WYPL Book Talk

Podcast - Ace Atkins - The Fallen

Ace Atkins is a best-selling and well-respected novelist of crime fiction. He has continued on the Spenser series for the Robert B. Parker estate, having published Little White Lies, his sixth addition to the series earlier in 2017, and this summer brings us the seventh installment of his Quinn Colson series, The Fallen, set in the contemporary, but fictional northern Mississippi county of Tibbehah.

Podcast - John Grisham - Camino Island

We have a special program today; we have two interviews. A little later I will be speaking with Tim Henderson who is the director of humanities TN about the organization and about its 2017 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville. This October will be the 29th edition of one of the biggest book festivals in America. But up first, we have a special guest, a writer by the name of John Grisham. John Grisham is of course the best-selling author of legal thrillers and other popular novels who got his start writing stories set in the Mid-South. He is estimated to have sold more than 300 million books worldwide, and I was invited by the website Chapter16.org to interview him at his recent event at Parnassus Books in Nashville, TN. Chapter16.org is the literary website of Humanities TN and they have graciously allowed us to use the audio from the interview on Book Talk. MR. Grisham and I began our conversation about his latest novel, Camino Island, which is published by Doubleday.

Podcast - Gail Godwin - Grief Cottage

 

 

I was recently invited to be in conversation with one of America's greatest writers, Gail Godwin, at Parnassus books in Nashville, TN. Ms. Godwin was on tour with her latest novel, Grief Cottage, which is published by Bloomsbury. I had some technical difficulties with my recording microphone, so the sound isn't as good as we normally have on Book Talk, but it is a wonderful conversation with Ms. Godwin. - Stephen Usery

Podcast - Vickie Fee - One Fete in the Grave

Vickie Fee was a long-time journalist in western Tennessee but now calls the Upper Peninsula of Michigan home. To help with home sickness, she began writing the Liv and Di in Dixie Mystery series, and today we'll be talking about the third installment, One Fete in The Grave, which is published by Kensington.

Podcast - Alexandra Marzano-Lesnevich - The Fact of a Body

 

 

 

Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich to the program today. Alexandria has received fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, MacDowell, and Yaddo, and a Rona Jaffe Award. Also, she teaches at Grub Street and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. In this episode, we will talk about her book, The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir.

Podcast - D.J. Donaldson - Assassination at Bayou Sauvage

Harry Freeman talks to Memphian D.J. Donaldson about the latest installment of his New Orleans Forensic Mysteries series starring Andy Broussard and Kit Franklin, Assassination at Bayou Sauvage.

Download here.

Podcast - Ann Patchett - Commonwealth

Ann Patchett has written several books of non-fiction, including 2013's This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, but she is best known for her novels, including Bel Canto which won the PEN/Faulker and Orange prizes, and 2012's State of Wonder. Today we'll be talking about her latest novel, Commonwealth, which was recently released in paperback.

Podcast - Edan Lepucki - Woman No. 17

 

Edan Lepucki is a contributing editor for themillions.com and the founder of Writing Workshops Los Angeles. She is also the author of the novella If You're Not Yet Like Me and the New York Times best-selling novel, California. Today we'll be talking about her second novel, Woman No. 17, which was recently published by Crown.

 

Podcast - Lisa Wingate - Before We Were Yours

Linda Lloyd talks to bestselling author author Lisa Wingate about her latest hit novel, Before We Were Yours, which looks at the infamous Tennessee Children's Home Society adoption scandal, and how it could have affected the children and their birth and adopted families.

Podcast - Peter Cooper - Johnny's Cash and Charley's Pride

Peter Cooper was a long-time music writer for The Tennessean newspaper. In addition to teaching at Vanderbilt University, and being a performing and recording artist, Peter is now a Senior Director, Producer, and Writer at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum. Today we'll be talking about his new book, Johnny's Cash and Charley's Pride: Lasting Legends and Untold Adventures in Country Music which is published by Spring House Press.

Podcast - David Wiesner - Fish Girl

David Wiesner has a tremendously successful career as a picture book author and artist, having won three Caldecott Medals. But today we'll be talking about his first foray into graphic novels. It's entitled Fish Girl, and he did the art and co-authored it with award-winner author and scholar Donna Jo Napoli.

Podcast - Julie Buntin - Marlena

Julie Buntin is the director of writing programs at Catapult and her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Cosmopolitan, and Slate among others. Today we'll be discussing her debut novel, Marlena. It's the story of a friendship between two teenage girls in rural Michigan and the decades long effects that it has on one of them.

Podcast - Holly Tucker - City of Light, City of Poison

Dr. Holly Tucker is a professor at Vanderbilt University in Italian and French, as well in their medical school's Center for Biomedical Ethics & Society. Dr. Tucker is author of Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine & Murder in the Scientific Revolution and Pregnant Fictions: Childbirth & the Fairy Tale in Early-Modern France. Today we will be talking about her most recent book, City of Light, City of Poison: Murder, Magic, and the First Police Chief of Paris, which is published by W.W. Norton. 

Podcast - C. J. Box - Vicious Circle

 

C.J. Box won the Edgar Award for best novel for Blue Heaven in 2008, but he is best known for his long-running and award-winning series featuring Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett. The series began in 2001 with Open Season and today, we'll talk about the seventeenth installment, Vicious Circle.

Podcast - Linda Williams Jackson - Midnight Without a Moon

Linda Williams Jackson has many contributions to the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, but today we'll be talking about her debut novel, Midnight Without a Moon. While the book is for readers ages 10 and up, it deals with the all too dangerous realities of growing up African-American in the Jim Crow south of the 1950s.

Podcast - Michael Knight - Eveningland:Stories

Michael Knight has published two novels, The Typist and Divining Rod. He has also published four story/novella collections. Today we'll be talking about his latest, Eveningland which includes six stories and a novella, and it is published by the Atlantic Monthly Press.

Tova Mirvis - Visible City

Tova Mirvis's two previous novels The Ladies Auxiliary and The Outside World were published to much critical acclaim. Her new novel, the first in ten years, is called Visible City, and it is available from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. It's the story of two families in Manhattan and the windows into their souls.

Podcast - Greg Iles - Mississippi Blood

Greg Iles is of course one of the biggest thriller writers in America, having written eighteen books which routinely hit the best- sellers lists. We last spoke with Greg about the first installment of his Natchez Burning trilogy about Mayor Penn Cage fighting against a Klan splinter group called the Double Eagles. We missed chatting with him about the second part, The Bone Tree, but he stopped back by to chat about wrapping it up with book three, Mississippi Blood.

Podcast - Farris Smith - Desperation Road

Mississippi native Michael Farris Smith's first book was the novella, The Hands of Strangers. In 2013 he broke out with the near future ecological dystopian novel, Rivers, which won the 2014 Mississippi Author Award. Today we talk about his new novel, Desperation Road, which is published by Lee Boudreaux books.

Podcast - Donna Everhart - The Education of Dixie Dupree

Linda Lloyd talks with Donna Everhart about her debut novel, The Education of Dixie Dupree. Set in 1969 down in Alabama, eleven year old Dixie Dupree is an expert liar who does so to protect herself and her family. Her mother is from New Hampshire and longs to return north, creating anxiety in the home, as more familial secrets come to the fore and threaten a new generation of damage.