WYPL Book Talk

Keith Thomson - Twice a Spy

Stephen welcomes Keith Thomson back to the program to talk about his new comedic international thriller Twice a Spy. Picking right up after Once a Spy, Charlie Clark and his former-spy and Alzheimer-patient father Drummond are searching for a nuclear weapon to save both one life in particular and many others in general.

 

Les Standiford and Joe Matthews - Bringing Adam Home

Stephen Usery interviews Les Standiford and Joe Matthews about their book Bringing Adam Home: The Abduction that Changed America. It's the story of the kidnapping and murder of six year-old Adam Walsh in Hollywood, Florida in 1981, the bungled investigation and the movement to bring the plight of missing children to national attention.

Kim Severson - Spoon Fed

Stephen Usery interviews New York Times Atlanta bureau chief, Kim Severson. Her memoir Spoon Fed:How Eight Cooks Saved My Life is new in paperback, and it looks back at her career as a food and dining writer in Alaska, San Francisco, and New York, as well as her family's food traditions rooted in her mother's Italian heritage.

Andre Dubus III - Townie

 

Stephen Usery interviews Andre Dubus III, author of The House of Sand and Fog. They discuss Dubus's new NY Times best-selling memoir, Townie, about growing up in the rough, crumbling mill towns of northern Massachusetts and how he embraced violence to give him a sense of control in his adolescence, but at a major cost to his spiritual well-being.

 

Yann Martel - Beatrice and Virgil

 

Stephen Usery interviews Canadian author Yann Martel about his allegorical novel, Beatrice and Virgil, which is now available in paperback. They'll also talk about the themes that pervade his fiction, including the international best-seller and Man Booker Prize-winning novel Life of Pi.

Sophie Littlefield - Aftertime

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Stephen Usery interviews Sophie Littlefield about the first book in her dystopia trilogy. In the novel Aftertime, Cassandra Dollar must navigate northern California after bio-terrorism has decimated the ecology and turned most humans into ravenous, zomblie-like predators called "beaters." She's searching for her young daughter and must also deal with the threat humans continue to be to themselves.

Mark Richard - House of Prayer No. 2

Stephen Usery interviews PEN/Hemingway winner Mark Richard about his new memoir House of Prayer No. 2: A Writer's Journey Home. It's an unusual book, in that it's told in the second person, so Stephen asked that Mark answer his questions in the second person, too.

Michael Oher - I Beat the Odds

Stephen Usery interviews professional football player and Memphis native Michael Oher about his memoir, I Beat the Odds: From Homelessness to the Blindside and Beyond.

Isabel Wilkerson - The Warmth of Other Suns

 

 

Stephen Usery interviews Isabel Wilkerson about her critically-acclaimed and commercially- successful first book, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Wilkerson contends that the movement of African-Americans from the South to other parts of the United States from World War I to the early 1970s is the most under-reported stories in our country's history. She follows the lives of three people examining the different social and economic reasons for leaving the South and Jim Crow behind.

Kevin Brockmeier - The Illumination

Stephen Usery interviews Kevin Brockmeier about his new novel, The Illumination.
It's the story of six people and how they respond to a strange, new development around the world when human pain begins to manifest itself as visible light. It investigates the philosophical, religious, artistic, and emotional ramifications of not being to hide one's pain or ignore another's.

Philip Stephens - Miss Me When I'm Gone

Stephen Usery interviews Philip Stephens about his debut novel Miss Me When I'm Gone. It's the story of a folk singer who returns home to Apogee, Missouri in the Ozarks Mountains when his mother falls ill. The town has changed much over the years, in no small part because his brother's real estate development business, and everyone is on edge when an ex-con drifts into town.

Mary Jane Clark - To Have and to Kill

Stephen Usery interviews best-selling author Mary Jane Clark about the first book in her new mystery series, To Have and to Kill, which introduces us to Piper Donovan, a down on her luck actress who moves back in with her parents and gets more than she bargained for when she agrees to make a wedding cake for her soap opera star friend.

Wendell Potter - Deadly Spin

Stephen Usery interviews former health insurance executive Wendell Potter about his book, Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans. Potter is a former Memphis Press Scimitar reporter who worked his way up the corporate health care ladder until their practices finally burdened his conscience enough for him to quit and blow the whistle.

Soledad O'Brien - The Next Big Story

Stephen Usery interviews CNN news anchor and special correspondent Soledad O'Brien about her new memoir The Next Big Story: My Journey Through the Land of Possibilities. It follows O'Brien from her growing up in her interracial, immigrant family, attending Harvard, and working her way up the ladder in the competitive field of television news.

Marshall Chapman - They Came to Nashville

Stephen Usery interviews Marshall Chapman about her new book, They Came to Nashville. In addition to her own story, Chapman talks to several country music performers and songwriters, including Willie Nelson and Emmylou Harris, about why they moved to Nashville and their earliest experiences when getting to town.

Sonja Livingston - Ghostbread

Stephen Usery interviews University of Memphis instructor Sonja Livingston, about her memoir, Ghostbread. Now in paperback, this winner of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Award for Creative Non-Fiction is an impressionistic take on Livingston's childhood in the Rust Belt area of western New York.

Nancy Pearl - Book Lust to Go

Stephen Usery interviews Nancy Pearl about her newest guide about what to read next with Book Lust to Go: Recommended Reading for Travelers, Vagabonds, and Dreamers. Not a listing of guide books, Book Lust to Go looks at travel memoirs, novels that evoke a strong sense of place, epic histories, and mysteries that get to the nitty-gritty of some of the world's most fascinating places.

 

Ian Frazier- Travels in Siberia

Stephen Usery interviews Ian Frazier about his new book Travels in Siberia, which details several trips to this vast land after the fall of communism. Frazier is a writer and columnist for the New Yorker who is known for his keen wit, as well as his serious non-fiction works like On the Rez and Great Plains.

Lee Sandlin - Wicked River

Stephen Usery interviews Lee Sandlin about his book Wicked River: The Mississippi When It Last Ran Wild. It's an interesting and sometimes funny look at the Big Muddy between the Louisiana purchase and the end of the Civil War, including close looks at crime on the river, the New Madrid earthquakes, and the Sultana riverboat disaster.

Mark Greaney - On Target

Stephen Usery interviews Mark Greaney about his the second book in his Gray Man series, On Target. Burned CIA operative Court Gentry is recovering from his previous adventures and injuries and jumps back into the world of black ops by heading to Somalia and getting in the middle of the Darfur conflict, where more than a few players have an active interest.