WYPL Book Talk

R.J. Ellory - A Simple Act of Violence

Stephen Usery interviews R.J. Ellory about his Theakston prize-winning novel, A Simple Act of Violence. Washington D.C. homicide detective Robert Miller is hunting a serial killer whose secrets could shake the foundation of the nation. They also talk about RJ's blues rock band, The Whiskey Poets.

Lisa Patton - Yankee Doodle Dixie

Stephen Usery interviews former Memphian Lisa Patton about her second novel Yankee Doodle Dixie. A sequel to Whistlin' Dixie in a Nor'Easter, Yankee Doodle Dixie finds Leelee Satterfield back in Memphis and having trouble readjusting to home after having run an inn in Vermont for over a year. A new job in radio makes things more interesting than Leelee could have ever imagined.

Rober Olen Butler - A Small Hotel

Stephen Usery interviews Pulitzer-Prize winner Robert Olen Butler about his new novel, A Small Hotel. It's the story of the end of a marriage between Michael and Kelly Hays, but travels back in time to their first meeting, their childhoods, and other points along their histories that let us know how their marriage came to be so troubled.

Jesmyn Ward - Salvage the Bones

Stephen Usery interviews Jesmyn Ward about her second novel, Salvage the Bones. It's August of 2005, and as the hurricane season begins heating up, a Mississippi Gulf Coast teenage girl named Esch tries to get by from day to day, as her brother raises pit bulls for fighting, her father obsesses about the coming storms, and the world at large seems to have little to no sympathy for the rural poor. 

Clyde Edgerton - The Night Train

Stephen Usery interviews Clyde Edgerton about his new novel, The Night Train. It's 1963 in a small North Carolina town where two teenagers, one black, one white, strike up a small friendship over music. One wants to become a jazz pianist in order to leave the segregrated south, and the other wants to lead his white bandmates in learning James Brown's Live at the Apollo note for note.

Preston Lauterbach - The Chitlin' Circuit and the Road to Rock 'n' Roll

Stephen Usery interviews Memphian Preston Lauterbach about his first book, The Chitlin' Circuit and the Road to Rock 'n' Roll. The Chitlin' Circuit doesn't just look at the evolution of African-American musical styles in the mid-twentieth century, but it also looks at the money men behind the business of show and all the hurdles they had to overcome to ensure some good rockin' tonight.

 

 

Jenny Wingfield - The Homecoming of Samuel Lake

Stephen Usery interviews Jenny Wingfield about her debut novel, The Homecoming of Samuel Lake. Set in South Arkansas in the mid-1950s, Samuel Lake is a Methodist minister without a church who moves his wife and kids into his in-laws' home, which features a general store up front and an illegal bar out back, and his daughter becomes friends with a neighbor which puts the entire family at risk.

Adam Ross - Ladies and Gentlemen

Stephen Usery interviews Adam Ross about his short story collection Ladies and Gentlemen. Coming on the heels of his critically-acclaimed first novel, Mr. Peanut, Ross continues his investigations into the choices we make every day, especially the ones which lead us to hurting others and ultimately, ourselves.

Sandra Beasley - Don't Kill the Birthday Girl

Stephen Usery interviews award-winning poet Sandra Beasley about her memoir, Don't Kill the Birthday Girl. Beasley has suffered from multiple extreme food allergies all of her life, and she looks back at the effect it has had on her and her family, as well as investigating the science behind food allergies and their treatment.

Oscar Hijuelos - Thoughts Without Cigarettes

Stephen Usery interviews Pulitzer Prize winner Oscar Hijuelos about his new memoir, Thoughts Without Cigarettes. It follows his parents' leaving Cuba and moving to New York, his fight with kidney disease and a long hospital stay as a child that alienated him from his mother tongue Spanish, and up until he won the Pulitzer in 1990 for his novel, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. 

Bill Loehfelm - The Devil She Knows

Stephen Usery interviews Bill Loehfelm about his third crime novel, The Devil She Knows. Maureen Coughlin is tough Staten Island waitress coming up on 30 who wants to get her life on track, but when she sees something that she shouldn't have, surviving the next few days means much more than choosing a new career path.

Jim Shepard - You Think That's Bad

Stephen Usery interviews National Book Award Finalist Jim Shepard about his newest collection of short stories, You Think That's Bad. Not one to limit himself historically or geographically, Shepard's stories range from Joan of Arc's compatriot Gilles de Rais, to the man responsible for the first Godzilla suit, and black ops scientists who work at Area 51.

Karen White- The Beach Trees

Stephen Usery interviews Karen White about her latest best-selling novel, The Beach Trees, where a woman in New York becomes guardian of her recently-deceased friend's son and goes to New Orleans and the Mississippi coast in order to untie her friend's secrets.

Rita Mae Brown - Hiss of Death

Stephen Usery interviews Rita Mae Brown about her newest Mrs. Murphy mystery, Hiss of Death. Strange things are afoot at the new medical center in Crozet, Virginia and our feline detective Mrs. Murphy, corgi Tucker, and the somewhat rotund cat Pewter, all try to help their human Harry track down who is behind a string of suspicious deaths.

 

David Schmahmann - The Double Life of Alfred Buber

Stephen Usery interviews David Schmahmann about his two recent novels, The Double Life of Alfred Buber and Ivory From Paradise.

Ace Atkins - the Ranger

Stephen Usery welcomes back Alabama native and current Mississipian Ace Atkins to discuss his new series about Army Ranger Quinn Colson. The Ranger is the first book, and in it, Sergeant Colson comes back to Jericho in Northern Mississippi for his uncle's funeral, and it seems there are more than a few questions lingering about this county sheriff's death.

Daniel J. Sharfstein - The Invisible Line

Stephen Usery interviews Vanderbilt Law School professor Daniel J. Sharfstein about his book The Invisible Line: Three American Families and The Secret Journey From Black to White. It's a fascinating look at the evolution of America's legal views of people who have both Caucasian and sub-Saharan African ancestors and the implications it had on them when dealing with slavery, reconstruction and Jim Crow.

Kyran Pitman - Planting Dandelions

Stephen Usery interviews Kyran Pittman about her memoir Planting Dandelions: Field Notes from a Semi-Domesticated Life. It's the story of a young woman from the Canadian Province of Newfoundland whose marriage blows apart as she runs off with a man from Arkansas and finds herself soon raising a family of three boys in Little Rock as she begins her writing career.

River Wilson - Praying for Strangers

 
Stephen Usery interviews novelist and playwright River Jordan about her memoir, Praying for Strangers. It's a look at the year when Jordan undertook a New Year's resolution to pray for a different stranger each and every day and the impact that it it made on her normally introverted tendencies.

Mark Childress - Georgia Bottoms

 

 

Stephen Usery interviews Mark Childress about his new novel Georgia Bottoms. Georgia Bottoms is a special woman who provides a special service to the important men of Six Points, Alabama, all while trying to maintain her family's stately home with her mother's slide in to dementia, complicated by old-school racism, and her brother's small-time criminal inclinations making things more and more difficult.