WYPL Book Talk

Podcast - Reed Farrel Coleman - What You Break

Reed Farrel Coleman is probably best known for his long-running Moe Prager series which he ended in 2014 after nine installments. He has also carried on Robert B. Parker's Jessie Stone series, with his fourth contribution coming out in September 2017. But today we'll be talking about his new series featuring retired long island beat cop, Gus Murphy. The first book in the series Where It Hurts was published in 2016 and is a finalist for the 2017 Edgar Award for best novel. The second title has just been published by G.P. Putnam Sons, and it's called What You Break.

Podcast - Chanelle Benz - The Man Who Shot out My Eye Is Dead:Stories

(photo: Christine Jean Chambers)

Chanelle Benz's short stories have appeared in Guernica, Granta.com, The American Reader, and The Cupboard, and she has received an O. Henry Prize. In this edition of Book Talk, we will be talking about her debut collection of stories, The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead, which is published by Ecco/Harper Collins.

Podcast - Tim Gautreaux - Signals

Tim Gautreaux is one of the most respected writers of fiction in America. His novels are The Clearing, The Next Step in the Dance, and The Missing. He's had four short story collections, the newest of which is Signals, which includes new and selected stories.

Podcast - Susan Rivers - The Second Mrs. Hockaday

Linda Lloyd interviews Susan Rivers about her debut novel, The Second Mrs. Hockaday. From susanriverswriter.com: 

It's 1865 and the Civil War is over.  For some survivors, however, the suffering is just beginning.  A Confederate field officer walks home from a Union prison to reunite with his teen-aged bride, only to discover that she birthed a child while he was away and buried it somewhere on their South Carolina farm.  Through a narrative that unfolds in letters, diary entries and inquest reports, the wife's painful story is eventually revealed, while the far-reaching repercussions of war are explored.  We see how the damage incurred by Gryffth and Placidia Hockaday has the power to dismantle and transform the lives of ensuing generations, white as well as black, and are witness to the healing powers of love.

Podcast - Mark Greaney - Gunmetal Greay

Mark Greaney back on the program today. Mark is a New York Best Times bestselling author of international thrillers. He co-authored several Jack Ryan novels with Tom Clancy, and has recently concluded his involvement with the series, with his last solo effort being True Faith and Allegiance. Mark is also the author of the Gray Man series starring for CIA goon Court Gentry. Today, we'll talk about book six in that series, Gun Metal Gray.

Podcast - Chanan Tigay - The Lost Book of Moses

Chanan Tigay's journalism has appeared in publications including Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle and The Jerusalem Post. He's an assistant professor of creative writing at San Francisco State University, and today we'll be talking about his first book, The Lost Book of Moses: The Hunt for the World's Oldest Bible, which is now available in paperback from Ecco/Harper Collins.

Podcast - Kevin Wilson - Perfect Little World

 

Kevin Wilson's story collection Tunneling to the Center of the Earth won an Alex Award and the Shirley Jackson Award. His first novel, The Family Fang was turned into a major motion picture directed by Jason Bateman, but today we'll be talking about his recently published second novel, Perfect Little World.

Podcast - Lydia Peelle - The Midnight Cool

Lydia Peelle first appeared on Book Talk to discuss her short story collection Reasons for and Advantages of Breathing, the collection making such an impression to earn her a spot on the National Book Foundation's 5 under 35 list in 2009. Today we'll be talking about her debut novel, The Midnight Cool, set mainly in the years before America's entry into World War One, in which a young man in middle Tennessee makes a living by selling mules to British Army and tries to make a normal life for himself.

Podcast - Shelia Lipsey - My Son's Wife

Susan Gray speaks to Memphis author Shelia Lipsey about her newest Christian fiction novel, My Son's Wife. Download the podcast today!

Podcast - Elizabeth McKenzie - The Portable Veblen

Elizabeth McKenzie who is a respected novelist having already published the novel-in-stories, Stop That Girl, and the novels MacGregor Tells the World and the new in paperback, The Portable Veblen, which was named to the longlist for the National Book Award and shortlisted for the 2016 Baileys Prize.

Podcast - Alexander Weinstein - Children of the New World

 

 

 

Alexander Weinstein's fiction has appeared in Notre-Dame Review, Pleiades,Southern Indiana Review, and other journals. His stories have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, and appear in the anthologies 2013 New Stories from the Midwest, and the 2014 & 2015 Lascaux Prize Stories. Today we'll be talking about his debut collection, Children of the New World, which is published by Picador.

Podcast - Beth Macy - Truevine

Beth Macy is a journalist having written for The Roanoke Times and has contributed essays to The New York Times.  She's written two best-selling books of non-fiction. The first was Factory Man: How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local -- and Helped Save an American Town, and today we'll be talking about Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother's Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South.

Podcast - Christine Kendall - Riding Chance

Before becoming an author, Christine Kendall worked in the field of law firm talent management, where she coordinated the NAACP 50th anniversary commemoration of the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision. Today we'll be talking about her debut novel for young adults, Riding Chance, which is published by Scholastic Press.

Podcast - Ashton Lee - Queen of the Cookbooks

Linda Lloyd welcomes Ashton Lee to the Book Talk studios to chat about Queen of the Cookbooks, the 5th installment of his Cherry Cola Book Club series. Librarian Maura Beth McShay is busy getting ready for the grand opening of Cherico, Mississippi's new, state-of-the-art library, when she is beset not just by skulduggery in the cook book competition, but also by protesters who want to control which books go on the library's shelves.

Beverly Lowry - Who Killed These Girls

Beverly Lowry is a respected novelist and writer of non-fiction. In addition to biographies of Harriet Tubman and Madame C.J. Walker, her book Crossed Over: A Monster, A Memoir dealt with the unsolved crime of her son's death by a hit and run driver and her getting to know Karla Faye Tucker, the convicted murderer who became the first woman executed in Texas in over 100 years. In this episode, we are talking about her new book, Who Killed These Girls?, her investigation to the still unresolved murders of four teenage girls in a yogurt shop in Austin Texas in December of 1991.

Podcast - Beverly Lowry - Who Killed These Girls?

Podcast - Robert Olen Butler - Perfume River

Robert Olen Butler is one of America's most acclaimed writers of fiction, having not only won many literary honors, including the Pulitzer Prize, but he also had prize for short fiction named in his honor, which was award five times in the early 2000s. Early in his writing career, Butler wrote fiction about the Vietnam conflict from several different angles, and in his latest novel, Perfume River, he looks about how this war, and even wars before and since, have influenced the Quinlan family.

Podcast - Thomas Mullen - Darktown

 

Thomas Mullen has published four novels, The Last Town on Earth, which won the James Fenimore Cooper prize, The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers, The Revisionists, and Atria has recently published his latest, Darktown, set in the dawning of the Civil Rights era in Atlanta. Eight African-American men are the first hired onto the police force, and two of them Lucius Boggs and Tommy Smith are tested as they investigate an African-American woman's murder, complicated by the fact she was seen last with a disgraced, white ex-cop who still has friends on the force.

 

 

Podcast - Nathan Hill - The Nix

Nathan Hill has worked as a journalist and is currently on leave from his job as an associate professor of creative writing. He's just published his debut novel The Nix to much critical acclaim, including starred reviews in Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Kirkus. And it was recently announced that Meryl Streep and J.J. Abrams plan on adapting The Nix for television.

Podcast - Kerri Maniscalco - Stalking Jack the Ripper