September 16, 2020
Ariel Sabar is a former newspaper reporter for The Providence Journal, Christian Science Monitor, and The Baltimore Sun. He is currently a freelance journalist having written for publications such as Smithsonian, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Wall Street Journal. His previous books include My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for his Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq and Heart of the City. Today we'll be discussing his most recent one, Veritas: A Harvard Professor, a Con Man and the Gospel of Jesus's Wife which is published by Doubleday.
August 29, 2020
Daniel Hornsby earned his MFA from the University of Michigan, and a Masters of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School. His stories and essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Electric Literature, The Missouri Review, and Joyland. Today we'll be talking about his debut novel, Via Negativa, which is published by Knopf.
August 22, 2020
Dr. David Stebenne teaches at Ohio State University in the history department and their law school. David has authored two academic books, Arthur J. Goldberg: New Deal Liberal and Modern Republican: Arthur Larson and the Eisenhower Years. He and Joseph Mitchell co-authored New City Upon A Hill: A History of Columbia, Maryland. Today, we'll be looking at his most recent book, which is aimed a general audience, Promised Land: How the Rise of the Middle Class Transformed America, 1929-1968.
August 8, 2020
Wendy Williams' journalism has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, Scientific American, and many other august publications. She's written seven book to date, including about the resilience of cancer patients, the history of the horse, and today we'll be talking about her latest, The Language of Butterflies: How Thieves, Hoarders, Scientists, and Other Obsessives Unlocked the Secrets of the World's Favorite Insect, which is published by Simon & Schuster.
July 18, 2020
Walter Thompson-Hernández is a former New York Times reporter who is now moving into the fields of podcasting and documentary film making. While at the Times, he traveled the world looking for and profiling fascinating subcultures. One of those was the group of black horse riders known as The Compton Cowboys. Their story piqued Walter's interest, and he recently released his book looking at their fascinating and fraught life trying to hold onto their horses and non-profit during a tumultuous year of changing leadership at the top of the program. The book is The Compton Cowboys: The New Generation of Cowboys in America's Urban Heartland, and it is published by HarperCollins.
June 25, 2020
Sydney Ladensohn Stern has was a reporter for Fortune and Money and her writing has appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times. She has also written three books of non-fiction, Toyland: The High-Stakes Game of the Toy Industry, Gloria Steinem: Her Passions, Politics and Mystique, and most recently, The Brothers Mankiewicz: Hope, Heartbreak, and Hollywood Classics, which is published by The University of Mississippi Press and was recently released in audio book format by Random House Audio.
May 30, 2020
In addition to being a international best-selling author, Scott Turow is an attorney and has served as the president of The Authors Guild. His novels often take place in the fictional Kindle county, which is a stand in for Chicago and Cook County, Illinois. The heart, but not always the star of these is books is defense attorney, Alejandro Stern, known to most as Sandy Stern. Now in his mid 80s, Sandy is contemplating his retirement in the new novel, The Last Trial, which is published by Grand Central. Mr. Turow joined us from Naples, Florida.
May 28, 2020
Book Talk veteran Scott Phillips joins us for our first remote interview during the Covid-19 era. Scott's writing mixes noir with biting wit. His novels include The Ice Harvest, Cottonwood, and Rake. Today we'll be talking about his most recent book, That Left Turn at Albuquerque.
May 9, 2020
Lee Durkee's work has appeared in Harper’s Magazine, Best of the Oxford American, and New England Review. His first novel was Rides of the Midway, and today we'll be talking about his latest, The Last Taxi Driver, which is published by Tin House Books.
May 2, 2020
Michael Farris Smith is a novelist and has been on Book Talk before to talk about his novels, Rivers, Desperation Road, and The Fighter. Today we'll be talking about his latest, Blackwood, which is available from Little, Brown. And as a note, this interview was recorded on March 11th, prior to many of the safer at home orders began taking effect.
April 18, 2020
Andy Davidson holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Mississippi. His debut novel, In the Valley of the Sun, was nominated for the 2017 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel, This Is Horror’s Novel of the Year, and the 2018 Edinburgh International Book Festival’s First Book Award. Today we'll be talking about his second novel, The Boatman's Daughter, which is published by MCDxFSG Originals.
April 4, 2020
Alexander Weinstein is the director of The Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and an Associate Professor of creative writing at Siena Heights University. He was last on Book Talk to talk about his debut story collection, Children of the New World. Today we'll be talking about his latest story collection, Universal Love, which is published by Henry Holt and Company.
March 14, 2020
Maria Kuznetsova teaches at Auburn University and is an editor at The Bare Life Review, a journal of immigrant and refugee literature. Her writing has appeared in publications such as McSweeny's, The Southern Review, and Slate. 2019 saw the publication of her debut novel, Oksana, Behave! which is now in paperback from Random House.
February 29, 2020
Michael Zapata is a former Chicago public School teacher, the founding editor of Make Literary Magazine, and he has recently published his first novel, The Lost Book of Adana Moreau, which is published by Hanover Square Press/Harper Collins.
February 22, 2020
Mark Greaney co-wrote several years with Tom Clancy, and for his estate several years after Mr. Clancy's passing, for a total of seven novels. Last year, he published Red Metal, co-written with recently retired Marine Lieutenant Colonel Rip Rawlings. But listeners of Book Talk know Mark best for his best-selling Gray Man thriller series, starring erstwhile CIA operator Court Gentry. Today we'll be discussing the ninth installment of the series One Minute Out.
February 15, 2020
Beatriz Williams and Karen White have both appeared on Book Talk before to talk about their best-selling novels, Beatriz with The Summer Wives, and Karen with The Beach Trees and A Long Time Gone. New to Book Talk is Lauren Willig, who has published six stand-alone novels and 13 installments of her successful Pink Carnation English historical series. All three authors together have collaborated on three novels, The Forgotten Room, The Glass Ocean, and today we'll be talking about All the Ways We Said Goodbye: A Novel of The Ritz Paris, which is published by Harper Collins. It's a story of honor and courage as three women, each in a different era in French history, World Wars I and II as well as the 1960s, strive for truth and autonomy while navigating a number of different battlefields.
January 25, 2020
Tara Conklin studied law and worked as a litigator here in the United States as well as in the United Kingdom. Her love of writing eventually won out, and she published her best selling debut novel, The House Girl in 2013. in 2019, she returned with her follow up, The Last Romantics, which was also a best seller, and has just been published in paperback by William Morrow.
