WYPL Book Talk

 

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.

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.

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'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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

(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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

 

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.

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.

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

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.

 

 

 

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.

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.

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.