalltime: A Story of My Family and the Mob."

Kristin Hannah is the number-one bestselling author of "The Nightingale" and "The Great Alone." 

Her latest, "The Four Winds," is an American epic about love and heroism and hope set during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.

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.

Jill McCorkle’s latest novel “Hieroglyphics” has been called a triumph, one that explores the physical and emotional imprints that make up a life. It reveals the difficulty of ever really knowing the intentions and dreams and secrets of the people who raised you.

Jane Smiley is the author of numerous novels, including "A Thousand Acres," which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and most recently, The Last Hundred Years Trilogy: "Some Luck," "Early Warning," and "Golden Age." Her latest novel is: "Perestroika in Paris: A Novel" - it's about a racehorse who escapes and takes on the streets of Paris.

Joe Donahue: Emily St. John Mandel is the award winning author of “Station 11”. Her new novel, “The Glass Hotel” is set at the glittering intersection of two seemingly disparate events, a massive Ponzi scheme collapse and the mysterious disappearance of a woman from a ship at sea. In the story of crisis and survival, Mandel takes readers through often hidden landscapes, campgrounds for the near homeless, underground electronica clubs, the business of international shipping service and luxury hotels, and life in a federal prison. “The Glass Hotel” is a portrait of greed and guilt, love and delusion, ghosts and unintended consequences and the infinite ways we search for meaning in our lives.

Joe Donahue: Glennon Doyle is the author of the number one New York Times bestseller “Love Warrior” an Oprah's Book Club selection as well as the New York Times bestseller “Carry On, Warrior.” An activist, speaker, and thought leader, she is also the founder and president of Together Rising, an all women-lead nonprofit organization that has revolutionized grassroots philanthropy, raising over $20 million for women, families and children in crisis.

Her latest, “Untamed” is both a memoir and a wakeup call. It offers an examination of the restrictive expectations women are issued from birth, shows how hustling to meet those expectations leaves women feeling dissatisfied and lost, overwhelmed and underwhelmed, and reveals that when we quit abandoning ourselves and instead abandon the world's expectations of us, they become women who can finally look at themselves in the mirror and recognize there she is. 

James Patterson is the world's bestselling author. The creator of Alex Cross, he joins us this week to discuss his three latest books - "The Last Days of John Lennon," "Deadly Cross" and "NYPD Red 6."

This program was recorded via zoom in an Off the Shelf event presented by Northshire Bookstore and WAMC.

Jo Nesbo's dark, gripping new standalone thriller, "The Kingdom," tells the story of two brothers, and a homecoming that turns deadly bringing long-buried family secrets to the surface. Nesbo is one of the world's bestselling crime writers, with his Harry Hole novels.

33 years ago, Fannie Flagg wrote the New York Times bestseller "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café" and she is now back with a sequel that traces the “what happened to” of the original’s main characters and brings them into the present.

The new novel is "The Wonder Boy of Whistle Stop."

Lydia Davis is a writer whose originality, influence, and wit are beyond compare. Best known for her masterful short stories and translations, Davis’s gifts extend equally to her nonfiction. In “Essays One” Davis has, for the first time, gathered a selection of essays, commentaries, and lectures composed over the past five decades.

In Roddy Doyle's latest novel, "Love," Joe and Davy are two old friends who meet at a Dublin pub for a night of reconnecting and hard drinking. Joe has a burning secret; Davy has a concealed sorrow. Doyle is the Booker Prize-winning author of "Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha" and "The Commitments."

Tana French’s first novel to feature an American protagonist and to be told in the third person, "The Searcher," brings all of French’s atmospherics and characterization to a story that plays with the traditions of suspense fiction and does not fail to keep readers guessing. The New York Times has proclaimed, “she is in a class by herself.”

  New York Times bestselling author Sue Miller's insightful new novel, focuses on marriage, love, family, happiness and sorrow.  "Monogamy" is the story of Annie and Graham, happily married for 30 years. But after Graham dies suddenly, Annie discovers he was having an affair.

Ayad Akhtar is a novelist and playwright, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. His latest work is novel, "Homeland Elegies," a deeply personal work about identity and belonging in a nation coming apart at the seams. It blends fact and fiction to tell an epic story of longing and dispossession in a world that 9/11 made.

Journalist Jonathan Alter’s new book, "His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, A Life," is the first full-length biography of Jimmy Carter, the thirty-ninth president of the United States and Nobel Prize–winning humanitarian. He tells the epic story of an enigmatic man of faith and his improbable journey from barefoot boy to global icon.

Ken Follett has sold more than 170 million books, including the acclaimed novel "The Pillars of Earth." Now, Follett is out with a prequel titled "The Evening and the Morning," a historical epic about the world emerging from the Dark Ages.

Sigrid Nunez’s first book since “The Friend,” winner of the National Book Award, looks back to a precarious, pre-pandemic world. "What You Are Going Through" is a story of death and companionship, loneliness and obligation and as she writes: “Messy life. Unfair life. Life that must be dealt with.” 

Vanessa Veselka’s new novel, "The Great Offshore Grounds," tells the story of sisters Livy and Cheyenne as they set out to claim an unusual inheritance from their estranged father. The book explores how individuals begin to navigate ethics and emotions until they find where in the world they belong.

As a native Floridian, author Carl Hiaasen has worked his entire adult life for the Miami Herald, for which he writes an award-winning column. In his latest, very funny, novel "Squeeze Me," Hiaasen takes on The Palm Beach social scene - complete with Presidential shenanigans, a missing woman named Kiki Pew, and enormous pythons. 

In his new book "Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History," Kurt Andersen asks the question: When did America give up on fairness? The bestselling author of "Fantasyland" tells the history of how America decided that big business gets whatever it wants, only the rich get richer, and nothing should ever change and charts a way back to the future.

One of the best-loved fiction writers of her generation, Jhumpa Lahiri fell completely in love with Italian language and literature beginning in 2012. She recently edited and published "The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories," a collection of short works of fiction— nearly half appearing in English for the first time.